Eric Fisher created the Geotagger’s World Atlas. An interactive map showing geographic data collected from Flickr’s geotagged photos. The lines and their density show the parts of areas where people took a sequence of images.
Eric also analyzed the geotagging data to try and determine which images were tourists and which were from locals. He took snap shots and posted them to a flickr set. They are fascinating to browse around. Here is his map of the Twin Cities.
Eric Fisher’s Locals and Tourists of the Twin Cities
Blue are locals.
Red are tourists.
Yellow are may be either (I wish this contrasted better, its a bit hard to make out).
You can see the Mall of America is quite red especially in the center where the indoor amusement park is. The Sculpture Garden has a lot of blue and red, but across the highway Loring Park is pretty much just locals.
The Washington Ave Bridge is a tourist draw, as is Loop of the Stone Arch Bridge, Main Street, and the Hennepin Ave Bridge with a concentration by the Mill Ruins. Nicollet Mall, the Hennepin Ave entertainment district both are tourist draws, with 7th and Nicollet a strong concentration.
There are tiny pocket that stand out, too. The Minneapolis Institute of Arts stands out as a tiny pocket of tourists. Uptown (surprisingly?) gets a lot of local photos but rarely tourist photos. Minneapolis gets a lot more geotagged images compared to St. Paul.