Gowanus Atlas is a dynamic, web-based interface that tells the story of the community around the Gowanus Canal, a neighborhood defined by its people, history, and diversity. It will give residents, business owners, organizations, activists, developers, and agencies access to quantitative and qualitative data about the area's rapidly changing conditions, its challenges, and the community's future. It is an active, living communal resource for connection, participation, and activism.

Initially, Gowanus Atlas will collect public data sets within the watershed, such as infrastructure, land use, flood zones, demographics, Superfund cleanup, etc., that tell the story of how the area developed and its current conditions. As it expands, we will conduct community outreach and add new data sets, such as sensory conditions, air quality, environmental contamination, displacement of affordable retail and youth resources, and access to healthy regional food options. Together with the public data sets, Gowanus Atlas will synthesize the area’s characteristics and visually explain in graphically-rich downloadable maps how complex urban, ecological, and sociological conditions define the neighborhood. Users can toggle the data sets on and off to curate and create their own maps.

As Gowanus Atlas develops over the next few years, it will use state-of-the-art data analytics to visualize the impact of changing conditions over increasing time spans: one year, ten years, fifty years. Not only will Gowanus Atlas provide a platform for understanding the complexities of a changing urban ecosystem, it will offer archival and historical value to the greater community who will be living with this urban regeneration for many years.