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Recent Atlanta Research from GSU in ScholarWorks

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digATLThe Digital Atlanta Portal

Projects, collections, and data about the metro area produced by Georgia State University faculty, staff, and students working with and within their communities. More ...

Tag: Data

Mapping Atlanta

GSU professor Taylor Shelton’s blog exploring all of Atlanta’s oddities and inequalities with maps. Issues covered are fundamentally about geography, about how places are the...
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GSU professor Taylor Shelton’s blog exploring all of Atlanta’s oddities and inequalities with maps. Issues covered are fundamentally about geography, about how places are the way they are and how they change over time and how all of that matters to the people that occupy those places. Atlanta is one of the most interesting and unique cities in the US, if not the world, but it’s also one that’s been chronically understudied relative to other large cities. Even if more were written about Atlanta on a consistent basis, the city’s rapid changes necessitate ever more investigation of what’s happening, where and why. Atlanta consistently has some of the highest levels of income inequality of any city or metro across the entire United States. And while the city had a reputation for being one of the most affordable large metros, the last several years have seen some of the most rapid housing price increases of anywhere across the country, with unchecked gentrification running rampant in some historically Black neighborhoods.

Creator
Taylor Shelton is an assistant professor in the Department of Geosciences at Georgia State University, where he teaches classes about maps and data.
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ATLMaps

The ATLMaps platform, a collaboration between Georgia State University and Emory University, combines archival maps, geospatial data visualization, and user contributed multimedia location pinpoints to...
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The ATLMaps platform, a collaboration between Georgia State University and Emory University, combines archival maps, geospatial data visualization, and user contributed multimedia location pinpoints to promote investigation into any number of issues about Atlanta. While currently focused on one city to demonstrate the power of stacking thousands of layers of information on one place, this innovative online platform allows users to layer an increasing number of interdisciplinary data to address the complex issues that any city poses. The project looks to offer a framework that incorporates storytelling reliant on geospatial data and for normalizing input across a range of data sets about so that material can be cross-compared in novel ways, allowing users to make connections between seemingly unrelated data sources and ask questions that would not be apparent when only looking at one particular project. The ATLMaps project will also encourage knowledgeable members of the university and local communities to curate data on the site to demonstrate the possibilities for synthesizing material across projects and data types.

Complete list of ATLMaps contributors and past and present team members at https://atlmaps.org/about

Creator
Brennan Collins, Assoc. Director, GSU Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning for Digital Pedagogy and Atlanta Studies; Megan Slemons, GIS Librarian, Emory Center for Digital Scholarship; Jay Varner, Lead Software Engineer, Emory Center for Digital Scholarship; Tim Hawthorne, Assist. Professor of Geographic Information Systems, Dept. of Sociology, University of Central Florida; Joe Hurley: Ph.D. candidate, School of History and Sociology, Georgia Tech; Ben Miller, Senior Lecturer, Technical Writing & Digital Humanities, Emory University

Research Atlanta, Inc. Reports

Formed in 1971, Research Atlanta was a non-profit organization established to study public policy issues affecting the Atlanta metropolitan area. Research Atlanta served as Atlanta’s...
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Formed in 1971, Research Atlanta was a non-profit organization established to study public policy issues affecting the Atlanta metropolitan area. Research Atlanta served as Atlanta’s think tank for urban problems and published policy studies from 1971 to 2006 on major urban issues confronted by metropolitan Atlanta and placed Atlanta’s urban problems within a national context. During its 35 years of operation Research Atlanta produced numerous public policy studies on issues ranging from public school desegregation to creating a downtown cultural district. In 1992, Georgia State University agreed to assume responsibility for operating Research Atlanta. In 2006, Research Atlanta merged with the Regional Leadership Forum and the Metro Group to form what is now the Civic League for Regional Atlanta. 

Creator
Research Atlanta, Inc
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Sprawling of Atlanta: Visualizing Metropolitan Area Change, 1940s to Present

Interactive web map created by Georgia State University Library that invites researchers, students, and the public to visualize the extensive built environment and demographic changes...
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Interactive web map created by Georgia State University Library that invites researchers, students, and the public to visualize the extensive built environment and demographic changes that have occurred throughout our metropolitan region from the 1940s to the present. The project provides aerial imagery overlays of the five core metropolitan counties – Fulton, DeKalb, Cobb, Gwinnett, and Clayton – documenting over eight decades of growth and change in our region. Also included are census tract level population and housing data, providing additional context to these visualizations. Among the changing patterns revealed are the dramatic growth of the suburbs, decline in agricultural areas, decline and rebuilding of the urban core, and shifting racial and housing patterns. 

Creator
Project led by Joseph Hurley, Data Services and GIS Librarian, and Katheryn L. Nikolich, Ph.D. candidate in History, with assistance from GSU Honors College Student Assistant Carson Kantoris.
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