It’s happened to all Atlantans at least once. You’re stuck in traffic and wonder why the congestion is this bad, yet again. From its start as a 19th-century railroad hub to the rise and fall of streetcars to the deliberate zoning of highways through segregated neighbourhoods, Atlanta’s history is carved into its streets — for better or worse.
Now, a new digital project is reimagining how we explore that history. The OpenWorld Atlanta Research and Learning Hub, built by Emory University with partners in Germany and South Korea, uses archives and interactive technology to connect the city’s past with its future. At the heart of the project is a desire to make history more comprehensible through visual tools. Alexander Cors of Emory Center for Digital Scholarship, and a graduate of Emory’s History PhD program, argues that, “Narratives that are sometimes hidden in documents or letters are so much easier to visualize on a map. You can communicate research or arguments to an audience that might not sit down and read your whole book.”
Atlanta Skyline in 1928 — 3D models (created by Ian Burr, Michael Page, and Jay Varner, ECDS)
OpenWorld Atlanta organizes content by people, places and themes, offering multiple entry points for exploration. With support for video, audio, interactive media and community-submitted projects, it’s a unique digital space where Atlanta’s past and present come alive.
The project began with a simple problem: Atlanta research was everywhere, but not connected anywhere.
“We have researchers doing amazing work, but no central directory,” says Cors, one of the project directors.
To fix this, his team built a platform where historians, geographers, and practitioners can share and combine data — turning disconnected projects into a powerful narrative. By layering maps, census records and old streetcar routes, researchers can now visualize how Atlanta’s cityscape evolved over time. Thanks to geographer Michael Page, digital visualization specialist Ian Burr and lead software engineer Jay Varner, users can even fly over the skyline as it would have looked in 1928.
“We have city directories and old yellow pages indicating where people lived, where businesses were located,” Cors says. The challenge was, “How can we bring all of these different data types together into one map? This is how OpenWorld Atlanta started.”
On a fundamental level, recognizing how the city was constructed along racial and economic lines helps users to understand how modern-day Atlanta functions and often reproduces similar social inequalities. OpenWorld Atlanta lets viewers combine and layer those maps in new and creative ways, which enables them to observe how the city developed and why.
“You can pull in different layers,” Cors says, “You have 1870 and then overlay it with 1911, you see the expansion of the city. Or you see continuous neighborhoods in 1928, then you overlay the modern street network and you can see how the downtown connector tore through neighborhoods and ripped communities apart.”
International partnerships funded by the Halle Institute
International cooperation has driven OpenWorld Atlanta from the start. Historians, geographers, computer scientists and data experts have all contributed, supported by funding from the Halle Institute for Global Research and Learning. Partnerships with the University of Bonn and Yonsei University added expertise in design and classroom applications, expanding the project’s reach.
Dr. Christina Crawford with geography students at the University of Bonn.
At Emory, Atlanta often doubles as a classroom. Students study everything from health care access to the languages spoken across Fulton County, even writing biographies of the city’s landmark buildings. But what happens when the students have never set foot in Atlanta — or even heard of it? That question sparked OpenWorld Atlanta’s push to take the city’s story abroad.
Partnering with the University of Bonn’s Geography Institute, the Emory team co-created a virtual field trip to Atlanta’s historic Cabbagetown. Using 3D models, Google Streetview, interviews, maps and photo galleries, the project gave German students a vivid way to explore an American city usually studied only through textbooks.
For the Bonn researchers, the project was also an experiment in how immersive media can boost spatial thinking and historical awareness. As Tobit Nauheim, collaborator at the University of Bonn, put it, “It was a pleasure to turn shared ideas into practice with our American partners.”
Geo AI: From archives to AI
Beyond teaching, OpenWorld Atlanta is reshaping how history itself gets studied. One of its biggest goals has been digitizing Atlanta’s historical maps — a massive task that once took several years to complete by hand.
Xiao Huang (right), with Shoibolina Kaushik (middle) and Safia Read (left), present the first results of the Geo-AI aspect of the project.
Early iterations struggled with faded streets or complex overlays, but continuous refinement allowed the AI to capture dense urban roads, winding streets and even faded paths within its mapping system.
The team is currently working to incorporate a layer of medical data such as hospitals and doctors’ offices that would let users ask complex, multilayered questions, such as how Black patients could find a specialist in the segregated Atlanta of an earlier era, then plot the appropriate way to travel there using different modes of transportation.
“You can ask questions about health care access and equity,” Cors says. “You can also trace the change over time with different data sources. When you have data that can talk to each other, you can ask questions about environmental justice, urban development, ongoing discrimination based on location.”
Left: 1974 historical map of Atlanta. Right: AI-generated road network overlay created within minutes.
For Shoibolina Kaushik, an Emory graduate who helped develop the system, the project was transformative. “Working with historical map data sparked a lasting interest in geospatial data and showed me its real-world impact,” she reflects.
OpenWorld Atlanta is not just about preserving the past; it is also about shaping the future, through innovation and connection. This unique learning hub that connects researchers, scholars, practitioners and community members, provides a resource for the people who care about Atlanta and its people. This initiative serves as a blueprint for other cities, demonstrating how digital tools can be used to enhance public scholarship and urban planning discussions.