It’s usually pretty easy to avoid touristy swamps in New York – just dodge Times Square. But what if you want to be more precise than that? Eric Fischer’s brilliant “Locals and Tourists” maps show a city’s divided hangouts.
Using photo geotags, Eric separated blue “people who have taken pictures in this city dated over a range of a month or more” (locals) and red “people who seem to be a local of a different city and who took pictures in this city for less than a month” (tourists). The results are both beautiful and insightful. While some parts of the city are a swirl of insiders and outsiders, there are wide stretches that are photo-segregated. Fisher’s work spans cities far beyond New York – from Budapest to Hong Kong. Turning cities into abstract, GPS-correlated red and blue heat maps doesn’t make them impersonal – it opens up the humans down below. [Eric Fischer via Alex Rainert]