The city of Charleston, South Carolina, is a microcosm of the United States’ history. Given its position as one of the country’s foundational urban areas, it has played a significant role in every major social, political, and economic event since its colonial foundation. This story is told through a tapestry of narrative threads woven from the rich archives of diaries, newspapers, photographs, material culture, and cartography scattered throughout the region. The breadth and depth of source materials mean that currently, an institution, organization, private researcher, or individual does not have an accessible process to determine what sources are available, who is working on what, and what has been completed by previous researchers.
As a result, discovering sources requires exploring more than 40 cultural, academic, and governmental organizations related to the preservation and dissemination of Charleston’s cultural resources. This often requires a skill set that includes proficiency in research and knowledge of which institutions house specific types of data. This concern has been slightly mitigated by collaborative and interdisciplinary work among these institutions, which has produced scholarship in academic disciplines such as archaeology, history, historic preservation, and public history.Footnote 1 Unfortunately, each institution’s stated mission, agenda, and limited resources limit its capacity to develop connections and build long-term networks. Prior to the most recent endeavors, this work has traditionally focused on curated historical documents and records, de-emphasizing voices that were not recorded in traditional historical sources.
This article traces the conceptual development of the Spatial History of Charleston (SHOC) from problem to prototype. We first contextualize the project within the pressures currently reshaping the Charleston region and especially Charleston’s historic communities, with a focus on descendant communities facing development and displacement pressures. SHOC is then placed within the framework of digital humanities and deep mapping that use spatial technologies to connect evidence, interpretation, and access. The final sections describe how specific conditions in Charleston shaped SHOC’s early framing and implementation, particularly its decisions on scale, aggregation, ownership, and agency.
1. Charleston, communities, and gentrification
Charleston’s built and social environments (Figure 1) are currently undergoing rapid transformation, placing significant stress on the region’s diverse cultural-heritage resources.Footnote 2 This change is primarily due to record population growth, which began in the 1980s and was accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic.Footnote 3 These pressures have accelerated the need to address the devaluing of human connections to past histories. An understanding of the scale of these challenges can provide insights into how rapid population shifts may affect attitudes toward and indeed ties to Charleston’s rich cultural patrimony.
Charleston, South Carolina. Greater Metropolitan Area.
Figure 1. Long description
A multi-panel map display.
In the top-left corner, an inset locator map shows the Southeastern United States, including Kentucky, Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama. A blue square highlights the coastal region of South Carolina.
The main map displays the Charleston metropolitan area with red lines indicating S C County Boundaries.
* North: Berkeley County is labeled in red text.
* Northwest: Dorchester County is labeled in red text.
* West: Colleton County is labeled in red text.
* Southwest: Beaufort County is labeled in red text.
* Center: Charleston County is labeled in red text.
Major city centers are labeled in black text along the coastal waterways: North Charleston, Mt Pleasant, and Charleston.
In the bottom-right corner, a north arrow points upward, and a scale bar indicates distances from 0 to 20 k m s. Data credits include City of Charleston, Charleston County G I S, Esri, H E R E, Garmin, U S G S, E P A, N P S, and J M L M.
The US Census Bureau’s report on population change from April 2020 to April 2022 found that the nation’s 56 major metropolitan census areas, defined as those with populations of 1 million or more, experienced an aggregate population decline.Footnote 4 The largest losses occurred in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Chicago. In contrast, many midsized cities, particularly those in the Sun Belt, experienced unexpected population growth during the same period.Footnote 5
This shift toward midsized Sun Belt cities, including Charleston, has been driven by several overlapping factors. First, it reflects the continuation of a 20th-century migration pattern toward places associated with “nice weather.”Footnote 6 Rappaport argues that this movement is not simply a response to climate itself, but to a broader set of complementary factors, including housing markets, climate control technologies, and the growing value placed on quality of life. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated these trends by encouraging households to relocate closer to social support networks, particularly kin. This pattern aligns with McLeod et al.’s findings that the desire to maintain family connections can motivate moves to smaller cities, even though larger metropolitan areas often continue to offer greater access to employment, services, and education.Footnote 7 At the same time, remote and hybrid work arrangements have increased residential flexibility, allowing many workers to live farther from traditional employment centers while remaining connected to specific regional labor markets.Footnote 8 This appears to represent a durable shift: The share of employees working from home rose from approximately 5 percent before the pandemic to 60 percent in the summer of 2020, before stabilizing at roughly 30 percent around 2023.Footnote 9
These forces have created conditions for rapid demographic change in midsized Sun Belt cities such as Charleston. Since 2020, the Charleston metropolitan area has grown by 8 percent, nearly three times the national average.Footnote 10 This growth is expected to continue across the broader tricounty region of Berkeley, Charleston, and Dorchester counties, which is projected to add approximately 61,000 residents by 2030.Footnote 11
The historic downtown of Charleston, commonly known as “The Peninsula” (Figure 2), has not yet experienced a dramatic population increase comparable to its surrounding urban area. This is not a reflection on demand or desirability but a function of its geographic and historic constraints. Located along the Sea Islands coastline, the city’s topography and shallow water table restrict the buildable area. Soft, unconsolidated, and marine-derived soil, paired with limited older, consolidated strata, severely limits building heights, thereby constraining urban densification.Footnote 12 Additionally, the city has proven vulnerable to tidal flooding, storm surge, and chronic sunny-day flooding.Footnote 13
Peninsular Charleston, South Carolina, marking the area known as “the Neck” and Calhoun Street.
Figure 2. Long description
A detailed street and waterway map of Charleston, South Carolina.
* Waterways: The Cooper River flows along the East side and the Ashley River along the West side, meeting at the Southern tip of the peninsula.
* The Neck: A large area in the North-Central part of the peninsula is marked with blue diagonal hatching. This zone is bounded by the Ashley River to the West and the Cooper River to the East, containing Meeting Street Road and King Street Extension.
* Calhoun Street: A prominent orange line runs East-West across the lower portion of the peninsula, connecting the Ashley River to the Cooper River.
* Landmarks: North of the Neck is North Charleston and the C S X Charleston rail yard. South of the Neck are Hampton Park, The Citadel, and Magnolia Cemetery.
* Infrastructure: The Arthur Ravenel Jr Bridge crosses the Cooper River to the East. Major roads include Interstate 26, Highway 17, and the Mark Clark Expressway.
* Scale and Orientation: A scale bar at the bottom right indicates 0 to 2 kilometers. A North arrow is located in the bottom right corner.
Despite this, the Charleston peninsula is likely entering a period of significant growth after decades of relative stability, with most of this change concentrated from the Neck southward through the upper peninsula rather than in the more tightly constrained historic core below Calhoun Street. The City of Charleston estimated the peninsula’s population at 36,942 residents in 2025.Footnote 14 Based on approved, under-construction, and publicly planned residential projects, the peninsula could grow to approximately 42,000–46,000 residents by 2035 and 48,000–55,000 residents by 2045. A higher scenario, especially if major redevelopments proceed at the envisioned scale, could push the peninsula toward or above 60,000 residents within the next two decades.Footnote 15
Mitigating this growth is the fact that the historic urban core, concentrated at the southern tip of the peninsula, is situated within designated local, state, and federal historic districts that are meant to protect the city’s nationally recognized architectural and historic heritage (Figure 3). At the local level, Charleston designated a significant portion of the old, colonial, and antebellum urban form into the “Old and Historic District” in 1931, and it is recognized as the first locally protected historic district in the United States.Footnote 16 Its creation is considered a landmark moment in historic preservation and served as a model for preservation efforts across the country.Footnote 17 Furthermore, the historic downtown, which is part of the Charleston Historic District, was designated a National Historic Landmark District in 1966. The district boundaries were subsequently expanded in 1970 and again in 1984. The district is recognized as one of the most complete and best-preserved examples of 18th- and 19th-century urban fabric in the United States, earning it a spot on the National Register of Historic Places.Footnote 18
Downtown Charleston, with National and State Heritage Areas Indicated. Source: South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology.
Figure 3. Long description
A street map of the Charleston peninsula bounded by the Ashley River to the West and the Cooper River to the East.
* North: Red shaded areas are concentrated around Magnolia Cemetery and Saint Lawrence Cemetery. Blue shaded areas appear near Hampton Park and the Citadel.
* Central: A large red zone covers the area between Crosstown and Calhoun Street, including Bogard Street, Spring Street, and Cannon Street. To the East of this, blue zones cover the College of Charleston and areas near the Port of Charleston Columbus Street.
* South: The Southern tip of the peninsula, labeled Charleston, is almost entirely shaded in blue, covering streets from Calhoun Street down to Murray Boulevard and South Battery Street, including Broad Street and Tradd Street.
* West: Across the Ashley River, a red shaded area is visible along Savannah Highway and Folly Road Boulevard.
* East: Drum Island is visible in the Cooper River, East of the main peninsula.
A legend at the bottom left identifies red as National Register Historic Areas and blue as National Register Properties and Districts. A scale bar at the bottom right indicates a distance of 1 kilometer.
The responsibility of oversight in these districts is directed by the City of Charleston’s Board of Architectural Review.Footnote 19 The board’s guiding principles emphasize limiting changes to properties whenever possible, favoring the maintenance of original features and materials, and prioritizing the repair and preservation of features over replication and replacement. For new construction, these principles are strictly followed, requiring a significant amount of preparation and care on the part of the developer. This creates further constraints on development within the historic sections of the city.
These restraints have directed changes in Charleston’s built environment to locations on the peninsula where geographic constraints and oversight by historic preservation-minded policies are less burdensome. In these locations, historic structures either no longer exist or are in severe disrepair and require demolition. This opens the door for new construction that is not required to meet the standards to maintain historic context and is therefore built with modern construction methods and design. The pressures of growth thus intersect with earlier patterns of racialized disinvestment.
The impact of these new structures has been dramatic, affecting the built environment and demographics of descendant communities.Footnote 20 The current communities consist of individuals actively maintaining identity via community support systems and cultivating and preserving shared histories. Modern urban development and economic pressures place these communities at risk, potentially eroding broader society’s understanding of the multiple inflection points in African American history. As a result, these communities have an urgent need to document their historical narratives and landscapes. The projected growth from the Neck southward should be understood as a cultural landscape in transition, requiring coordinated planning, equitable housing review, and community-centered stewardship. This task can be assisted by using approaches from the digital humanities, paired with emerging geospatial technologies and tools.
2. Digital humanities and social science
The evolution of geospatial technologies, combined with the increasing accessibility of digital data and products, has transformed the research practices of archaeology, history, and the social sciences and humanities more broadly. At the center of these changes is often the use of geographic information systems (GIS). The conceptual roots of GIS can be traced back to the 1960s, where its demand stemmed largely from government and defense applications.Footnote 21 By the 1990s, the commercialization of GIS, notably ESRI ArcView and open-source alternatives (e.g., the Geographic Resources Analysis Support System or GRASS), along with the growing pool of digitized spatial data, demonstrated to researchers and scholars that the capabilities of GIS extended beyond just a digital mapping tool. As an increasing number of scholars have embraced geospatial technologies, the assumptions, principles, and theories have reshaped how evidence, interpretation, and narratives are studied across many disciplines.Footnote 22
Nowhere has this been more prevalent than in the emergence of the digital humanities. The inherent focus of bringing digital technologies into the realm of traditional humanist discourse has been transformative, providing the necessary conditions to create, develop, or innovate conventional scholarship.Footnote 23 It leverages the increased accessibility of data and documents to create digital applications, broadening the scope of inquiries in research activities and increasing public accessibility. This work has been enriched and expanded as collaborative scholarship, and Big Data analyses have become more prevalent in humanities circles.Footnote 24 Work in the digital humanities has used large textual corpora, historical imagery, and computational analysis to expand the scale at which humanistic questions can be asked.Footnote 25
This growth in interdisciplinary research has enabled scholars across disciplines to share methodologies, theory, and best practices, particularly when technological and methodological advances are involved. Advancements in computational technology have enabled researchers in geospatial science and digital humanities to collaborate and leverage their specialties to create innovative digital applications—particularly when the combined spatial contexts create unexpected complications.Footnote 26 Earley-Spadoni advocates for the further development of interdisciplinary work between the fields of archaeology and digital humanities, specifically noting the potential of data visualization, deep mapping, and participatory practices to enrich investigations into social narratives and landscape transformations.Footnote 27 Such enrichment needs to include the means to hold different kinds of evidence together without erasing disagreement, uncertainty, or authority. Deep mapping is a framework in which this engagement can occur.
3. Deep mapping
“Deep mapping” refers to a system that brings together different forms of evidence, such as maps, archival records, oral histories, and community memory, into a shared spatial and temporal environment without reducing them to a single authoritative account. A deep map is not a map with many layers; it is a relational system in which geography can be understood via the accumulation and comparison between multiple forms of evidence.Footnote 28 In the case of SHOC, this means that a building, neighborhood, resident, or story may be connected to other records across time while concurrently preserving the origin of the source.
SHOC addresses the problem not merely of the absence of data but also of its uneven production based on the historical visibility of various groups and their remains—a condition that has been recognized for some time. Social narratives, stories, and the understanding of place form a complex web; in urban environments, this is particularly challenging.Footnote 29 This web is multivocal, requiring knowledge of highly nuanced social, political, and economic factors specific to the local geography.Footnote 30 To complicate matters further, the nuance is often politicized, and traces of historic context woven into contemporary places can be ignored or reinterpreted. In many cases, the narratives of marginalized subpopulations are ignored and altogether lost—functions of unequal power structures written to uplift those who write the history.Footnote 31
Researchers have worked to capture narratives and understanding, incorporating the multivocal and nuanced study of place. Within American historical archaeology, examples such as Fairbanks’ work at Kingsley Plantation and Otto’s at Cannon’s Point used archaeological evidence to compare the lives of planters, overseers, and enslaved workers.Footnote 32 Singleton’s scholarship on coastal Georgia and plantation slavery helped consolidate the archaeology of African-descendant peoples as a major subfield.Footnote 33 Historians, archaeologists, and geographers investigated the East Side neighborhood of contemporary Charleston, South Carolina, with the stated aim of examining land usage, community heritage, and architecture.Footnote 34 Their underlying premise was to supplement standard socioeconomic measures with oral histories to connect “wherever possible, previous inhabitants and activities with extant structures or archeological sites.”Footnote 35 In his seminal book PrairyErth, William Least Heat-Moon combined history, folklore, and ecological observation, creating a work of scholarship capturing the layers of time, memory, culture, and subjective narratives.Footnote 36 The book inspired other scholars to reimagine the operationalization of maps in academic settings.Footnote 37 The ambition was to move from maps as static data visualization media, declarative in nature, to a mapping process that was more dialogic, contested, and capable of accommodating multiple interpretive forms of representation.
Completed nearly in their entirety as analog studies, these works required an enormous amount of time, resources, and effort to accomplish. The lack of accessibility to and knowledge of the works meant that the widespread adoption of these methods did not occur immediately, and deep mapping mainly remained conceptual. The resurgence of deep mapping has contributed to what is known as the “spatial turn” in humanities scholarship.Footnote 38
The spatial turn in the humanities was a broad, intellectual shift that occurred late in the 20th and early 21st century.Footnote 39 The movement established space, place, and geography at the center of humanistic, cultural, and historical research. Rather than viewing space as a passive setting, the work emphasized space as a social construct that actively shapes events and human experience.Footnote 40 Geography therefore, became not just a means of context but a way to examine how power, identity, and memory were produced and reified.Footnote 41 In practice, the spatial turn paved the way for new methods that expanded the ways scholars interpret texts, visualize data, and engage the public.
4. The spatial history of Charleston
SHOC was created within this intellectual milieu. It is a spatial platform under development for exploring the complex history of the Charleston region. It is being designed to benefit Charleston-based history initiatives, serving the needs of the public, students, educators, researchers, and local government planners. SHOC will serve as an aggregator of data within a managed, public-facing geospatial discovery interface, enabling end users to find data and leading them to data sources they would not necessarily be aware of otherwise. The system will provide researchers, planners, and community advocates with a centralized resource for either data directly created by the project or links to data managed by collaborating entities. As a public-facing platform designed to serve the needs of Charlestonians, we hope that SHOC will help create a virtual hub of information for all the region’s communities.
SHOC is conceived as a deep historical geospatial platform of the Charleston Region from the colonial period to the mid-20th century (c. 1670–1950); its size and scale require the project to be initially developed at a defined spatial and temporal scale. For the initial phase (supported by the NEH Community Deep Mapping Institute), SHOC begins with a significant transformational period in Charleston from the 1850s to the close of the 19th century and its connections to modern-day African American descendant communities.Footnote 42
SHOC leverages the efforts of partner organizations actively involved in curating and developing data on historic structures, socio-demographics, cartography, and first-person sources to create a platform that integrates data into a single interface. As it matures, it will build on the lessons and experiences learned in workflow and data integration processes at smaller spatial and temporal scales to expand its base datasets and footprint to urban and rural neighborhoods on the Charleston peninsula and James Island.
SHOC is designed to impact numerous constituencies. Developed at an undergraduate university with a strong commitment to undergraduate high-impact experiences, the project integrates its work into opportunities for students in African American studies, archaeology, geography, historic preservation, history, and urban studies. As part of the data generation phase, SHOC envisions broadening educational opportunities to high school students from schools serving descendant communities to engage students’ interest in the digital humanities. In its final form, SHOC will serve several purposes. It would be a data repository for academic inquiry, community improvement, and sustainable development. As an aggregator of information, it will provide a publicly available means to explore the integrated histories of the human and built landscapes of the Carolina Lowcountry. As a public-facing platform designed to serve the needs of the community, SHOC would provide opportunities—by leveraging the strengths and capacities of partner organizations—to augment its datasets by fostering digital storytelling initiatives among community members.
5. Implementation
The initial phases of the project confronted early-on issues of scale, access, ownership, and agency. The early takeaways provide a view of a project’s foci at the nascent phases of development. As SHOC matures, other concerns will undoubtedly arise, while current issues will be resolved. A key through line is the extent to which community engagement provides necessary input for key decision-making.
One of the immediate concerns involved the scale of the project. Given the region’s complex histories, a dense urban landscape intertwined at times with a rural, early industrialized agricultural system employing highly specialized enslaved labor, the task ahead was daunting.Footnote 43 Beyond the spatio-temporal scales, the extent to which this history is documented via historical and archaeological data is extensive, curated by a tapestry of state, city, public, and private institutions. The team needed to prioritize early on which work could be done by SHOC, which functions required prioritization, and which functions were outside the scope of SHOC but could still be facilitated.
Determining initial scale and prioritization was facilitated by engagement with and input from community members. Initial conversations with community organizers and general open meetings allowed the team to isolate key concerns and needs. In particular, descendant communities identified stress due to the pressures of development and gentrification. As the SHOC project was being conceived, there were positive examples of community-centered approaches to heritage. The Anson Street Burial Project demonstrated how community-centered archaeology could connect descendant-community priorities with scientific analyses.Footnote 44 These principles were being built on by other organizations to further work in descendant heritage initiatives.Footnote 45 Support for community development to bolster community histories and identities was being facilitated through a partnership between regional city governments and private organizations.Footnote 46 Engagement with partners and participants in this program highlighted the need for not only community development of historical and cultural programming, but also the means by which that data could be integrated with other formal data. Of the entirety of Charleston’s history, a focus on descendant communities emerged as a spatio-temporal priority.
Beyond prioritizing SHOC’s initial spatio-temporal framework, community input informed the team on the most pressing functional needs of SHOC. Based on listening sessions with community organizers and the broader public, SHOC identified data aggregation as a key need. Furthermore, this aggregation of data was most assistive if the information was displayed in a side-by-side fashion to better evaluate similarities and differences between different (sometimes contradictory) sources.
Other interests and needs of the communities fell outside SHOC’s purview. This was specifically in the areas of oral history serving and curation. While committed to a spatially-grounded approach to public history and storytelling, primarily due to issues of ownership and agency, SHOC decided early in the design phase not to be the primary repository of oral history data. The primary factor in this decision was to ensure the agency and ownership rights of the content creator. Furthermore, engagement with other historical organizations demonstrated that partnering organizations were fully engaged with the community in developing this content within CARE principles.Footnote 47 As an aggregating service, our role is to provide a means of collocating data and to help direct users to those resources.
Factors related to agency and ownership influenced the development of the platform. In discussing the potential form and focus of SHOC, community concerns were often directed at who would create the information, the conditions under which it would be provided, and who would have authority over its use and dissemination. For many, the information has been curated within community structures; having the information distributed broadly was desired, but concerns about losing agency of how that information would be presented were real and justified, given generations of discriminatory and dismissive attitudes within dominant socio-political power structures.
Simultaneously, community-based knowledge is often disaggregated and curated informally, making its aggregation within the platform a deeper process of cultivating comfort and trust. This process yields a rate of aggregation into the platform that is slower than other forms of data. This provides the perception of a developing a system that is, once again, dismissive of community-based knowledge.
These factors have required work on two fronts. First, a formalized protocol of agreements has been established between participating organizations, whereby the nature of the data sharing is clearly stated, the data to be shared is specified, the conditions by which the information is presented, and the extent to which end users can fully access and manipulate that information from the SHOC interface is stipulated. In many instances, data used within SHOC is designed to be displayed in conjunction with other information and is read-only. If users desire additional functionality with the information, they are directed to the contributing party. This arrangement of co-ownership provides a balance between the end goals of SHOC to integrate the information while preserving the agency and ownership concerns of SHOC partners.Footnote 48 The formalized agreements assist in communicating to organizations not only the goals of SHOC but the means and format by which information is aggregated. This then leads to the second conversation—about data creation and curation at the community organization level. In this work, it is anticipated that SHOC can serve in a collaborative capacity to develop capacity within community organizations for data creation, curation, and dissemination.
In community-based history programs, open-ended agenda, direct engagement, and data creation by individuals are often featured elements.Footnote 49 The initial conceptualizations of deep mapping envisioned an open structure, encouraging direct engagement in the data creation process.Footnote 50 In its initial formulation, SHOC is taking a corporate approach to community engagement. That is, data aggregation and creation are managed at the organizational level through formalized data-sharing agreements (MOUs) between organizations. This was deemed appropriate, given the deep, often difficult, and complicated history of Charleston and the desire to cultivate local systems of historical and heritage curation. This approach not only supports community-level initiatives but also supports other focused initiatives driven by current and potential SHOC partners.Footnote 51
These considerations have had a direct impact on how we bring information together. Operationally, SHOC follows a staged workflow comprising raw data ingestion, formatting, and publication. Once an MOU with an organization is established, data is received in an agreed-upon file format. If the data is spatial in nature (e.g., a digitized map or plat), the object is georectified and metadata recorded (FGDC CSDGM), including original source details and information on use limitations. Once georectified, the source is used to create geometry of map features (such as structures), and information is attributed according to a standardized schema using the CIDOC-crm ontology and controlled vocabulary derived from the United States National Register for Historic Places and the South Carolina Department of Archives and History.Footnote 52 Tabular sources such as city directories, tax records, and partner datasets are retained with their source information, then standardized to the SHOC schema and vocabularies to support searching, comparison, and linking. A series of cross-referencing tables enables many-to-many relationships, thus associating people with the landscape, built environment, and stories. Throughout the process, the association between the original record and its source information is maintained, retaining the record of ownership and agency. The prototype interface at https://spatialhistory.charleston.edu (Figure 4) allows users to encounter these data spatially and compare information across sources.
Screenshots of the prototype SHOC interface at https://spatialhistory.charleston.edu. (Top) the main interface view, (Left) Information about structures at 499 King Street in 1902 and (Right) individuals associated with 499 King Street from the 1904 City Directory.
Figure 4. Long description
The interface features a dark red header titled Spatial History of Charleston with a date range slider set from 1670 to 1950.
Top Panel: A large map of Charleston shows a high density of brown data points concentrated in the historic district between the Westside and the waterfront. A left sidebar lists historical maps including 1788 Petrie and 1815 City Engineers Plat Book 40b. Neighborhood labels include Peninsula West, Radcliffeborough, and Charleston Village.
Bottom Left Panel: Focuses on Places. The sidebar displays details for Structures at 499 King Street, specifically a commercial wood frame shop from 1902 with 2 stories. The adjacent map view shows a zoomed-in street grid with yellow building footprints and red circular markers.
Bottom Right Panel: Focuses on People. The sidebar displays a record for Miss Emma H. Graver, a baker residing and working at 499 King Street. The map view remains zoomed in on the same street grid, highlighting the specific location associated with the individual.
Technical details include a scale bar of 1,000 feet and data credits for Esri, M E T I / NASA, and U S G S.
6. Mapping a Living Landscape
Charleston’s cultural landscape is not merely a repository of historic buildings, archaeological sites, archival records, and community memories; it is an actively contested terrain in which development, demographic transformation, and long-standing inequities continue to reshape the relationship between people and place. The region contains an extraordinary density of sources, but those sources are dispersed across institutions, agencies, private collections, and community knowledge systems. As a result, the ability to understand Charleston’s past—and to apply that understanding to present-day questions of preservation, planning, and cultural stewardship—remains unevenly distributed.
SHOC responds to this challenge by treating mapping not simply as a technical process, but as a civic and interpretive practice. By aggregating spatial, archival, and community-generated data within a shared spatial and temporal framework, SHOC seeks to make visible relationships that are often obscured when sources are held apart. In doing so, SHOC draws on the methods of deep mapping and the digital humanities while remaining grounded in the obligations of community-centered heritage work. Its purpose is not to replace existing archives, organizations, or community knowledge systems, but to connect them in ways that preserve source authority, respect ownership, and expand access.
This is especially urgent in Charleston’s descendant communities, where the pressures of gentrification and redevelopment threaten not only buildings and archaeological deposits but also the social memory and cultural continuity that give those places meaning. Projects such as the Anson Street African Burial Ground Project and Mapping Charleston’s Black Burial Grounds demonstrate the importance of research models that begin with community priorities, honor ancestral presence, and recognize that data are never neutral. SHOC builds from this principle by creating a platform through which historical evidence can support preservation advocacy, public education, planning decisions, and community storytelling without severing information from the people and organizations that steward it. In its initial design phase, the project had to address foundational challenges of scale, ownership, and aggregation. The approach taken to resolve those issues demonstrates how community input not only exposes historical inequities but drives their resolution.
Ultimately, SHOC’s design is best understood as an infrastructure project for historical justice and sustainable cultural planning. Its long-term value will depend not only on the quantity of data it incorporates, but on the relationships and agreements through which that data is gathered, governed, and shared. If successful, SHOC will provide Charleston with more than a map of the past. It will offer a means of seeing the city as a layered, living landscape in which historical knowledge can inform present decisions, strengthen community agency, and help ensure that growth does not come at the expense of memory, identity, or belonging.
Author contribution
Conceptualization: D.R., J.M.N., D.C., L.F., R.G.G., K.J., M.L., M.M.; Data curation: D.R., J.M.N., D.C.; Formal analysis: D.R., J.M.N.; Funding acquisition: D.R., J.M.N.; Investigation: D.R., J.M.N., D.C., R.G.G., M.L.; Methodology: D.R., J.M.N., D.C., L.F., R.G.G., M.L.; Project administration: D.R., J.M.N.; Resources: D.R., J.M.N., D.C., L.F., R.G.G., K.J., M.L., M.M.; Software: D.R., J.M.N., D.C.; Supervision: D.R., J.M.N., D.C.; Validation: D.R., J.M.N.; Visualization: D.R., J.M.N., D.C.; Writing - original draft: D.R., J.M.N., D.C., R.G.G.; Writing - review & editing: D.R., J.M.N., D.C., L.F., R.G.G., K.J., M.L., M.M.
Data availability statement
No quantitative data were used in this study.
Acknowledgments
The authors wish to acknowledge the directors and co-directors of the NEH Community Deep Mapping Institute (Don Lafreniere, Krysta Ryzewski, James Juip, Sarah Scarlett, Dan Trepal, and Mark Rhodes) and the staff of the Great Lakes Geospatial Research Facility at Michigan Technological University (Robert Cowling and Dan Lizzadro-McPherson) for their insights and conversations on the concepts of deep mapping. The authors wish to state their appreciation to the many voices of the Charleston community who have provided guidance and counsel in formulating this work, particularly members of the Eastside Community Development Corporation (Antonio Coaxum, Oman Muhammed, and Alexis Singleton-Wright), members from the communities of Cross Cut/Down Cut (Jacki Young, Barbara Goss Brown, Terrie Washington, and Mark Brown). Chloe Stuber, of the City of Charleston’s Department of Planning, Preservation, and Sustainability, has been a continuing source of inspiration and a model of what public administration can be when it works not for, but with, the community. Without her insight and advice, this project would not have come into existence. Funding and support came from various units at the College of Charleston (School of Languages, Cultures, and World Affairs; School of Humanities and Social Sciences; Department of Political Science; Program in Archaeology). Work on SHOC is undertaken at the College of Charleston in the Geospatial Laboratory of the Center for Social Science Research, with data storage and management maintained by the Center for Historical Landscapes.
Funding statement
The authors were fellows of the NEH Institute on Deep Maps and Community Histories: Advancing Transdisciplinary and Public-Facing Scholarship in the Spatial Humanities (Lead Institution: Michigan Technological University, Award number HT-301411-24) and were therefore in receipt of indirect support for this work.
Conflicts of interest
D.C. is employed by the Library Society of Charleston, an organization focused on the preservation and dissemination of historical records related to Charleston and the Carolina Lowcountry. L.F. is employed by the Preservation Society of Charleston, an organization that undertakes advocacy work for cultural heritage preservation. M.L. is employed by the Preservation Society of Charleston, an organization that undertakes advocacy work for cultural heritage preservation. J.M.L.N. is a member of the Preservation Society of Charleston, an organization that undertakes advocacy work for cultural heritage preservation. R.G.G. has no potential conflicts of interest. D.R. is a member of the Charleston Library Society, an organization focused on the preservation and dissemination of historical records related to Charleston and the Carolina Lowcountry. K.J. has no potential conflicts of interest. M.M. has no potential conflicts of interest.
Ethical standard
The work required no IRB approval or informed consent from individuals.
Open access
