It’s happened to all Atlantans at least once. You’re stuck in traffic and wonder why 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 neighborhoods, Atlanta’s history is carved into its streets.
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, technology, and interactive tools to connect the city’s past with its future.
In May, the redesigned OpenWorld Atlanta site debuted at the ATL Studies Symposium. Built by Dr. Bailey Betik and the Emory team, the hub was designed with one goal: to make Atlanta’s history accessible to everyone, not just academics.
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 nowhere connected. “We have researchers doing amazing work, but no central directory,” says Dr. Alexander Cors of Emory’s Center for Digital Scholarship.
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 like in 1928.
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.
Teaching (Teaching Atlanta & University of Bonn)
At Emory, Atlanta often doubles as a classroom. Students study everything from healthcare 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.
Collaboration between these international scholars and a contingent from Emory was the solution. 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 Dr. Tobit Nauheim 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 seven years to complete by hand.
Now, with GeoAI, the team can do the same work in a fraction of the time. Working with Environmental Sciences Professor Xiao Huang, two Emory students, Shoibolina Kaushik and Safia Read, built an AI system that reduced a 300-hour job to just four hours—mapping Atlanta’s entire 1972 road network in under ten minutes.
Digitizing historical road maps used to be a months-long, labor-intensive process, with researchers manually tracing every street. OpenWorld Atlanta changed that by developing an AI-based road detection system capable of scanning maps and identifying networks automatically.
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 from Atlanta’s 1974 map in a single pass. What once took over 300 hours now takes just four hours to prepare and 10 minutes to generate, saving more than 97% of manual labor.
The AI success with road networks opens doors to digitizing other map features—buildings, railways, and land-use zones—revealing how cities evolve while saving time and labor. Making historical maps AI-ready gives researchers, educators, and communities new ways to connect with the past.
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, achieved through innovation and connection. Through generating this unique learning hub that connects researchers, scholars, practitioners, and community members, this project provides a network of people who care about Atlanta and its people – and who can inspire this same care, interest, and curiosity in others, no matter how far. This initiative serves as a blueprint for other cities, demonstrating how digital tools can be used to enhance public scholarship and urban planning discussions.