The Consumer Need for Good City Maps

Our world is changing at a colossal rate, as our cities rise, our people are also enjoying unlimited travel experiences, while the disappearance of a job-for-life also means we are becoming more transient in where we live within our own country, or even within the world.

We now see a global phenomenon where we have a large number of cities full of people who don’t know their city well. These include businessman, tourists and residents. And this lack of knowledge represents one incredibly large economic inefficiency and substantial weight of unhappiness, loneliness, worry and anxiety. What is running through the minds of most people moving about in London? Where is my next stop? Where do I exit? Where am I? These feelings are not exactly conducive to a good tourist economy, business context, and certainly psychologically traumatic for anyone with long-term exposure to it, like the residents of the city itself.

And this is why to so many living within these contexts a good city map becomes the most treasured item. A map is someone’s compass. And in the confusing world of a city, a compass provides spiritual as well as practical comfort to the user.

So why leave such an important item in the domain of the transport authority, the tourist board or the free sponsored map. Surely such a prized article can be placed amongst the ranks of the commercially viable consumer product? We know people buy A to Z’s and Lonely Planets guides, so why not a really good city map? And furthermore, why is the universal reality for visitors to any city in the world, that using the bus system is a mystery to be solved through considered adventure!

In a highly competitive environment, can any city really be complacent about the amount of time it takes for any visitor or new resident to become familiar with navigating their city with pleasure? Furthermore, what is the commonality with all these people operating in cities? It the pedestrian nature of their needs. A city cannot operate efficiently if dominated by car-use, as is woefully proven by some of the fast growing cities in the world who have not invested sufficiently in mass-transit systems.

For this reason, cities need to develop, as London has done, an effective signage and mapping strategy for the cities users. But on top of this, we believe that each city deserves a quality city map production, that visitors can purchase prior or at the beginning of their visit, that will make them happier well-informed visitors, that takes advantage of a person’s natural curiousness and capacity to study a transport system to achieve their aims. We need products that essentially speed up the learning process that all humans have a capacity to achieve – a knowledge of the city they wish to use.

While technology enables forms of mapping in elegant electronic media, we strongly believe that you can’t compete with a quality narrative of something you can hold and leaf through in your hand. Despite the introduction of better technologies, we have not seen the allure and value of paper diminish. That is why we believe in the power of a paper-based, pocket-sized city map for achieving our aims of making people in cities happier.

We can however, harness the power of the internet to change the means of distribution for such products. Now, people who need the map can order the map online – negating the need for large production runs and distribution channels to reach those willing to pay for the product they need. By applying an economic value to our paper product, we remove the risk of wasted effort and wasted paper, and in doing so guarantee to make people happier in the most sustainable way. There is also the opportunity for customised, rather than mass-market products. Through further research, we might find a suite of different city maps for each city, which suit different customer mind-sets. Again the internet sales channel allows us to reach audiences in this niche way.

In conclusion, we believe that there is a spiritual need for city maps, that will enable cities to perform better and people to be happier – and that the greatest opportunity to achieve this in a sustainable way, is to harness the power of online sales to reach niche markets and deliver custom map products.

In this way we see ourselves to mirroring the global trend of the death of the mass-market broadcast against the rebirth of customer-oriented content and product, and with this the hope that market economics can now be directed to achieving good, not greed.