Pacific Standard May-June 2013 Cover

How the Internet Should Increase Geographic Mobility

internet-travel

You go where you know. Relocation is risky business. Another law of migration from Ernest George Ravenstein: "Most migrants only proceed a short distance, and toward centers of absorption." Moving far from home is the exception, not the rule. Knowledge doesn't travel very well. A successful transfer of ideas usually requires face-to-face interaction. The geography of venture capital looks a lot like the distance decay of migration: Fiber networks cross the world. Data bits move at light speed. The globe has been flattened, and national boundaries obliterated. Yet in Silicon Valley, the ... Read More

Forget the Maps: Why All the Data in the World Won’t Make You a Better Traveler

road-map-fiction

Listen to Life in the Data, Episode 3, featuring Paul Theroux: In the absence of information the only certainty in travel is suspense, with the suggestion of risk, and the possibility of danger. The usual presumption, amounting almost to a conceit of many travelers, is that they will be able to brainstorm a trip before they set out—downloading data, solving the issues of transfer and transition, places to stay, places to eat, the condition of roads, the mood of the locals, the sights, the diversions. It’s pretty to think so. Sometimes, as I have found, this amounts to pure fancy ... Read More

Lose All Your Weight, Fly for Free

plane-takeoff_fe

Samoa Air—which is sadly not an airplane made out of Girl Scout cookies and which is an airline with mini planes that appear to come pre-packaged in a box that you can order on Amazon—is beginning to charge its customers based on how much they weigh. As in, however many kilograms you bring on the plane—on your body and in your bags—you'll multiply that by whatever set per-kilogram rate the airline is charging at the time. From news.com.au: "People have always traveled on the basis of their seat but as many airline operators know airlines don't run on seats they run on weight and ... Read More

Visions of Futuristic Air Travel (And Plenty of Leg Room!) in 1946

airtravel

  Before the American airline industry had really taken off, there were many predictions about what pent-up consumer demand following WWII would mean. The September 1946 issue of Popular Science imagined what air travel might look like just five years into the future. The cover proclaimed that "Air Travel for Everybody" was just over the horizon! From Popular Science: By 1951, air transports and the airline pattern itself, both domestic and intercontinental, will confound the most extravagant predictions of the men who were nursing a few scrawny air lines to maturity in 1931. The ... Read More

Congratulations, Mr. President, and Bon Voyage!

Looking for President Obama over the next few years? You should start at the White House, of course, and then try Camp David. But if you can’t find him there, you’d be wise to look overseas. According to new research, U.S. presidents—at least in recent decades—take far more trips out of the country during their second term in office. “A liberated president tends to spend more time abroad,” according to scholars Kathryn Dunn Tenpas of the University of Pennsylvania, Emily Jane Charnock of the University of Virginia, and James McCann of Purdue University. They outline their ... Read More

Green Habits Stay Home on Vacation

School's out, and many people who diligently bike or take the bus to work have bought their plane tickets for vacation. They may not know or care that flying will dramatically increase their carbon footprint. Using a kind of "moral accounting," people who thriftily save fuel getting to work may feel they've done "their fair share" and can indulge themselves in their time off, says a Norwegian study titled, "Troublesome Leisure Travel." This is the unintended side effect of building compact cities, promoting environmental awareness and telecommuting — three of the most common policies for ... Read More

The Politics of a European Pat-Down

The level of panic this winter over the snow — of all things — that snarled European and American travel plans obscured another story about invasive pat-downs at European airports. Briefly, it goes like this: Travelers in Europe didn't have to suffer them. That should seem strange. Washington has used visa-free travel agreements to foist other security restrictions on its European allies, from electronic passports to body scanners. But so far there have been almost no American-style complaints in Europe about "enhanced pat-downs," even at major European hubs like Schiphol, Frankfurt ... Read More

A Road Less Traveled

Amid the planes, trains and automobiles of the holiday season comes a surprising finding from transportation scientists: Passenger travel, which grew rapidly in the 20th century, appears to have peaked in much of the developed world. A study of eight industrialized countries, including the United States, shows that seemingly inexorable trends — ever more people, more cars and more driving — came to a halt in the early years of the 21st century, well before the recent escalation in fuel prices. It could be a sign, researchers said, that the demand for travel and the demand for car ... Read More

Which Countries Rank Highest in Adventure?

In February, the Adventure Travel Trade Association and the International Institute of Tourism Studies at The George Washington University released their annual Adventure Tourism Development Index, a joint project that ranks countries according to their potential as adventure/nature travel destinations. The survey is not an opinion poll. It uses data produced by a variety of organizations, including United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, Transparency International and the U.S. State Department, along with the input of advisory boards to score adventure travel ... Read More

Can Tourism Be Sustainable?

Slovak Paradise National Park

It was an adventure getting to Veinte de Enero. From Lima, Peru's capital, it was a two-hour flight to Iquitos, a jungle-locked city of 600,000 people whose streets buzz with "mosquitoes," or motorcycles rigged with wagons to carry passengers. From there, it was another two hours in a taxi that had one main peril — its driver, who may not have had as great a need for the religious icons that swayed from his rearview mirror if he'd slowed down and stayed in his lane. Then the fun began. A narrow wooden boat partly covered by a thatched roof and powered by a 15 horsepower engine idled on ... Read More