digATL | The Digital Atlanta Portal

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.

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. 

How water has shaped the city. Video tour with urban designer and author Hannah Palmer. Palmer’s writing explores the intersection of Southern stories and urban landscapes, and has appeared on CNN.com, Art Papers, Creative Loafing, and in masterplans for urban design projects around the world.

Related Content

• Palmer, Hannah. “The scent of water: Searching for hidden springs in downtown Atlanta
  Can we find and repurpose the downtown springs and creeks that have languished for generations under layers of asphalt?” Atlanta Magazine, February 3, 2023, https://www.atlantamagazine.com/great-reads/the-scent-of-water-searching-for-hidden-springs-in-downtown-atlanta/

Atlanta, originally named Terminus, has a profound history which is extensively intertwined with transit. This project visualizes how the city’s public transit system, now a shadow of what it once was, falls short of its far-reaching intentions. By highlighting the routes which have been proposed in the development of these systems, this project aims to contribute to larger discussions taking place around the topic of public transit in Atlanta. The displayed map layers were georeferenced from planning documents available through GSU’s Planning Atlanta collection. These historical, paper maps often served general planning purposes and therefore were not created with attention to precise geographical accuracy. While map layers represented here accurately reflect rail transportation routes displayed by planning documents, please be advised that the map layers accessible from this page have limited geographical accuracy and do not necessarily align with one another. 

Prepared by the Spring 2006 Preservation Planning students. This project, developed in a collaborative effort by the Atlanta Urban Design commission and GSU students, was designed to highlight the history of the proposed redevelopment nodes along the Beltline, which is an outer band railroad line encircling the city. The purpose was to identify the significance of the resources therein and their links to Atlanta’s history, providing assistance in the overall development process of the Beltline project.

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

The Digital Archive of the Heritage Preservation Program (HPP) available in ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University is a compendium of student projects produced under the supervision of the HPP faculty from 1991 until the present. The Archive contains a variety of completed projects that document buildings and historic areas in and around Metropolitan Atlanta. The projects include Historic Structure Reports of historic or endangered buildings, Historic District Information Forms prepared for submission to the Georgia Historic Preservation Division for eventual National Register Designation, Design Guideline and Planning projects that are intended to assist communities and neighborhoods in making design decisions about Locally Designated Historic Districts and Historic Context studies that focus on a particular building type, period of development (developmental history) or particular community. These documents embody a wide variety of buildings, neighborhoods and communities across Metro Atlanta. They demonstrate the body of work accomplished by the students of the Heritage Preservation Program and are here to be utilized by anyone seeking to research historic places in and around Atlanta.

Student project from GSU Department of Geosciences. With more than 80,000 acres of tree cover inside the Perimeter, Atlanta leads the nation in urban tree cover; approximately 47% of the city has significant tree growth. Atlanta’s forest is home to over 50 species of native trees, which work to reduce carbon dioxide, produce oxygen, conserve and filter water, serve as habitats for native and endemic species throughout the Piedmont region, cool neighborhoods, and serve as recreational areas. In a city where the tree canopy is already being lost, is submerged in its own wastewater, is experiencing extreme climate change, including enhanced heatwaves, and other factors documented here, the current threat of deforestation has placed the city’s trees in an historically critical situation. Launched 2022; last accessed 2022-10-15 

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. 

Historic District Information Form authored and submitted by GSU Case Studies in Historic Preservation students, Spring 2017. Located partially in the City of Atlanta, DeKalb County and in unincorporated DeKalb County, East Atlanta is a good example of an evolving suburb. In the late 19th and early 20th century the area was an urban neighborhood that relied on the streetcar system and by World War II had evolved into an automobile-reliant suburban. Development progressed from a densely gridded street pattern in the northern portion indicating a traditional urban neighborhood to a curvilinear street pattern in the southern section indicating an automobile-centric suburb. The area includes at least three commercial nodes, a variety of historic houses and community and commercial buildings, a cemetery, a park, a Civil War monument, and five state historic markers.

Design guidelines prepared by graduate students in the Preservation Planning Class of Georgia State University’s Heritage Preservation Program under the direction of Richard Laub and Mary Ann Eaddy, Spring 2011. These guidelines explain and interpret general design criteria in the local preservation ordinance for Decatur, serves as a tool to guide preliminary design decisions, preserves historic character of the area, protects and stabilizes property values, makes suggestions for design appropriateness and provides neighborhood continuity, stability and predictability in assessing future change. The purpose of this report is to provide recommendations that aid in the preservation of the unique architectural and historic character of the city. The recommendations incorporate and revise the Design Supplement to the Decatur Historic Preservation Resource Manual, developed in 1997, the McDonough-Adams-King the Guidelines for MAK district property owners, developed in 2008, and the Historic Resource Survey: Final Report, City of Decatur, Georgia, September 1, 2009, developed in 2009. Students consulted with the Historic Preservation Commission of Decatur to ensure that these revisions accurately reflect the intent of Decatur’s local historic designations and the design review process. We hope that consideration of these recommendations will aid in the preservation of the unique architectural and historic character of the city. The Historic Preservation Planning Class would like to extend its appreciation to Regina Brewer and the entire Decatur Historic Preservation Commission for their support. We would also like to grate fully acknowledge the express help of Laura Drummond, Ken Kocher, Andrew Kohr, and the staff of the DeKalb History Center and Decatur Branch of DeKalb Public Library.