On the Torrens: An AI Urban Heritage River City Walk

Imagine standing on the River Torrens bank today, holding your phone, and seeing the exact same view from 1885. That is what this project does.

For this Adelaide Design Week event, we are walking the river to test a new digital heritage map. The project takes 150 historical photographs of the Torrens, sourced from the State Library of South Australia archives and spanning from the 1840s to the 2020s and pins them to their exact modern locations.

But we didn’t just map the photos; we used Artificial Intelligence to read them.

We used YOLO computer vision AI to do two specific things. First, it helped process and geolocate these disconnected archives into one coherent, interactive map. Second, it "looked" at every single photo and quantified it. The AI automatically counted the buildings, boats, people, and patches of vegetation in the old images.

What does this add? Instead of just saying "the river has changed," this project gives us hard data. By looking at the AI’s counts, we can actually measure how Adelaide's urban design evolved over nearly two centuries. We can see the shift from natural riverbanks to engineered concrete, and track how public recreation changed over time. It’s a new way to understand our city's heritage and think about climate-resilient design for the future.

The Walk: On October 14th at 11:00 AM, we will walk from the Sir Douglas Nicholls Bridge to Hindmarsh Bridge. We’ll pause at several of the 150 mapped spots along the way. You’ll view the archival photos on your phone, compare them to the modern landscape right in front of you, and we’ll discuss what the AI found hidden in the data.

No tech background is needed! just bring your curiosity and a pair of walking shoes!