Developing civic identities for our neighbourhoods
What if, instead of marketing our cities as the best places for business or top destinations for city breaks, we developed identities for our cities as places where people care for each other and build well-being? This is not just a marketing strategy, but a reflection of our commitment to community well-being in the context of tourism.
This may seem like motherhood and applied pie, but remember Ken Livingstone’s speeches after the 2005 terrorist attacks in London, the Mayor of Seoul’s Sharing City vision, or the Mayor of Curitiba’s.
Imagine the post-pandemic world, where tourists return to our cities not just as visitors, but as contributors to our local economies. They spend on experiences and products that support inclusive business practices, like paying people a living wage. They choose environmentally friendly transport, and their expenditures are reinvested into the local community through social housing or public transport. This is not just a vision, but a potential reality that can bring economic growth and prosperity to our cities.
About a decade ago, I took part in the inaugural Social Innovation Camp, which gave birth to Good Gym, My Police, and Enabled by Design. The “innovation” I helped develop with others, “Useful Vistors,” was based on the premise of imagining you were visiting another city on a business or leisure trip and had some spare time. Instead of spending that extra hour on the beach, you could help our local community.
How could you design inclusive tourism, like Barcelona is doing?
How could you connect tourism in the local communities beyond the main tourist destinations, as the Community Lovers Guide has done?
How can communities benefit from their areas becoming more touristic, rather than a binary choice between helping every house owner become an Airbnb host to top up their income and banning short-term lets? Rather than getting EU subsidies to build airports to bring in sub-burnt tourists or protesting that “we don’t like tourists”?
How about more excellent neighbourhood“placemaking”?
- Spaces where people can use their “making” skills to turn them into neighbourhood spaces
- Media, where people invest in using and developing their storytelling skills to report on local issues, can be a powerful tool for community engagement and empowerment. It’s about communities shaping their narratives and taking control of their destinies.
- Advertising where people can support local products
- Production where you can combine artisanal products and digital practices to the circular economy
How can we attract people to come and invest and work in our boroughs, not just because of good transport connections but as hubs for more inclusive business, as Cleveland, Bologna, or Ghent have done?
