digATL | The Digital Atlanta Portal

Digital collection of material related to city planning and urban development in Atlanta. The collection consists of city planning maps, city planning publications, demographic data, photographs depicting planning activities, oral histories, and aerial photographs. Much of the Planning Atlanta material was created by the City of Atlanta, the Atlanta Regional Commission (ARC), and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Additionally, items from other agencies and entities, such as the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA), are included. Planning Atlanta is a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) funded project and seeks to move beyond the traditional digital library model of simply providing digital equivalents of tangible objects. This city planning focused collection provides free and open access to digitally transformed, dynamic, and engaging content with the goal of enhancing this material for educational and research uses. Many items in the collection have been transformed into digital objects that can be engaged with and manipulated. 

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. 

Focused on suburban residential developments in DeKalb County, Georgia between the end of World War II and 1970 in order to better understand the transformation of the area after the Second World War. The resource includes data on national residential trends, architectural and landscape designs, as well as information on metropolitan Atlanta. The resource was created to support the effort to preserve local neighborhoods, buildings, and landmarks by providing the historic context in which they were created.

Date created

Spring 2010