In Search of Authenticity

Mapping Chinatown through the lens of Flickr

Chinatown: Authentic?

Gentrification threatens Chinatowns across the US, and in the process, the authenticity of the cultural heritage of Chinatown may be lost. The “authenticity” is subjective to the individual’s personal experience and background.

A residential neighborhood with its own culture and businesses.  A capital city and center for the larger Chinese population of the Bay Area.    A destination for most visitors to the city.   [1]  

Chinatown vs. Citywide

(checking data sources) 45 vs. 38  Median Age  55% vs. 35%  Foreign Born  $34,000 vs. $70,000  Median Household Income  70 vs. 27  Per Acre Population Density 


Social Media Photos

Global coverage of ~5M geotagged media objects from  YFCC100M 

Social media photos record the beautiful or unique scenes of a city and present the subjective view of a place, and provide an opportunity for us to investigate the cultural landscape of cities.

Yahoo Flickr Creative Commons 100 Million (YFCC100m) dataset contains a list of photos and videos. This is the largest publicly and freely useable multimedia collection, containing the metadata of around 99.2 million photos and 0.8 million videos from Flickr.

Let's zoom into San Francisco.

823,833 media objects are posted in San Francisco by 11,343 users during 2005-2014. They will be used to identify each user as a tourist or local.

The identification is based on users' local posting time pattern. If a user post within 7 days over a year, this user will be identified as a tourist, otherwise a local.

A total of 685,661 images by 3,894 locals and 138,172 images by 7,449 tourists are identified.


Undefined Boundaries

The boundaries of the San Francisco Chinatown remain undefined, which poses a technical challenge for this research. Considering different definitions of SF Chinatown, the distribution of Chinese commerce and the Asian population, a bounding box enclosed by Green Street, Mason Street, Sutter Street, and Sansome Street was defined as the study area.

Explore the various boundaries of Chinatown


Perception

Photos are grouped into 6 perception categories. The 'Chinese Culture' category is composed of photos that are related to Chinese traditional festivals, food, art, business and activities. 

The perception proportion of Business, Chinese Culture and Art between the two groups are very closed, whereas locals take more photos about Socializing, tourists take more photos about Townscape and Landmark.

Perception Map

Townscape. Photos belonging to this class are distributed all over the study area. Compared to locals, photos taken by tourists are more concentrated in several streets, i.e. Grant Avenue.

Landmark. As expected, the majority of pictures belonging to this class are found near Dragon Gate, Transamerica Pyramid, etc.

Business & Socializing. For locals, the distribution of the two categories is similar.

Art. Photos belonging to this class distribute with some highest density points. There is little difference between locals and tourists.


Back to the Initial Question

Perception map of "Chinese Culture" Category. Locals vs. Tourists

The authentic Chinatown area? To some extent, the distribution of photos belonging to "Chinese Culture" class represents the "real" Chinatown area. Locals percept a larger area than tourists. Besides, tourists' perceptions are more concentrated in the main street, whereas locals take photos in some small alleys. The social media data volume is huge. However, we should be aware of the people who could not be reached using social media data, such as elders and other financially or even socially marginalized groups.


1️⃣➖🔟 Rate Authenticity!

The current categorization and labeling are all based on my personal view. I was born and raised in China for 20+ years and have never been to any Chinatown.


🤳 One Day In Chinatown!

Proposed interactive visualization: This visualization displays the data of one random Flickr user's posting activities in San Francisco Chinatown on a single day between 2005 and 2014. See the location and perception content of the photo, as well as the distribution of photos within 24 hours.

General Info. On the left column, we can see the clock, legend, and perception proportion, or load another user. Timeline. On the bottom column, we can explore how many and what kinds of photos he/she took over 24 hours. Image. Click a point in the map, we can explore the original image taken in this location. Main Map. The map will show the spatiotemporal route of the user's photo taken activities in Chinatown.


📌 Draw & Pin!

(Similar to offline interview survey)

Credits & References

References: In Progress...

Flickr Social Media Photos

YFCC 100M

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Literature Review

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A residential neighborhood with its own culture and businesses.  A capital city and center for the larger Chinese population of the Bay Area.    A destination for most visitors to the city.   [1]  

Global coverage of ~5M geotagged media objects from  YFCC100M 

Perception map of "Chinese Culture" Category. Locals vs. Tourists

A total of 685,661 images by 3,894 locals and 138,172 images by 7,449 tourists are identified.