Georgia Avenue as Palimpsest: Uncovering the Multilayered Histories of One Street

Marni Davis, Georgia State University

It is a fact of city life that neighborhoods change over time. But the forces that drive these changes can be difficult to discern. When sections of the urban landscape have been effectively erased, the changes themselves are rendered invisible at street level. Dr. Marni Davis (History, Georgia State University) will discuss “Streetscape Palimpsest,” her digital mapping history project that investigates the history of Atlanta’s Georgia Avenue, which once served as an important commercial thoroughfare in the Black, white, and mixed-race neighborhoods south of downtown. By exploring the history of this street, and of the people who lived, worked, and shopped there, this interactive historical narrative rediscovers a neighborhood that was entirely replaced by urban renewal and massive development projects. By combining spatial technologies with the methodologies of social geography and urban policy history, Davis explains why Summerhill, and other “stadium neighborhoods” in Atlanta, were so thoroughly transformed over the course of the twentieth century.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 21. Mapping Atlanta's Historical Geographies of Race, Class, and Justice I