This map shows the growth of Quebec City over time through its amalgamation of nearby towns, which eventually became boroughs. It briefly explains the historical considerations and the reasons both for and against expansion of the city at various critical growth periods. The use of the internet as an interactive medium allows the viewer to click through the timeline and watch as the city grows and morphs into what it is today. Viewers can hover over the boroughs as they exist today to read more and to see pictures representing them.
Quebec City has always been a comparatively small city without much industry, so it has been trying for decades to find ways to grow. On the one hand, incorporating new boroughs provided an easy way to make the city seem as if it was growing, hopefully attracting people to move there and create a virtuous cycle of growth. On the other hand, doing so caused friction with the sense of local identity of each former town, causing some boroughs to vote for separation from the city just a few years later. To combat the latter problem, the city government has tried very hard to blur the lines between the former towns as much as possible, to the point that it was difficult to find accurate information for this map beyond the 2002 reorganization.
This relates to the content of the class because it shows how Quebec City has tried to evolve from a colonial-era town on a strategic site to a modern "creative city," with mixed success. It also shows how Quebec City's spatial structure is best described by the multiple-nuclei model since most of its growth was in amalgamating nearby existing towns.