I was wondering when they would appear – latitudes and longitudes in advertisements for countryside shops, cafes and other attractions. This year they did. Will we see new patterns of localization of businesses and other attractions evolve, changing the relations between the centre and periphery of urban regions?
In Sweden, just like in many other countries, rural shops and factory outlets are a popular goal for trips by car, and sometimes even organized bus travel. The most popular one is Gekås in Ullared, which attracts 3.9 million visitors a year. Ullared is just a village with around 800 inhabitants but around 1 000 people work at Gekås. How did such a remote countryside store become so popular? How did people find their way to it?
My guess would be mouth-to-mouth information combined with traditional advertising. Today train and bus trips to Ullared – even from quite remote places like Stockholm – are arranged. And on Gekås home page you actually find the coordinates of the parking lot.
Johannesens close to Båstad publish not only their own geographical coordiantes but also those of neighbouring attractions.
But it was in a slightly more exclusive context I first found the signs of this new geographical practise, that a place anywhere on the Earth can be pinpointed just with a combination of figures and found using the GPS built in your phone. Johannesens, a clothing outlet not far from Båstad, in their summer leaflet not only published their own coordinates. As a service, they also listed the positions of nearby attractions like Nivå 125 and Café Killeröd. For those of you who do not know Sweden, Båstad is one of the most exclusive seaside resorts of the west coast, famous for tennis and related to the “tennis king”, Gustav V, and infamous for the splashy champagne parties of noveau riche teenagers. So – even if the GPS in mobiles or as a separate gadget – is becoming a frequent phenomenon, Båstad would be one of the first places to find people using GPS – as a function in their phones or as part of their “car environment”.
Conclusions: New mobile technologies now offer opportunities that changes the rules of business and other localization. Distances still matter. Visibility in an attractive urban setting is still important. But remote places, off the most important routes, now benefit from a technology that makes wayfinding easier. Actually, these portable and ever-accessible technologies may lead to significant changes in the economical geography of regions.
So, open a pub in the middle of the forest, publish the coordinates on your web site and the customers will start swarming in.
Places, phones and mobilities 