What began in Europe is now increasingly visible in the United States. In New York, once bohemian neighborhoods like the West Village and SoHo are now so overrun on weekends that tourists stand in long lines outside global designer flagships and big chain stores, then crowd the sidewalks to photograph their shopping bags against branded facades that could be anywhere.<\/p>\n
More than a half century ago the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur warned of a world<\/a> where \u201cthe same bad movie, the same slot machines, the same plastic or aluminum atrocities\u201d would spread across cultures. His fears resonate today as tourism-driven economies push cities to stage their distinctiveness, overlaying local life with standardized, tourist\u2011facing layers.<\/p>\n This is the paradox of overtourism: The more people seek out distinctive places, the more they invite standardized, visitor\u2011friendly layers to grow on top of them. But how deep does that homogenization really go? Does it erase local ways of living or mostly reshape what visitors see?<\/p>\n To answer these questions, we undertook a study<\/a> to measure the extent to which global forces are actually eroding or reshaping local distinctiveness. Published in Scientific Reports<\/a> and conducted with colleagues at MIT\u2019s Senseable City Lab, the study used visual AI to analyze more than 400,000 Airbnb interior photos from 80 cities worldwide \u2014 treating home interiors as a basic cultural marker \u2014 to see how much local distinctiveness survives under globalization.<\/p>\n The results reveal a more complex story than the simple narrative of globalization steamrolling local culture. Globalization does homogenize, but it does so selectively. Global forces shape the technology and objects found in our homes: the same televisions, flat\u2011pack furniture, and devices appear in homes around the world. Global supply chains, international brands, and social media trends create powerful convergence pressures.<\/p>\n Yet significant local differences persist in how space is organized. Apartments in Madrid resemble those in Barcelona far more than those in Bangkok. The way rooms are laid out, how light enters them, the materials used in their construction \u2014 these basic qualities remain stubbornly local even as global products proliferate.<\/p>\n Kitchens are especially resistant to homogenization, retaining identities rooted in local food traditions and cooking practices. Local building traditions, climate, and cultural preferences create regional signatures that persist even in our hyperconnected age. When we clustered images with neural networks, South Asian kitchens grouped together visually, distinct from European or East Asian spaces, even though the model had no information about geography \u2014 geography\u2019s \u201cfirst law\u201d is that near things are more related than distant things.<\/p>\n