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While I am not as much of a cartography expert as I’d like to be, I wanted to share this project by the talented Eric Fischer. It landed on my news feed from Bill Bowen, the longtime chair of the Cal State Northridge Geography program and major benefactor of the Association of Pacific Coast Geographer (who you should hopefully have the chance to meet one day and chat with about the last six decades of Geographic education; he was there in Berkeley in the 1950s).

Anyway, Fischer’s project involves a heavy use of geotagging to cache where people discernible as “tourists” take photos in cities versus where those discernible as “locals” do. The results are not without the logistical issues (also, they are based on data from the beginning of this decade), but the visual output is stunning. It should also be highly intriguing and useful as a way to teach urban geography.

Take, for example, the map of Paris above. Many of the red blotches are fairly easy to guess (The Eiffel Tower, Avenue des Champs-Élysées, and Notre Dame), but others make for a fun challenge (Père Lachaise Cemetery, Versailles, and ???).

Here, kids, is a tourist.

I hope you’re all having pleasant Sundays and hope you enjoyed this.