This article analyses the ‘Following the Archives to View Shanghai’ digital humanities platform, examining how it employs digital narratives to construct urban memory. Moving beyond a simple digital repository, the platform's innovation lies in its ‘narrative intelligence’ – its architectural design that integrates Geographic Information Systems, 3D modelling and knowledge graphs to create a dynamic, spatial-temporal-thematic narrative lattice. This structure transforms multimodal archival resources into an interactive ‘possible world’, enabling users to explore Shanghai's history through non-linear, associative pathways rather than a fixed chronology. The study finds that the platform successfully balances institutional curation with participatory engagement, fostering a user-driven and immersive exploration of the past. By synthesizing macro-historical perspectives with micro-narratives, the platform enhances public engagement with cultural heritage. It serves as a valuable blueprint for future digital archive initiatives, demonstrating that the strategic application of narrative theory and digital technologies can effectively bridge the gap between archival preservation and the dynamic construction of collective urban memory.
Jie Guo (Sun,) studied this question.