Civic Tourism in Northeast Minneapolis

(UPDATE 8/29: The walking tours are available for download here: http://www.newalkingtours.com/)

I'm excited to attend the launch party this weekend for the new neighborhood walking tours of Northeast Minneapolis. I wrote about the project here. The folks at ArtShare pulled together a diverse group of volunteers to comb the community for stories and present them to neighbors and visitors alike via walking tours.

It seems the artists who conceived this project already understood something that the tourism industry has only recently started mulling over. It's called Civic Tourism.

I stumbled across this description today for an upcoming conference in Colorado:

"Civic Tourism’s mission is to 'reframe' tourism's purpose from an economic goal to a tool that can help the public enhance what they love about their place. It provides a forum for citizens to decide if, how, and for what purpose the ingredients of place (cultural, built, natural) can be integrated to create a dynamic, distinctive, and prosperous community. Ideally, Civic Tourism involves all stakeholders to build strong partnerships..." (emphesis added)

In other words, place matters because it is what every member of a community has in common. Communities that embrace place will have stronger internal ties (call it "culture") while appealing to visitors seeking an authentic experience.

But isn't that obvious?

I think the hyper-development of places like Wisconsin Dells, Branson, Missouri or Pigeon Forge, Tennessee indicates otherwise. Places once visited for their unique natural features now sprout indoor water parks and T-shirt shops. These attractions are economically successful, but they do not enhance the place around them (indeed, usually quite the opposite).

The Civic Tourism conference organizers seem to be proposing a different way to measure the benefit a communiy receives from the appeal of its place.

(As a journalist, I can't help but compare this notion to civic journalism -- the movement to treat readers and the community as participants in journalism rather than just consumers or advertisers. I also wonder if its fate will be the same...a good idea that is nearly impossible to implement in the context of a successful business model.)

Northeast Minneapolis is an up-and-coming neighborhood that isn't drawing tourists yet, but it is getting visitors from the rest of the city. So let's see what happens when the community is proactive about embracing place. I bet business can learn quite a bit from the artists.

The ArtShare walking tour release event is Saturday 8/29 from 10 to noon. Details here.

More on civic tourism here: http://www.civictourism.org/