How to explore your own city like a visitor

The tourist test

Ask what a visitor with one free afternoon would do in your town, then do exactly that, without irony.

1. Find the map board Most towns have an outdoor map on a post near the center or the station. Stand in front of it and find three things you've never visited.
2. Get above it The highest public viewpoint: a hill, a tower that's open, a parking garage's top deck, a bridge. Find your own street from up there.
3. The oldest streets Walk the oldest part of town slowly. Look for the signs of age: a worn step, a corner stone to fend off cart wheels, cobbles laid in fans, a surviving piece of town wall.
4. Go down to the water Every town has some: a river, a canal, a harbor, a lake. Walk a mile of it in one direction and see what the town looks like from its back.
5. Stand where the postcard was taken Find a postcard or an old photo of your town and go stand where the photographer stood. Something in the frame will be gone, and something will still be exactly there.

Go where you never go

A city is mostly the parts you don't use. Residents carry a surprisingly small map in their heads; a visitor has none, which is an advantage.

1. Cross the tracks Whatever divides your town, a railroad, a highway, a river, cross it on foot and walk half an hour on the other side.
2. The working side Find the part of town where things are made, stored or repaired: the industrial park, the wholesale market, the port. Walk its public streets on a weekend when it's quiet.
3. One stop farther Take the bus or train you always take, but get off one stop past your usual and walk back from there.
4. Pick a name off the map Open a map, find a street or neighborhood name you've never heard spoken, and go and stand in it.
5. Past the shops Where you usually turn back, don't. Keep going for another fifteen minutes and see what the street does after the point you know.
6. The next town over Walk to a place name you've only ever driven past. If it's too far, ride most of the way and walk the last two miles.

Learn to look at a street

Visitors notice details because everything is new. You can borrow the trick by looking for one specific thing at a time.

1. A boot scraper by a door A small iron bar set into the step or wall beside an old front door, from when the streets were mud. Hardly anyone notices them.
2. A buzzer panel with too many buttons A sign of how many people live behind one door. Count them.
3. Where the paving changes The point where the sidewalk switches from one material or pattern to another usually marks a boundary: an old parish line, an estate, a different decade.
4. An old street sign In a lettering style the town stopped using years ago, often right above a newer one.
5. A bricked-up window Sometimes a wall went up behind it, sometimes a room was divided. Look at the upper floors.
6. A courtyard through a gateway Older buildings often hide a yard behind an open arch. Look in from the public side; don't go through.
7. A hatch in the sidewalk A metal cover leading down to a cellar, from the days when coal and beer came in by that route.
8. Where two eras meet A facade where an old building and a newer one join, the brick changing mid-wall.

A half-day itinerary for your own town

Here is a Saturday morning, assembled from the above. Start at the station or the central square and find the map board. Pick one thing on it you've never visited and make that your destination, ideally across whatever divides the town. Walk there through the oldest streets, looking for one detail from the list above per block; don't hurry. At the destination, find the nearest water or the nearest high point, whichever is closer, and spend ten minutes there. Then walk back a different way, through a neighborhood whose name you've never said aloud, and finish with a coffee somewhere you've never sat.

Four to five miles, three hours, and you'll have been to at least two places in your own city for the first time. Do it once a month in a different direction and in a year you'll know the place better than most people who've lived there all their lives.

Keep a map of where you've actually been

The thing that makes this stick is a record, and the best kind is a map that shows you not where you went but where you still haven't. That's what RLQuest's explorer map does: the city is divided into hexagon tiles about 350 meters across, and tiles fill in as you walk them. After a few months the blank ones are the honest picture of your own town, and the morning quests nudge you toward them: uncover five new tiles, find four on the side of town you rarely visit, reach three on streets you've never walked. Other quests lead to real places, towers, old gates, viewpoints, ruins, drawn from OpenStreetMap; be the first in RLQuest to complete one there and it's logged as your first find. The app checks the recorded route and the tiles, and it stores which tiles you uncovered, not where you were.

It's free to download for iPhone and Android, with a Premium subscription that adds more quests per day. The itinerary above needs only shoes.