Sensing Place - A Proposal for Digital Mapping

Soon I hope, digital cartographers will add a layer on GPS maps to show ecological regions much as they do terrain now.

Updated research that came out while we were on the road found that 90% of map use now is on a smartphone or tablet with nearly 6-in-10 Americans tapping into GPS on smartphones each month and more than a quarter doing so on a tablet.

We use them even more on vacation where 89% of Americans now take a smartphone along and more than half a tablet.  GPS is used by 77% and local search by 92%, surprisingly with usage by men only slightly less than women (smile.)

Nearly half now use the devices to access visitor guides.  Americans on vacation are now 2.5 times more likely to use GPS over a paper map or printed directions.

Now that my CoPilot GPS app isn’t reliant on cell coverage, I probably won’t order GPS in my next Jeep, although it is cool to look over at any time and see the posted speed limit.

Use of built-in-vehicle GPS is now below 17% and most of those are people my age or older and in the Northeast.  Within three years, smartphones will be used by 84% of Americans while tablets will increase to 71%.

Digital maps today are layers of data using GPS.  When a user runs into inaccurate directions it is most likely because the jurisdiction isn’t updating impedance data or new routes.

Or platforms such as Navtech or Mapquest or Google update at their end only periodically.

One of the roles of destination marketing organizations is to monitor both ends of that process and spur constant updating.

Many people only think of historic buildings when they think of sense-of-place but place based assets also include distinctive culture/history and natural/environment.

I first incorporated ecoregions into my work promoting and differentiating cities in the late 1980s about the time I arrived in Durham, North Carolina to jumpstart visitor-centered economic and cultural development (DMOs often called CVBs.)

At its coarsest level, North America has 15 ecoregions.  Zoom in a level and you see 52.  At level III, the USA has 104.  Zoom into the state level and a state such as North Carolina has 29 different areas of distinct geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife and hydrology.

Durham, where I still live in retirement, has a very distinct cultural identity and different sense of place than Raleigh, a metro center further south and east with which we co-own an airport, but I didn’t realize that is also true of Fort Worth and Dallas, which are also often lumped together because they co-own an airport.

Fort Worth is in a unique part of an ecoregion called the Cross Timbers, while Dallas is in the Blackland Prairie that stretches down to San Antonio.

Cross Timbers is a “complex mosaic of upland deciduous forest (shorter but post and blackjack oaks with striking habits,) savanna, and prairie” that stretches from north of Austin up past Fort Worth and through central Oklahoma into Kansas.

It is the western most extension of the eastern oak-hickory forests covering nearly 20 million acres at one time and possibly the least disturbed.

When Texas became a state, there was a provision to divide it into five different states but it has an incredible 56 different ecoregions.  It is a much more diverse state than often depicted.

I have a general idea in advance of the routes we will take on each cross-country but Mugs and I don’t zero in on the route we will take each day until we punch it into GPS and take a fresh look at ecoregions along the way.

The day we left Fort Worth for Santa Fe, we were listening to Amarillo By Morning, one of my favorite songs by George Strait, first heard when it was recorded the year my daughter was born by one of its songwriters, Terry Stafford (whose 1964 version of Suspicion is a classic.)

Our route up through Henrietta and Wichita Falls took us up along US 287 through four beautiful ecoregions of Texas.  Amarillo, where we turned west toward the Southern Rockies of northern New Mexico is High Plains, similar to Denver, Fort Collins and Cheyenne.

Overall, we took five unexpected routes during this trip.  More on that later.

How “Fort Worth” Stole The Show Without Selling Its Soul!

Fort Worth and Durham have a lot in common and it isn’t bull.

While Durham is known as the “Bull City,” it isn’t because prize-winning bulls were indeed bred here at one time nor is it because the a research station for cattle is based in North Durham.

Durham’s legacy moniker is because “Bull Durham” tobacco originated here late in the century before last and the nickname, while it is no longer associated with that product, still fits.

It is Fort Worth that has a more direct claim to livestock in its heritage but both communities have a great deal in common.

• Durham and Fort Worth each co-anchor poly-centric regions where there is no dominant city at the center.

 

• Durham and Fort Worth each co-own major airports often confused as the name of a city and the identities of both communities are undermined by “hyphenation.”

 

• Durham and Fort Worth value being unpretentious and have proudly anchored their present with a faith in being historic, genuine and authentic while others have sold their soul to be “slick and big.”

 

• And apparently both communities understand that economic development is more important than “big game hunting.”

While Dallas pretends to host the Super Bowl and actual-host Arlington hopes to recoup a fraction of return on some of the more than $300 million in resident- and visitor-taxpayer-backed bonds it put up toward a new billion dollar stadium where the game takes place, it is Fort Worth that truly grasps that even without storms, mega-events like the Super Bowl are big “media events” at best while “super hyperbole” in terms of economic impact.

Two years ago, Fort Worth very quietly and successfully out hustled and out maneuvered others to be the host for all ESPN radio and television coverage for the weeks leading up to the event.

So for two weeks, 24/7 on broadcast, cable, FM, AM and Satellite, scores of shows and program hosts have repeated heralded Fort Worth…not Dallas, not Dallas-Fort Worth, just FORT WORTH!

While the sheer size of the event, even without disruptive weather events, has been shown to displace as much or more than it adds to the net economies of the communities or nearby communities where it is held…Fort Worth has cashed in on the true value of the Super Bowl as a media event.

Sheer repetition of the name Fort Worth along with descriptive commentary about the community by on-air talent lauding the iconic character and identity of the community will lower the barriers that organizations like Fort Worth’s official community-marketing organization will face as it tells the community’s story and harvests interest in that community’s brand for many years to come.