Photographing a City: An Analysis of Place Concepts Based on Spatial Choices

We ask whether the photographs published in web-based image collections do represent different conceptualizations of a city. We present a method for gathering and analyzing a data set of more than 12.000 images from Amsterdam, Bamberg, Cardiff, and Dublin. A measure for the popularity of a location in a city is described. The analysis of the data set reveals that the popularity follows a power law with very few highly popular locations and a long tail of places in a city that are visited only occasionally. The most popular locations can be identified with the semantic core of the conceptualization of the city in terms of images. This raises the issue of individual differences. We propose another measure that permits to identify users with similar conceptualizations of a city.