Locals and Tourists #14 (GTWA #7): Boston

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Blue pictures are by locals. Red pictures are by tourists. Yellow pictures might be by either.

Base map © OpenStreetMap, CC-BY-SA

suprgrlndg, SpatialH, dougcornelius, mer-made, and 103 other people added this photo to their favorites.

  1. mer-made 36 months ago | reply

    Interesting mix of blue, yellow, and red on Tufts campus (on the left, just above the blue asterisk that is Davis Square).

  2. hlkljgk 36 months ago | reply

    great project

  3. jenever 36 months ago | reply

    Boston proposes an interesting composition since it has such a large, temporary student population who could be considered locals or tourists...

  4. Andy Woodruff 36 months ago | reply

    Interesting micro-pattern at Harvard - tourists are taking more pictures of Harvard while locals are taking more pictures of Harvard *Square*.

    Needless to say, this is an amazing project and series of maps!

  5. It'sPastMyBedTime 36 months ago | reply

    This whole set is amazing! Apparently a lot of people take pictures in melrose?

  6. Modern Day Thoreau 36 months ago | reply

    Great stuff! Thanks!

  7. historygradguy (jobhunting) 36 months ago | reply

    Interesting. A lot of overlap downtown. It's interesting that locals tend more towards backbay while tourists favor the Huntington ave and Boylston st area

  8. as11804 36 months ago | reply

    IPMBT, I wouldn't be surprised if the odd concentration of photos in Melrose is related to Hunt's, the largest photo store in the Boston area, being located there -- if the cause and effect go the other way around, they picked a brilliant spot for their store, and I'd love to know how they figured it out!

  9. historygradguy (jobhunting) 36 months ago | reply

    In Allston there's an interesting "tourist" cluster at the corner of Cambridge and Boylston. Stopping by to take pictures of Twin Donuts?

  10. sambang 35 months ago | reply

    I'm not sure the blue on any college campus, like BC, denotes "locals;" college students are just around for most months out of a year

  11. Eric Fischer 35 months ago | reply

    It is hard to say what really constitutes local, but I think somebody who lives there almost all year for four years is pretty local by the end of it.

  12. Michelleyyy 29 months ago | reply

    The Hunts store is right across from a really pretty walking park, soccer and baseball field... so it might be a collaboration

  13. jak119 24 months ago | reply

    Granted under MA law that makes us "residents"

  14. Jeff prime 22 months ago | reply

    Thank you for putting these maps together. They are fascinating and provoking. But unfortunately, the area you've picked for your Boston map is seriously misleading.

    It looks like you really wanted to get Salem in the shot, but as a result, you've cut off fully half the city, instead including northern suburbs that lie pretty far outside what people consider "Boston". You're missing all of the Arboreteum (you're notation is incorrect - that small concentration near the bottom is the campus of the British School - the Arb is completely below your cutoff). And all of Forest Hills Cemetary (one of the oldest, most beautiful and most visited in the country). You've also excluded Franklin Park - the largest park in the city. Also big chunks of the largest Boston neighborhood Dorchester, and all of the Roslindale, West Roxbury and Hyde Park neighborhoods. Finally, by looking mostly to the north rather than the south, you've excluded the Blue Hills Reservation and and upper South Shore region, all of which are known as huge attractors of shutterbugs.

    If you redo this particular map, I'd suggest you shift your sample area south about 5 miles.

  15. Eric Fischer 22 months ago | reply

    The sole criterion I used in choosing the area for each of these maps was to get the largest clusters of contiguous photos within each 15-mile square, and Salem is photographed more often than the areas to the south, so that is why it is included. A different version of the map that is centered on downtown Boston shows the small size of the clusters further south. Taking Twitter into account (and going to 20-mile squares) does include more of the area you are interested in.

    Thanks for the correction to the Arboretum identification. I did not add those notes myself and was trusting the local knowledge of the people who did.

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