We wanted to explore the historical dimension of urban data, to unearth to what extent different kinds of events and phenomena are recorded - a kind of archaeology of Flickr data. We've selected a cross-section of world cities as case studies. For the cities with large datasets we are using a years worth of data - 2012. Where possible we are looking at larger date ranges from 2005 - 2012. Luminous Cities is supported by the TALISMAN User Fellowship scheme. The Talisman project is based in the CSAP at the University of Leeds and CASA at University College London.