This past summer, I took the Envisioning City class, which is probably also one of the best classes that I have taken in college. In such a short amount of time that I learn so much more about cities, not necessarily academically knowledge, but I have gained some more perspectives and understandings.
Born and raised in a city that is the same size as New York City, I always thought I had known everything I should about the urban life. But of course, I was wrong. Kevin was a great teacher, in a way that I was able to bring my own perspective about cities into class, and he would try to elaborate on that and have everyone else discuss around the topic. I was able to see from different viewpoints, from people who grew up in a rural area, or in a mid-size city. They were all interesting.
We took many trips to enhance our understanding of cities – to Spring Grove cemetery, Findlay Market, and even one of the Underground tours in Cincinnati. They were all very different from what I had known and understood about cities, but they all together helped me shape my point of view.
There were many interesting assignments during class, but my favorite was probably the assignment after we took the Underground tour in Cincinnati, discussing the idea around the concept of “ghetto tours” and how it shaped the perception of cities in modern days. After writing the assignment, I was more than ever encouraged to be a traveler instead of a tourist. I was encouraged to dig deeper and learn more things that aren’t superficial whenever I travel or encounter new things. I was encouraged to actively learn. Here in this post, I attached my assignment during the course, hoping to give you one of my thoughts about cities.
ASSIGNMENT 4 - MULTIFACETED CITIES
Humans are born with curiosity. Sometimes, the curiosity is good because it is the motivation for us to keep pushing ourselves to learn new things, to explore, to make action and contribute back to what we have learned. However, if curiosity is not put in the right place in the right way, it can kill whatever we are so once curious about. This is especially true when it comes to tourism tours.
The definition of nowadays tourism tours didn’t seem to appear until recently. When moving between cities, countries, or even continents became a lot easier and more affordable, tourism tours have blossomed to fulfill the needs of travel and, mainly, the curiosity of people from other cultures. Tourism tours have been praised by its ability to become such an important learning tool and bring to the tourists, or viewers, the best learning experiences – by seeing, hearing, and exchanging. However, normally with time and budget constraints or even because of the tourists’ interests, tourism companies only take their customers to well known attractions. Photographs with these attractions act as some kinds of medals for the trip. Tourists do not have enough time to learn about the city culture, its residents, and what makes a city. These factors make truly learning about the city difficult and all the understanding tourists gain from these types of tour are profound and shallow. Tourists, besides the fact that they have contributed so much to the economy of wherever they visit, have also left bad reputations among the locals. The cities are not understood any better. The cities just either get an icing layer of being glorious and fancy, or sometimes the other way around, nasty and faded. There are no in-between perceptions. For the short amount of time they get to spend, tourists seem to be given a privilege to leave their own judgments.
Within the last decade, there is another movement acting against tourism tours. One of the more well known ones is the website from Portugal called “We Hate Tourism Tours” (1). It was started by a group of friends who want to help people experience Portugal in different ways, providing more authentic and personal experiences that will help them better understand the city of Lisbon under different lights. The website provides services which tourists can truly experience the authentic home-made Portuguese food, the daily lifestyle surfing, the streets and neighborhoods that are also the hearts and souls of Lisbon. This might not be the pioneer for theme-oriented tours in Europe or even the United States, but it definitely speaks to the rising popularity of these types of tour based around history, breweries, murals, and neighborhoods. More than a city’s unique building or attractions, these aspects at least give tourists a better-rounded view within a short amount of time. They also reflect a new vision of cities in the 21st century, with more in-depth knowledge and wider range of interpretations. Although these are growing fast, they seem to be more appealing for tourists from within a country or for smaller cities without many world-recognition attractions.
Along with these theme-oriented tours is a type called “the ghetto tours”. Because any city can be very glorious and luxurious, it has its dark sides. The ghetto tours focuses on portraying that dark side of a city – taking tourists to poor with high crime rate neighborhoods in a city so that they can learn and experience living in a dangerous space. In some places, these are called “reality tours”. Curiosity is the foundation for innovation and action, but sometimes without enough passion and knowledge, it can be more harmful than beneficial. Like Kennedy Odede described in his New York Times article, “slum tourism turns poverty into entertainment, something that can be momentarily experienced and then escaped from.” (2) The tours indeed satisfies people’s curiosity and promotes social awareness to those poor areas as well, but in fact people “then go back to their lives and leave me, my family and my community right where we were before.” (3) The majority of tourists feel positive after the tour, most feel intrigued and interested, because they can see themselves living in a better condition and a better place. These do not only push people further from one another, but they also create than gentrification within people’s thinking. Hardly anyone, without taking the tour for the purpose of academic research or learning, ever comes back and takes action to help the community they have taken a tour about. Although they do contribute to the area’s economic growth, the residents do not appreciate it and think it is worth it. A part of their dignity is lost after every single tour that comes by.
The curiosity coming from tourists of the ghetto tours can kill a neighborhood: its perception, its dignity, and its community. These tours might have had great purposes when it first started: to create empathy from the tourists towards the neighborhood residents, and to take use of its own resources of being poor to push the economic growth. However, tourists can only feel sympathetic at their best, if not apathetic. Sometimes, desperate souls do not want to have sympathy from other people. Sometimes, it can be an insult. And sometimes, a city can be even more gentrified because sympathy is put in the wrong place in the wrong way.
Citation
(1) Wehatetourismtours.com
(2) (3) Odede, Kennedy. "Slumdog Tourism." The New York Times. The New York Times, 09 Aug. 2010. Web. 23 July 2016.
Born and raised in a city that is the same size as New York City, I always thought I had known everything I should about the urban life. But of course, I was wrong. Kevin was a great teacher, in a way that I was able to bring my own perspective about cities into class, and he would try to elaborate on that and have everyone else discuss around the topic. I was able to see from different viewpoints, from people who grew up in a rural area, or in a mid-size city. They were all interesting.
We took many trips to enhance our understanding of cities – to Spring Grove cemetery, Findlay Market, and even one of the Underground tours in Cincinnati. They were all very different from what I had known and understood about cities, but they all together helped me shape my point of view.
There were many interesting assignments during class, but my favorite was probably the assignment after we took the Underground tour in Cincinnati, discussing the idea around the concept of “ghetto tours” and how it shaped the perception of cities in modern days. After writing the assignment, I was more than ever encouraged to be a traveler instead of a tourist. I was encouraged to dig deeper and learn more things that aren’t superficial whenever I travel or encounter new things. I was encouraged to actively learn. Here in this post, I attached my assignment during the course, hoping to give you one of my thoughts about cities.
ASSIGNMENT 4 - MULTIFACETED CITIES
Humans are born with curiosity. Sometimes, the curiosity is good because it is the motivation for us to keep pushing ourselves to learn new things, to explore, to make action and contribute back to what we have learned. However, if curiosity is not put in the right place in the right way, it can kill whatever we are so once curious about. This is especially true when it comes to tourism tours.
The definition of nowadays tourism tours didn’t seem to appear until recently. When moving between cities, countries, or even continents became a lot easier and more affordable, tourism tours have blossomed to fulfill the needs of travel and, mainly, the curiosity of people from other cultures. Tourism tours have been praised by its ability to become such an important learning tool and bring to the tourists, or viewers, the best learning experiences – by seeing, hearing, and exchanging. However, normally with time and budget constraints or even because of the tourists’ interests, tourism companies only take their customers to well known attractions. Photographs with these attractions act as some kinds of medals for the trip. Tourists do not have enough time to learn about the city culture, its residents, and what makes a city. These factors make truly learning about the city difficult and all the understanding tourists gain from these types of tour are profound and shallow. Tourists, besides the fact that they have contributed so much to the economy of wherever they visit, have also left bad reputations among the locals. The cities are not understood any better. The cities just either get an icing layer of being glorious and fancy, or sometimes the other way around, nasty and faded. There are no in-between perceptions. For the short amount of time they get to spend, tourists seem to be given a privilege to leave their own judgments.
Within the last decade, there is another movement acting against tourism tours. One of the more well known ones is the website from Portugal called “We Hate Tourism Tours” (1). It was started by a group of friends who want to help people experience Portugal in different ways, providing more authentic and personal experiences that will help them better understand the city of Lisbon under different lights. The website provides services which tourists can truly experience the authentic home-made Portuguese food, the daily lifestyle surfing, the streets and neighborhoods that are also the hearts and souls of Lisbon. This might not be the pioneer for theme-oriented tours in Europe or even the United States, but it definitely speaks to the rising popularity of these types of tour based around history, breweries, murals, and neighborhoods. More than a city’s unique building or attractions, these aspects at least give tourists a better-rounded view within a short amount of time. They also reflect a new vision of cities in the 21st century, with more in-depth knowledge and wider range of interpretations. Although these are growing fast, they seem to be more appealing for tourists from within a country or for smaller cities without many world-recognition attractions.
Along with these theme-oriented tours is a type called “the ghetto tours”. Because any city can be very glorious and luxurious, it has its dark sides. The ghetto tours focuses on portraying that dark side of a city – taking tourists to poor with high crime rate neighborhoods in a city so that they can learn and experience living in a dangerous space. In some places, these are called “reality tours”. Curiosity is the foundation for innovation and action, but sometimes without enough passion and knowledge, it can be more harmful than beneficial. Like Kennedy Odede described in his New York Times article, “slum tourism turns poverty into entertainment, something that can be momentarily experienced and then escaped from.” (2) The tours indeed satisfies people’s curiosity and promotes social awareness to those poor areas as well, but in fact people “then go back to their lives and leave me, my family and my community right where we were before.” (3) The majority of tourists feel positive after the tour, most feel intrigued and interested, because they can see themselves living in a better condition and a better place. These do not only push people further from one another, but they also create than gentrification within people’s thinking. Hardly anyone, without taking the tour for the purpose of academic research or learning, ever comes back and takes action to help the community they have taken a tour about. Although they do contribute to the area’s economic growth, the residents do not appreciate it and think it is worth it. A part of their dignity is lost after every single tour that comes by.
The curiosity coming from tourists of the ghetto tours can kill a neighborhood: its perception, its dignity, and its community. These tours might have had great purposes when it first started: to create empathy from the tourists towards the neighborhood residents, and to take use of its own resources of being poor to push the economic growth. However, tourists can only feel sympathetic at their best, if not apathetic. Sometimes, desperate souls do not want to have sympathy from other people. Sometimes, it can be an insult. And sometimes, a city can be even more gentrified because sympathy is put in the wrong place in the wrong way.
Citation
(1) Wehatetourismtours.com
(2) (3) Odede, Kennedy. "Slumdog Tourism." The New York Times. The New York Times, 09 Aug. 2010. Web. 23 July 2016.