Cornell maps the world’s photos


April 23, 2009

Paul Redfern

Read More: http://www.cac.cornell.edu/about/news/090423.aspx

ITHACA, NY – Cornell University computer scientists used a supercomputer at the Cornell Center for Advanced Computing to download and analyze nearly 35 million Flickr photos taken by over 300,000 photographers from around the globe. Their main goal was to develop new methods to automatically organize and label large-scale collections of digital data. A secondary result of the research was the generation of statistics on the world's most photographed cities and landmarks, gleaned from the analysis of the multi-terabyte photo collection:

• The top 25 most photographed cities in the Flickr data are: (1) New York City (2) London (3) San Francisco (4) Paris (5) Los Angeles (6) Chicago (7) Washington, DC (8) Seattle (9) Rome (10) Amsterdam (11) Boston (12) Barcelona (13) San Diego (14) Berlin (15) Las Vegas (16) Florence (17) Toronto (18) Milan (19) Vancouver (20) Madrid (21) Venice (22) Philadelphia (23) Austin (24) Dublin (25) Portland.

• The top seven most photographed landmarks are: (1) Eiffel Tower - Paris (2) Trafalgar Square - London (3) Tate Modern museum - London (4) Big Ben - London (5) Notre Dame - Paris (6) The Eye - London (7) Empire State Building - New York City.

The study also identified the seven most photographed landmarks in each of the top 25 cities. Most of these landmarks are well-known tourist attractions, but some surprising results emerged. For example, one striking result in the Flickr data is that the Apple Store in midtown Manhattan is the 5th-most photographed place in New York City – and, in fact, the 28th-most photographed place in the world.

Cornell developed techniques to automatically identify places that people find interesting to photograph, showing results for thousands of locations at both city and landmark scales. "We developed classification methods for characterizing these locations from visual, textual and temporal features," says Daniel Huttenlocher, the John P. and Rilla Neafsey Professor of Computing, Information Science and Business and Stephen H. Weiss Fellow. "These methods reveal that both visual and temporal features improve the ability to estimate the location of a photo compared to using just textual tags."




PDF Reports & Charts: http://www.cs.cornell.edu/~dph/papers/photomap-www09.pdf

I'm surprised Venice is so low on the list. I'd expect it to be above Seattle.

based on Flickr only, hmmm....

I wouldn't argue with that.

I looked at Indafoto (indafoto.hu),and concluded that the most photographed cities in the world are in Hungary. :banana:

I wouldn't argue with that.


so, er San Diego and Austin beat Shanghai, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Bangkok (worlds second most internationally visited city after London)

I'm surprised Venice is so low on the list. I'd expect it to be above Seattle.

It would put things into better perspective if one knew the geographic breakdown of the people posting on flickr. It's probably not a good cross section of the world's people. ;)

so, er San Diego and Austin beat Shanghai, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Bangkok (worlds second most internationally visited city after London)

so, er on flikr, yes.

New York no. and London no. I can believe that... Its not as if its gonna be Tampa, FL and Birmingham lol

so, er on flikr, yes.

so maybe the titles should be 'Most Photographed Cities and Landmarks on Flickr' or 'Cornell Maps Flickr's Photos'

so maybe the titles should be 'Most Photographed Cities and Landmarks on Flickr' or 'Cornell Maps Flickr's Photos'

Just what I was thinking. Flickr hardly represents the entire medium. I would say there's more photos of Beijing (Forbidden City) or Sydney (Harbour Bridge) or Moscow (Kremlin) or lots of others outside of Flickr than some of those listed by the OP.

There is someplace where it is so amazing that people don't even hold a camera in front of their face.....so no pics at all.......................but you will know the place when you go there.........amazing

Ok...I was being flippant...again ? I can agree with the list.....isn't great that people move around and take pics of stuff!

..

Tate modern, big ben, ok....but the eye, and not acropolis???? oh well....

Flickr alone is hardly representative of all the travel photos out there online.

Hey guys, check out the Geotaggers' World Atlas (http://www.flickr.com/photos/walkingsf/sets/72157623971287575/detail/) to see where the concentration of the photos are taken from. The photos used to generate the maps are based on Flickr.

For example, this is New York. You can see that the highest concentration of photographs of NY from Flickr are taken around Midtown/Central Park and Downtown.
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4032/4621770959_383261aebe.jpg

This is London...
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3042/4621770253_bc207f9f42.jpg

and Paris (and Versailles on the lower left)..
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4033/4622376356_d0e78bd1c1.jpg

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^^I would assume that is because Japanese people prefer to upload their pictures of Tokyo onto Japanese speaking websites. Thus this list of most photographed cities is far from accurate.

yep 12 million visit Beijing's Forbidden City every year (twice as much as the Eiffel Tower), and 7 million Tiananmen the square outside, yet it's nowhere on the list. Like everyone keeps saying, Flickr is mostly an Anglo-nation, English speaking upload site, and NOT representative of the entire world as the thread title and article purports.

The Tokyo Midtown tower gets something like 30 million visitors a year too, Ropponggi Hills tower something like 49 million at its height.

most photographed landmarks are:

(1) Eiffel Tower - Paris
(2) Colosseum - Rome
(3) Tate Modern museum - London
(4) Big Ben - London
(5) Notre Dame - Paris
(6) The Eye - London
(7) Empire State Building - New York City
(8) Trafalgar Square - London

nice

repost:

12 million visit Beijing's Forbidden City every year (twice as much as the Eiffel Tower), and 7 million Tiananmen the square outside, yet it's nowhere on the list. Like everyone keeps saying, Flickr is mostly an Anglo-nation, English speaking upload site, and NOT representative of the entire world as the thread title and article purports.

The Tokyo Midtown tower gets something like 30 million visitors a year too, Ropponggi Hills tower something like 49 million at its height.

^^+1:)

the answer is in fact london. why? because it contains 20% of the world's CCTV. thats one heck of a lot of photographs.

repost:

12 million visit Beijing's Forbidden City every year (twice as much as the Eiffel Tower), and 7 million Tiananmen the square outside, yet it's nowhere on the list. Like everyone keeps saying, Flickr is mostly an Anglo-nation, English speaking upload site, and NOT representative of the entire world as the thread title and article purports.

The Tokyo Midtown tower gets something like 30 million visitors a year too, Ropponggi Hills tower something like 49 million at its height.

You don't have to "visit" the Eiffel Tower to take pictures of it.

Heck, I bet the "visitor" count is how many tickets they sell...missing the people who walk around the bottom, not to mention the millions who can see if from around town.

^exactly the same with Forbidden City, ticket sales only for that 12 million figure. The 7 million for Tiananmen would only be one side of the palace too, (and neither counting the traffic that crosses it).

so, er San Diego and Austin beat Shanghai, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Bangkok (worlds second most internationally visited city after London)

Bankok ?? second most internatioally visited city after London ???

I think Paris is by far more visited than London, but Bankok ? where did you get that ?

http://www.euromonitor.com/Top_150_City_Destinations_London_Leads_the_Way

London 15,640
Bangkok 10,350
Paris 9,700
Singapore 9,502
Hong Kong 8,139
New York City 6,219
Dubai 6,120
Rome 6,033
Seoul 4,920
Barcelona 4,695


I think though youre right about Paris though, it's recently pipped London and Bangkok into 2nd and 3rd place last year. Also Kuala Lumpar and Istanbul have surged ahead now. Bangkok has always been top 3 though for most of the decade.

*edit* 2009 list:

City Country International
visitors
(millions) Year/Notes
Paris France 14.8 2009 (Excluding extra-muros visitors)[13]
London United Kingdom 14.1 2009[14]
Bangkok Thailand 10.21 2008 (External study estimation)[15]
Singapore Singapore 9.7 2009[16]
Kuala Lumpur Malaysia 8.94 2008 (External study estimation)[15]
Hong Kong China 8.9 2009[17][18]
New York City United States 8.7 2009[19]
Dubai United Arab Emirates 7.58 2008[15][20]
Istanbul Turkey 7.51 2009[21]
Shanghai China 6.7

http://www.euromonitor.com/Top_150_City_Destinations_London_Leads_the_Way

London 15,640
Bangkok 10,350
Paris 9,700
Singapore 9,502
Hong Kong 8,139
New York City 6,219
Dubai 6,120
Rome 6,033
Seoul 4,920
Barcelona 4,695


I think though youre right about Paris though, it's recently pipped London and Bangkok into 2nd and 3rd place last year. Also Kuala Lumpar and Istanbul have surged ahead now. Bangkok has always been top 3 though for most of the decade.

*edit* 2009 list:

City Country International
visitors
(millions) Year/Notes
Paris France 14.8 2009 (Excluding extra-muros visitors)[13]
London United Kingdom 14.1 2009[14]
Bangkok Thailand 10.21 2008 (External study estimation)[15]
Singapore Singapore 9.7 2009[16]
Kuala Lumpur Malaysia 8.94 2008 (External study estimation)[15]
Hong Kong China 8.9 2009[17][18]
New York City United States 8.7 2009[19]
Dubai United Arab Emirates 7.58 2008[15][20]
Istanbul Turkey 7.51 2009[21]
Shanghai China 6.7


The two lists are different. The first is a vast joke made by Euromonitor. The second list figures mostly come from municipalities. The Paris figure includes only intra-muros visitors (Ile-de-France receives 27M foreign visitors each year). The Bangkok figures of the second list are unconfirmed. They come from an "external study estimation" which is Euromonitor (there is no official and public statistics of the number of tourists in Bangkok).

^by arrival numbers Bangkok may be number 1 again next year:

14.15 million 2009, planning to take that to 15.5 million by 2011

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/SGE6860CQ.htm

^by arrival numbers Bangkok may be number 1 again next year:

14.15 million 2009, planning to take that to 15.5 million by 2011

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/SGE6860CQ.htm

These statistics refers to Thailand, not Bangkok.

sorry, but yep the majority of foreign tourists do arrive via Bangkok. Point being I'd say those 'unconfirmed' numbers are more or less accurate - if just 10 out of the 15 million arrivals came into Bangkok that would still put it in the top 3.

^^
That's not to be unpleasant but these figures for Bangkok are speculative. The second list has been created by myself with the help of some contributors of Wikipedia and based on official statistics from the CVBs. That was the occasion to locate many errors in the Euromonitor study, which has a very curious and visibly botched methodology.
Bangkok was a problem, just like Kuala Lumpur cause these two cities doesn’t have official and public statistics (we searched a lot for this). There’s only Airports data and the WTO study for the whole state. So we decided to conserve the doubtful Euromonitor figures for Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur with a notice (“External study estimation”).
Most of the 15M tourists of Thailand pass through Bangkok for infrastructure reasons. That doesn’t mean they are tourists in Bangkok (staying more than 24 hours) and Thailand have many attractions besides its capital city. However, I agree that Bangkok is certainly a main destination (Westerners are inclined to forget that eastern cities receive a lot of eastern visitors) and 10M seems to be a possible estimation (that’s why we mention it in the table) but still a speculative estimation.
Anyway, we can be sure that Bangkok is not going to be the number one destination next year.

why'd you say that? It was around 10 million this year, even despite the political turmoil and civil unrest.

Maybe not next year but I reckon BK can only rise up the table over this decade, especially as more and more middle class Chinese and Indians come 'online' to the aviation network, countries that in the future will dominate the market of international tourists.

Also for all BK's snarling traffic, smog and urban jungle it's consistently rated as the top favourite for visitor experience (eg Travel and Leisure's Top City in 2008 and again 2010), notable for its friendliness, openness, low prices and food (not just girlie bars and drugs) - and in short possibly the world's most liberal and accessible (read: affordable) society. It also does a roaring trade in luxury. This growing reputation, especially from word of mouth, could make the city where Asia goes to party, and where the world goes to spend.

Of course BK would have to deal with local competition from Shanghai and Dubai too, not just London and Paris. Ive heard Istanbul is also rapidly rising up the ranks, and on a concerted path thanks to its forward thinking mayor, in becoming top 3 (basically where West goes to meet East and vice versa).

I globally agree about that. Tourism in eastern cities is rapidly growing and Bangkok has many attractions and advantages. But, still, with its (supposed) 10M visitors, the city is still far away from Paris (around 25-27M sum-total) or even London (15M). So I don't think it will be the number one destination in the short-term.

Paris has 25-27 million foreign visitors???

For Paris Metropolitan area, yes. That’s a rough estimation made by the Ile-de-France Regional Council. The Paris CVB statistics are partially based on hotels occupation rate extrapolated to all forms of accommodation but concern only intra-muros housing. However, 40% of Paris hotels are outside of the city limits, mostly in the commuter belt. That explains the different Ile-de-France statistics which include extra-muros hotels and attractions for professional tourism (like La Défense) or leisure tourism (like Disneyland or Versailles). The table I made concerns only cities from an administrative point of view so I considered only the 14.8M of the Paris CVB and added a note.

None of these are apples to apples. Tourist counts are usually counting wildly different things.

^^
Yes and that’s a problem for this kind of list. But globally, I think the margin of error is not that huge. From what I have heard the methodologies are not so different, the counts are generally based on hotels occupation figures (which differentiate local and foreign guests) and more or less extrapolated to all kind of housing.
For Euromonitor, the methodology is quite simple : collecting official CVBs statistics (with a very relative rigor) or other unofficial figures in the specialized press or industry.

For Paris Metropolitan area, yes. That’s a rough estimation made by the Ile-de-France Regional Council. The Paris CVB statistics are partially based on hotels occupation rate extrapolated to all forms of accommodation but concern only intra-muros housing. However, 40% of Paris hotels are outside of the city limits, mostly in the commuter belt. That explains the different Ile-de-France statistics which include extra-muros hotels and attractions for professional tourism (like La Défense) or leisure tourism (like Disneyland or Versailles). The table I made concerns only cities from an administrative point of view so I considered only the 14.8M of the Paris CVB and added a note.


I don't think you're differentiating between foreign tourists and domestic tourists (the vast majority) with that figure, as we've been talking foreign arrivals only all this time. You can't just boost the numbers like that.

No I spoke about foreign tourists : http://www.iledefrance.fr/english/sports-loisirs-tourisme/tourism/tourism/