Urban History has long supported the publication of online-only, multimedia works. Since 2004 the journal, published by Cambridge University Press, has delivered a number of open-access, multimedia companions, both for special issues and for individual journal articles and in 2006 the journal released Urban Icons, a groundbreaking interactive special issue focused on urban visual history.

This week the journal once again demonstrated its commitment to born-digital scholarship, releasing a special issue, ‘Urban Sights: Urban History and Visual Culture,’ guest edited by Matt Delmont and authored entirely in Scalar. “Drawing on photography, painting, film, television and other visual and textual evidence,” Delmont summarized the special issue, “the essays explore how diverse visual forms not only shape metropolitan spaces, experiences and identities, but also shape the ways in which people imagine, remember and forget such spaces and events.”

Putting the study of the visual at the center of urban history, these born-digital essays examine a wide range of visual assets and, in the case of Bridget Gilman’s essay (see below), allow readers to explore interactive timelines and visualizations of Robert Bechtle’s paintings. Delmont, in fact, worked closely with the Scalar team, as well as Urban History’s Multimedia Editor (2004-2015) and Scalar Co-PI, Phil Ethington, to see that each essay took the greatest advantage of the platform’s affordances. Delmont writes:

By presenting the special issue in Scalar, we hope to offer both new research on urban visual history and also new models for the visual and textual presentation of such research. In contrast to a traditional print issue, Scalar affords the opportunity to present a large number of images, including color images; present selected clips from films and television that are analyzed in the essays; and create visualizations to present evidence in more dynamic ways. The authors have used digital technology to expand and extend their historical analysis of and to bring this sustained engagement with the past to a wide audience through an open access online format.

Urban Sights contains the following essays:

• Laura Grantmyre, ‘Conflicting visions of renewal in Pittsburgh’s Hill District, 1950-1968’
• Bridget Gilman, ‘San Francisco views: Robert Bechtle and the reformulation of urban vision’
• Mona Damluji, ‘Visualizing Iraq: oil, cinema and the modern city’
• Carrie Rentschler, ‘Filmic witness to the 1964 Kitty Genovese murder’
• Matt Delmont, ‘Buses from nowhere: television and anti-busing activism in 1970s urban America’