Emory University announced on May 5 the launch of the OpenWorld Atlanta Research and Learning Hub, a new digital platform designed to help users explore the complex history of Atlanta through interactive maps and archives.
The initiative aims to make Atlanta’s historical development more accessible by allowing users to visualize how transportation, zoning, and social policies have shaped the city. By connecting researchers, students, and community members with layered data sources, the hub seeks to foster a deeper understanding of how past decisions continue to influence present-day life in Atlanta.
Alexander Cors of Emory Center for Digital Scholarship said that visualizing historical narratives on a map can make research more accessible: “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.” The redesigned OpenWorld Atlanta site debuted at the ATL Studies Symposium last May. Built by Bailey Betik and the Emory team, it organizes content by people, places, and themes while supporting video, audio, interactive media, and community-submitted projects.
Cors explained that previously there was no central directory for research about Atlanta: “We have researchers doing amazing work, but no central directory.” The platform now allows historians and geographers to share data in one place. Users can layer maps from different eras—such as comparing neighborhoods from 1870 with those from 1911—to see how city expansion or infrastructure projects like highways affected communities. Cors added: “You have 1870 and then overlay it with 1911; you see the expansion of the city… you overlay the modern street network and you can see how the downtown connector tore through neighborhoods and ripped communities apart.”
International partnerships supported by funding from Emory’s Halle Institute for Global Research have expanded OpenWorld Atlanta’s reach. Collaborations with Germany’s University of Bonn led to virtual field trips using immersive media tools for students abroad. Tobit Nauheim at Bonn said: “It was a pleasure to turn shared ideas into practice with our American partners.”
The project also incorporates artificial intelligence (AI) through its GeoAI component developed by Professor Xiao Huang along with Shoibolina Kaushik and Safia Read. Their AI system reduced what was once hundreds of hours’ work mapping road networks into minutes. According to Cors: “You can ask questions about health care access and equity… When you have data that can talk to each other, you can ask questions about environmental justice, urban development, ongoing discrimination based on location.” Kaushik reflected on her experience developing GeoAI: “Working with historical map data sparked a lasting interest in geospatial data and showed me its real-world impact.”
OpenWorld Atlanta is positioned as both an educational resource for scholars worldwide as well as a model for other cities interested in using digital tools for public scholarship.
