Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Mapping Atlanta

Moving to Atlanta got me interested in the complex politics behind the public transport system here, especially the trains which only run to points along a four-way system: pretty sparse for a city known for its urban sprawl. Most middle-class and affluent people don't seem to take the subway at all and an affluent white school like Emory which has a train line running by it doesn't have a subway stop and doesn't figure on the route map.

This project began at the Data Center at Emory University where I began to learn how to map using Arc-GIS software. I mapped the electric routes across 50 maps of Atlanta from a large 1928 map of the city. I then began to name routes using a source in the Atlanta Historical Journal and am now filling in information about all of these routes as hyperlinks with text and photo data.

This is a slideshow which shows some of this work so far. The project is called Still in Transit because if there's one single thing to learn from a mapping project, it's that there is always going to be more that you can do ;)

It begins by demontsrating how mapping has been used in a contemporary feminist intervention, to map sites of street sexual harassment using apps on the iPhone and droid phones. More here.