transportation
Welcome to Atlanta’s transportation landscape through digital projects, articles, maps, and more! Dive into interactive tools and insightful research that uncover the city’s mobility challenges and historical developments.
Featured Project
Segregation By Design
This animation was produced by Divided By Design in partnership with Segregation By Design
This project uses historic aerial photography to document the destruction of communities of color caused by redlining, urban renewal, and freeway construction, revealing how the 1956 Federal Highway Act systematically segregated American cities. Freeways acted as tools of racial division, displacing hundreds of thousands, destroying livelihoods, and perpetuating cycles of poverty, while subsidizing white suburban flight. The project calls for reparations, including dismantling urban freeways as a step toward rectifying these injustices and revitalizing cities. By visually exposing the enduring impact of these policies, it aims to complement works like The Color of Law and The Sum of Us, highlighting the physical and social scars of institutionalized racism.
Purpose
Atlas of Urban Renewal: The project aims to create a book-form “Atlas of Urban Renewal,” using high-quality aerial imagery to visually document how government policies hollowed out roughly 180 downtowns, driven by racially motivated urban planning.
Digital Materials for Local Groups: The project will produce accessible graphics and materials to support community groups opposing freeway expansions, such as those in Houston, Downey, and Portland. These resources, used in public hearings and featured on platforms like Streetsblog, aim to raise awareness and bolster grassroots efforts against ongoing freeway projects.
Social Media Growth: The project seeks to expand the reach of Segregation by Design’s social media channels through regular posts, amplifying local voices against freeway expansion and increasing public awareness of the systemic issues tied to urban segregation and freeway.
Digital Projects
Related Map
ATLMaps
The ATLMaps platform, a collaboration between Georgia State University and Emory University, integrates archival maps, geospatial data, and user-contributed multimedia to explore Atlanta’s complex issues through layered, interdisciplinary data. By enabling users to cross-compare diverse datasets, it fosters new connections and questions, while offering a framework for geospatial storytelling and data normalization. The project also invites university and community experts to curate content, showcasing the potential for synthesizing varied materials and data types.
ATLMaps platform is an open source project made possible by the Open Source community.
The base maps used are generously provided by:
- Street: © OpenStreetMap contributors © CARTO
- Satellite: Tiles © Esri — Source: Esri, i-cubed, USDA, USGS, AEX, GeoEye, Getmapping, Aerogrid, IGN, IGP, UPR-EGP, and the GIS User Community
- Light Gray: © OpenStreetMap © CartoDB
- 1928 Atlas: Emory University and Stamen Design, CC BY 3.0 — Map data © OpenStreetMap
Further Reading
- Beltline: A History of the Atlanta Beltline and its Associated Historic Resources by Kadambari Badami, Janet Barrickman, Adam Cheren, Allison Combee, Savannah Ferguson, Thomas Frank, Andy Garner, Mary Anne Hawthorne, Hadley Howell, Carrie Hutcherson, Rebekah McElreath, Cherith Marshall, Rebekah Martin, Brandy Morrison, Bethany Serafine, and Tiffany Tolbert.
- Segregation By Design, by Adam Paul Susaneck.
- Tracking the Atlanta Streetcar by Georgia Tech.
This story map describes the scope and surrounding area of the first phase of the Atlanta Streetcar.
- Georgia State University Library, Digital Collection about Atlanta (different topics).
- Georgia State University Library, Planning Atlanta – A New City in the Making, 1930s-1990s.
- Reed, Mary Beth, Patrick Sullivan, W. Matthew Tankersley, Sara Gale, Mary Hammock, and New South Associates. “Historic Streetcar Systems in Georgia.,” 2012. https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/24396.
Bay, Mia. “Jim Crow Journeys: An Excerpt from Traveling Black.” Southern Spaces, June 7, 2021. https://southernspaces.org/2021/jim-crow-journeys-excerpt-traveling-black/.
Hatfield, Edward A. “A Well-Tied Knot: Atlanta’s Mobility Crisis and the 2012 T-SPLOST Debate.” Southern Spaces, April 29, 2013. https://southernspaces.org/2013/well-tied-knot-atlantas-mobility-crisis-and-2012-t-splost-debate/.
Hunt, James L. “Law, Business, and Politics: Liability for Accidents in Georgia, 1846-1880.” The Georgia Historical Quarterly 84, no. 2 (2000): 254–82.
Karlsberg, Jesse P. “Atlanta’s T-SPLOST Referendum and Atlanta Studies.” Southern Spaces, April 29, 2013. https://southernspaces.org/2013/atlantas-t-splost-referendum-and-atlanta-studies/.
Keating, Larry. Atlanta : Race, Class, and Urban Expansion. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2001.
Pooley, Karen. “Segregation’s New Geography: The Atlanta Metro Region, Race, and the Declining Prospects for Upward Mobility.” Southern Spaces, April 15, 2015. https://southernspaces.org/2015/segregations-new-geography-atlanta-metro-region-race-and-declining-prospects-upward-mobility/.
Scott, Carole E., and Richard D. Guynn. “The Atlanta Streetcar Strikes.” The Georgia Historical Quarterly 84, no. 3 (2000): 434–59.
Thomas, William G. Lawyering for the Railroad : Business, Law, and Power in the New South. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1999.
Toton, Sarah. “Vale of Amusements: Modernity, Technology, and Atlanta’s Ponce de Leon Park, 1870–1920.” Southern Spaces, January 15, 2008. https://southernspaces.org/2008/vale-amusements-modernity-technology-and-atlantas-ponce-de-leon-park-1870-1920/.
Wyczalkowski, Christopher K, Timothy Welch, and Obed Pasha. “Inequities of Transit Access: The Case of Atlanta, GA.” Journal of Comparative Urban Law and Policy 4, no. 1 (2020): 657–84.
- MARTA https://www.itsmarta.com/
- Atlanta Beltline https://beltline.org/visit/
- Atlanta Streets Alive https://www.atlantastreetsalive.org/
- Love to Ride Atlanta https://www.lovetoride.net/atlanta