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Maps Reveal the Difference in How Cities Are Perceived by Tourists and Locals
- homonculus1 7y agoWell, photographed. Perception is a cognitive function that's not so easily measured as this...
- throwwwawayyyy 7y agoAs someone who lived in Paris for many years now, it's fascinating how the city has sort of three identities: 1. What outsiders think it's like 2. What they see when they encounter the city as tourists 3. What the city is like for a local You'd say this is true for any city but Paris in particular has concentrated so many stereotypes together that it's almost comical to see people's attitudes yo-yo so dramatically in both directions.
- blaser-waffle 7y agoI'm reminded of Paris Syndrome, which is phenomenon common with the Japanese, where they assume Paris is something it is not, and get angry and frustrated upon visiting. https://grapee.jp/en/99643 https://grapee.jp/en/99643 I'd say similar things about Texas, DC, and NYC, for that matter.
- partisan 7y agoIt is a funny article, but this line puts things in perspective: > Out of the million or so Japanese tourists that visit Paris each year, about 12 will fall prey to Paris syndrome.
- travisjungroth 7y ago“12 Japanese tourists let down by Paris visit each year” doesn’t quite have the same oomph.
- mwilliaams 7y agoThat’s .001%. Why is anyone even talking about it?
- bb101 7y agoIt could be the tip of a trend. For every one person suffering the full Paris Syndrome psychosis, there are probably a thousand Japanese departing Charles de Gaulle thinking to themselves "What a horrible dump, thank god we are leaving." -- Paris Syndrome-lite?
- mr_crankypants 7y agoWatching it happen can be quite a slice-of-life event. One guest who wanted to see my city's Chinese neighborhood was rather bitterly disappointed upon seeing it. "But it's just like any other neighborhood, only the convenience stores have Chinese signs in the windows!" Pointing out that they also sell red envelopes wasn't much of a consolation.
- mntmoss 7y agoAn old story from my dad is of observing a couple while dining at the Cliff House(SF attraction looking out over the Pacific Ocean). The lady was asked what she thought of the ocean and she replied, "I'm very disappointed. I thought it would be bigger!"
- wil421 7y agoMy European colleagues were distraught about DC and the White House in general. They couldn’t believe how small it was compared to European Palaces for Monarchs, ex rulers, etc. They didn’t understand when I said it was probably the point. We fought against a British monarch, why would we build massive palaces for our non-monarch president? They said look all the power is in Congress their buildings are much bigger.
- ben509 7y agoThe common contrasting explanation is that DC is projecting power by limiting how ostentatious it is, but nevertheless restricting other buildings from being tall. While the Capitol dome theory is a myth, the maximum height[1] allowed for building is set by law. It was due to safety concerns about then very new skyscrapers, but at the same time, the limit has persisted long after. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Height_of_Buildings_Act_of_1910 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Height_of_Buildings_Act_of_191...
- oh_sigh 7y agoMaybe if they built something a little less ostentatious(and adopted similar policies throughout their lives), the monarchs could have occupied the grand palaces for more than 100 years before losing their heads. I'm thinking specifically about Versailles
- lazyant 7y agoDC and Texas maybe, but at least for me as a tourist in NYC it was pretty much as expected, after watching so many movies filmed there
- seanmcdirmid 7y agoI once wound up in the suburbs as a tourist. Not what I was expecting at all.
- baud147258 7y agoWell, it really depends on which suburbs it was.
- seanmcdirmid 7y agoI think it was the northern outer wards? I don’t remember the number, but all the police I saw were armored and heavily armed.
- baud147258 7y agoThe most police I've ever saw was when I working in the middle of Paris, close to the Champs-Élysées, the presidential palace and a few ministry, in 2015 (so just after a terrorist attack). They were cops everywhere.
- 24gttghh 7y agoWas there a heat-map in the article for Paris that I am missing? I don't see it...
- baud147258 7y agoHere's the link to the one on Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/walkingsf/4671584999/in/album-72157624209158632/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/walkingsf/4671584999/in/album-... The red spot on the bottom left is Palace of Versailles(specifically the cross-shaped Grand Canal in red and the surrounding gardens)
- 24gttghh 7y agoAwesome thank you!
- hprotagonist 7y agoIt’s always fun to quantify this. I can say that for certain I avoid the tourist things in my home city and my current adopted home city. I cannot remember the last time i was near them, actually.
- Angostura 7y agoBut why? Tourist sights are tourist sites for a reason. The Tower of London is swarming with tourist, but its still genuinely fascinating. If only for Henry VIII's armoured codpiece.
- chapium 7y agoProbably because tourists are generally awful to be around.
- alistairSH 7y agoBut as a local, you can visit off-season/off-hours and avoid the worst of it.
- codingdave 7y agoNot in my experience. We get people from all over the world travelling to National Parks, and whether they are hardcore outdoors-folk exploring the back country, or a bus full of older Japanese camera-wielding tourists, they are almost universally friendly, interested in the area, and have stories to tell of their own lives and homes.
- Angostura 7y agoI disagree in general. I mean some are, but when I travel and am coming back via Heathrow, I quite often sit myself near a group of first-time visitors on the Tube, just because its interesting to evesdrop on their impressions. Typical American family looking through the window at the surburban streets: "Look at those houses, they are so small". Seeing through other people's eyes can be fascinating.
- dfxm12 7y ago
- wruza 7y agoLiving in semi-touristic district, it’s funny to see how locals views differ from tourists. We have a special term for it: local resident syndrome. It’s when someone asks you if there is something interesting to look at here, but you don’t know, despite living here since forever. Well, I can show you where that expensive nightclub is on the map, does it count? I also see people making selfies with decorative street elements (simple installations and/or statues) that were installed, say, a year ago, and really mean nothing, but are perceived as if they had a history. Accidentally hearing what tour guides tell to groups about locals and their traditions is another story.
- iagovar 7y agoThat happend to me too. They take photos of stuff that I didn't pay attention to. Maybe I should take a tour guide of my own city, since there's a lot to see apparently. Anyway, those maps could also be that way because locals try to avoid tourists. It's not a big deal where I currently live, but it is very annoying in Barcelona, Madrid, etc, that kind of places. Not only because touristy places become pricey or there's too many people, but because some tourists are... special.
- close04 7y agoMaintaining the same level of curiosity about your city that a tourist has is a challenge. You "just" live and work there, it's hard to get excited about your own city. Some years ago I tried to be a tourist in my own city and basically treated my weekends like going on a city break as a tourist (helped that it was a city of several million inhabitants and some centuries of history, so it had some potential). I discovered some really wonderful places, sometimes right next to the streets I drove on every day for work. That made a difference for me in how I looked at the city and made my life there just a bit more content.
- darrenf 7y agoMy gf and I started a project to spend a day in each borough of London, a couple of years ago. Originally we were aiming to complete it in one or two years, but life got in the way; it's paused at 16 out of 33 right now. I'm a born and bred Londoner in my mid-40s, and in the course of this (despite only being halfway through) have been to so many places I'd never visited - we research interesting cultural, historical, and alcohol-vending places to visit beforehand and it's ludicrous amounts of fun.
- jmkd 7y agoFor London it's fascinating to see the highest density of local photography mostly east, with a particular hotspot in Hackney. It seems to support the stereotype of it being a more creative area. I'm sure a dataset more recent than 2010 would amplify this further.
- llamathrowaway 7y agoI would not call it creative these days, because I don’t find those hipster beards, soul-crushingly loud factory-feeling restaurants and bars, and new shinny unaffordable residential developments designed by anti-natalists (hence no space for families) creative at all. It should be purple on the map if the data is more recent.
- eropple 7y ago"Anti-natalists"? That's a real weird flex. Surely it isn't that areas that aim to bring in the young and the creative are taking into account that kids cost money nobody's got.
- agent008t 7y agoThe issue is not the money, it's the 'stuff'. If they built decent residential areas where families could live, family homes would be more affordable. If they built more daycare facilities, daycare would be more affordable. Etc. etc. In London in particular, it is hard, if not impossible, to find a consistently decent area that would appear safe to bring up kids in within cycling commute of the City. There does not seem to be any objective reason for that, so it seems to be a policy decision.
- eropple 7y agoIf they built decent residential areas where families could live, DINKs and other childless folks would move there first. Families are and are permanently expensive in post-industrial society to the point where they're nearly a luxury if you want to also live in an urban (read: trendy, young, creative) area because space, and therefore anything that depends on space, is at a premium. Make no mistake: this sucks. But it isn't "anti-natalism". It's om-nom-nom capitalism. The fix is deeper than whether or not planners like families with kids or not: it's a rethinking of how we allocate resources. And that's a hard conversation to have.
- sct202 7y agoFor the actual direct link to the 100+ maps go to Flickr https://www.flickr.com/photos/walkingsf/sets/72157624209158632/with/4671594023/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/walkingsf/sets/721576242091586...
- tubbs 7y agoAnd to view an interactive map: https://labs.mapbox.com/labs/twitter-gnip/locals/#5/38.000/-95.000 https://labs.mapbox.com/labs/twitter-gnip/locals/#5/38.000/-...
- ghaff 7y agoThis was particularly cool when Eric Fischer first put these up on Flickr because smartphones were fairly new and it was such a great example of teasing interesting data/visualization from data that people were recording essentially incidentally. Google Flu Trends was also a hot topic around the same time although that turned out to be a lot less effective than it initially appeared.
- inlined 7y agoAm I the only one who felt like they were in the photo round of trivia night looking at the unlabeled heat maps?
- klez 7y agoI was trying to guess which cities were in North America and which ones weren't.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- anc84 7y agoRegurgitated content from more than half a decade ago. Here is the direct link with all you need to know: https://www.flickr.com/photos/walkingsf/sets/72157624209158632/detail/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/walkingsf/sets/721576242091586... (Click "show more" for the description with is more verbose and honest than the aggregator spam submission).
- chansiky 7y agoThanks for sharing. This deserves more upvotes. And all the respect to Eric Fischer who is more likely to be the author.
- enf 7y agoThanks. Yes, I made these maps several years ago.
- awhitty 7y agoCompletely unrelated to maps, but I really enjoyed your talk about the origins of the "else" keyword at !!Con West a few months back! Thanks for picking that topic. Really got me thinking.
- chansiky 7y agoOh man, I never expected you to respond. These images are much better on Flickr, I like how you can actually click links to the hot spots.
- welder 7y agoAnd the direct link to San Francsico: https://www.flickr.com/photos/walkingsf/4671581511/in/album-72157624209158632/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/walkingsf/4671581511/in/album-...
- aylmao 7y agoI've lived in SF before— this is so accurate to my experience. Went to SoMa a lot and actually never visited the Golden Gate bridge.
- hyldmo 7y agoI feel like this is applicable on a smaller scale than tourist/locals as well. I have lived in the same place in the same city for 7 years now and I have almost never been to any of the good bars/restaurants close to me. I'm always surprised when friends who live other places in the city recommend me places that I've walked past a hundred times in my neighborhood but never went into, and vice versa. I wonder why it is like that. I don't have a good answer myself.
- dfxm12 7y agoWhen you're at home, do you go out to eat often? If so, how do you choose where to go? I'm sure the answer lies in one of these questions.
- jonbronson 7y agoThis post is a cautionary tale of why Legends are important.
- egypturnash 7y agoI am looking at the version of this that has an interactive map of the US (https://labs.mapbox.com/labs/twitter-gnip/locals/ https://labs.mapbox.com/labs/twitter-gnip/locals/) and zooming in to my current location of New Orleans: https://labs.mapbox.com/labs/twitter-gnip/locals/#13/29.9802/-90.0676 https://labs.mapbox.com/labs/twitter-gnip/locals/#13/29.9802... And holy shit I really did do a favor for my friend when I went down to the French Quarter, met up with her, and took her to City Park instead of another day of scheduled tourist activities; there are no red dots up there.
- selimthegrim 7y agoSculpture Garden ftw, also CDM took over the morning call stand for now so you don’t even have to leave there for beignets
- egypturnash 7y agoIt’s not you couldn’t get beignets when it was Morning Call! But yeah the sculpture garden is awesome, I love going there and sitting in the quiet little grove around *A Battle: For The Resistance Fighters”. Or chilling on a shady bench with the laptop getting shit done. You could probably see it on a modern version of this map.
- nofinator 7y agoAny theory about why there is a local photo for every street in College Point, Queens? It's about 3 o'clock in the NY map here: https://flic.kr/p/87P99x https://flic.kr/p/87P99x.
- danmg 7y agoPhiladelphia Resident: The art museum. Philadelphia Tourist: The Rocky steps.
- codedrome 7y agoIt says "The red dots indicate photographs taken by tourists, while the blue dots show images taken by local residents" but what is the orange?
- bhtru 7y agoWhen it could've been taken by either a local or a tourist, undetermined.
- ghaff 7y agoYellow is can't be determined (because they haven't taken a picture anywhere for over a month). https://www.cnet.com/news/the-rise-of-the-accidental-sensor/ https://www.cnet.com/news/the-rise-of-the-accidental-sensor/
- incanus77 7y agoIf you are ever in SF and visit the Exploratorium, Eric’s work on these maps is shown there as well.
- JJMcJ 7y agoLocal resident: the library, the MacDonalds with the fastest drive through, the nice park with the ducks, except the sidewalk by the trees is always slimy with duck poop. Of course in suburban areas that's about it 99% of the time.
- newsreview1 7y agoHigh time locals started to know their city better than tourists.
- ma2rten 7y agoI lived in Amsterdam for 5 years but I never saw the Anne Frank House, because I thought I could always go there later.
- bb101 7y agoI lived across the street from the Charles Dickens Museum in London for years. Never once went as "it'll always be there later". Still haven't been.
- geuis 7y agoTerrible site UI. It hijacks the back/forward buttons to navigate through other content you haven't visited on that site.
- mannykannot 7y agoThere are a couple of places here that I know as more than a visitor, and in those cases, the residents' maps are quite interesting - for example, what is it about College Point, New York, that makes it stand out?
- smogcutter 7y agoAs far as I know as an NYC native... nothing? I was wondering about that too, must be some kind of sampling artifact. Maybe there's something we don't know about, but the neighborhood has more coverage than the whole rest of Queens (besides Shea). It's probably data from one guy who lives in College Point and happens to post a ton of pictures.
- mannykannot 7y agoGood point - maybe the amateur neighborhood historian, or possibly a group who are documenting the state of things as part of a dispute with City Hall? +1 for calling it Shea, not Citi Field.
- simonebrunozzi 7y agoI grew up in Assisi, Italy, and lived there until ~2008. Assisi was home to St.Francis, one of the most popular saints in Christianity, and it's a tiny village (5,000 residents) with >1.3M people visiting it every year, mostly for religious reasons. Growing up there was really a unique experience in that regard, especially when tourism is such an important share of the local economy. I met so many people from abroad, and befriended so many, over the years, and at the same time I almost took it for granted. I think my mind benefited from this great influx of foreigners.