Measuring Urban Change in Travel Texts Using the Example of the City of Graz in the Long Nineteenth Century

Nineteenth-century guidebooks offer measurable insights into urban change, revealing how subjective narratives intertwine with historical reality. This study demonstrates that travel texts can serve as valuable sources for reconstructing perceptions and spatial relationships in the city of Graz, Austria. By analyzing these accounts, researchers can quantify aspects of urban transformation over time. The approach combines qualitative text analysis with quantitative methods to bridge the gap between individual experiences and broader historical trends. This method provides a novel way to study the evolution of historic urban spaces, offering new perspectives on how cities were perceived and documented in the long nineteenth century.

Bürgermeister, M. (2022). Measuring Urban Change in Travel Texts Using the Example of the City of Graz in the Long Nineteenth Century. Magazén, (1). https://doi.org/10.30687/mag/2724-3923/2022/05/003