ABSTRACT
Chapter 1, “Departure Points,” begins with a brief tour of tourism studies – noting the tension between concepts of gaze and performance in that field – before examining how the construction and perception of cities is value laden (drawing insights from cultural geography and the anthropology of the senses). This chapter then situates this exploratory study of locative tourism apps within the broader locative media literature: it offers key insights regarding the potential for locative tourism to thicken the urban informational layer and engage users in co-authoring the city. Primed with this interdisciplinary framework, the chapter concludes by offering some directions for the research that follows.
