Tourists in NYC already know about Times Square, looked up where to get the best chocolate chip cookie, and planned to walk around SoHo at a turtle pace squeezed among other visitors. Yet, they rarely make their way to areas above Midtown, let alone leave Manhattan, and understandably so. What is there to see in residential neighborhoods, where streets look very similar to each other and all establishments are regular delis or supermarkets? Unless one brings a seasoned New Yorker along, the answer is next to nothing.
Unfortunately, it is unfeasible to provide every tourist with a personal guide, so the same couple of streets keep getting busier and busier while the authenticity of the tourist experience is diminishing. It is hardly the visitors' fault though. One learns about destinations from social media or friends who traveled to the city before — they wouldn’t be recommending visiting E 93rd Street around Lexington Avenue, right?
The alternative is to thoroughly gentrify the non-touristy areas by filling them with overhyped bakeries and overpriced chain clothing stores and then bombarding target audiences with advertisements hidden in the influencer content. “My day in the life as a 20-year-old living in NYC. I wake up and immediately head to Eastside Deli to grab my daily cleansing smoothie. So yummy! 10/10, recommend! I then pop by Little J Cleaners to drop off my dirty clothes — literally the best laundry service in the city.” I can see that. But there must be a less invasive way to invite tourists to explore New York without eroding its ecosystem.
To find the best solution, I wanted to first dive into the tools that were invented in the past to introduce the visitors to the city and learn lessons from them. Tourism in the United States began gaining its popularity in the early nineteenth century with Niagara Falls becoming the first most desirable destination. As early as in 1860s, people were already complaining about an overbearing abundance of souvenirs and annoying tour guides. Yet, by that time, only about 1% of the American population visited a tourist attraction (Gershon).
The first NYC guide was published in 1807 containing almost exclusively practical information with a very small section dedicated to select neighborhood tours (Mitchill). The representative of the next iteration of guides to NYC dates back to 1849 (Williams and Appleton). Significant portions of it are dedicated to churches and railroad or steamboat lines. It highlights some of the most prominent landmarks and contains a short description of most neighborhoods. Yorkville’s — an Upper East Side neighborhood between E 79th Street and E 96th Street — only remarkable trait seems to be the Receiving Reservoir, which I doubt attracted many visitors. It is clear that even 175 years ago tour guide writers were merely making a lazy attempt to expose their readers to the ordinary New York, acknowledging that it is there but not inviting them to explore it. On top of that, these books were only accessible to the literate and wealthy because of high production costs.
Williams, Wellington, and Daniel Appleton. Appleton’s New York City and Vicinity Guide. 1849.
Around the same time guided tour packages appear, though mostly in Europe. Thomas Cook becomes the first person to organize the “Round The World” tour in 1872-1873 which includes New York as one of its stops. Judging by the letters he published during the trip, they stopped in the city for five days, yet he didn’t have anything remarkable to write about it. Interestingly, he was aiming to make travel accessible and safe to middle-class people, rather than targeting the richest populations. (Cook)
In the early 19th century, some expensive guidebooks still existed (Brown) but many evolved into mass-produced affordable pocket guides and foldable maps, which were often distributed at hotels and train stations. The accessibility of these tools improved due to companies now willing to sponsor their production and place advertisements for the services they offer inside. Transportation companies were also interested in popularizing their products and attracting travelers by writing about exciting destinations. For example, the American Automobile Association issued its first TourBook in 1929 (sherry). While this made travel seemingly more accessible to less wealthy people, it did not educate them on the culture or history of the city, instead providing the most basic logistical instructions. By the mid-century, standard travel booklets, such as this one published by the New York Convention & Visitors Bureau (“1961 VISITOR’S TOURISTS GUIDE and MAP of NEW YORK CITY 1960’S BROOKLYN MANHATTAN”) were widely available. With colored pictures, they covered a much larger area of the city but were not detailed enough to deep dive into the history of a block or even a street.
New York Convention & Visitors Bureau, Visitor’s Guide and Map of New York, 1961.
Since then, we got used to seeing numerous advertisements in tourist guides, got used to receiving them for free in hotels, got used to a whole bookstore section filled with oddly specific travel books, and finally got used to searching up all the information online. Over the years the perspectives from which one could experience the city multiplied since more organizations and authors could share their advice targeting increasingly specific populations. Despite that, we were never able to shift the visitor’s focus from Times-Square-coded activities and share the city in its entirety, where one could find oneself on a completely random street but learn more than in a well-curated museum.
As a hybrid between a tourist and a New Yorker, I have a clear vision of the product that would solve this problem, but the goal is to help locals tell the stories of their neighborhoods and visitors to hear them. To make sure I address their needs and not mine, I formed a portrait of an average member from both of the groups.
New Yorker
Tourist
Essentially, the question becomes how do I recreate the experience of a personal local tour guide on a budget and without the person being present there? I suggest an augmented reality app. If you ever walked around an unfamiliar area and wished there were subtitles or exhibit labels, this app could make your dream come true. The app will allow locals to place pins around their neighborhood, telling the stories of even the smallest details a visitor might encounter, design immersive experiences that show how the area has changed over the years, and highlight impactful people who lived there. None of this will require any programming experience, just a very basic familiarity with smartphones. On the visitor’s end, one would be able to walk through a residential street, pointing their phone at buildings, stickers, and signs and learning about them in an interactive way. Since the hope is for people to contribute their stories from all over the city, it should not create a sudden influx of tourists in a specific area disturbing its residents.