Find Local Hotspots With These Photo Maps
Lifehacker just moved to Times Square and damn it, it’s weird to work in an area where tourists are staying. I want to shout at them: “I have to be here, but you can leave! Save Yourself! ” Nobody has to go to Times Square . As a traveler, if you want to avoid the crowds of tourists in the city but still want to see something interesting, take a look at these heatmaps where tourists and locals do the most. photos all over the world .
Data artist Eric Fischer built a world map filled with data from geotagged Twitter photos. A blue dot means that a local has taken a picture at that location; a red dot means the tourist has taken a photo. (Fisher defined locals as anyone who photographed in one city for more than a month, and tourists as anyone who photographed outside their usual city.) Maps show tourists concentrating in certain areas, usually in dense urban centers, at the time. how the locals are scattered all over the place.
You can’t plan your trip based on this data alone, but it’s a great starting point for finding neighborhoods and streets to explore. There are groups around most of the main streets, as well as around pedestrianized streets with many interesting bars, restaurants and shops. You may even find small tourist traps that should be avoided in the local area.
The map is not a perfect guide for visitors: the main parks are oddly empty, and since the data was collected between 2010 and 2013, some areas are out of date. (For example, this map does not show the recent tourism boom in Williamsburg.) But it does provide an overall accurate picture of where tourists and locals congregate. And it’s interesting to choose the banks of the Thames, the Staten Island ferry route , or how Hawaiian tourists stick to the coast . Fisher also made maps of 36 cities , including the London map above, on Flickr, where he added yellow dots for photographs that could be tourists or locals: places where everyone wants to take a photo, regardless of whether they are here everyone day or see it. place for the first time in my life.