A neighborhood can be new to the writer without being a secret waiting for visitors to reveal it. People already live and work there. I would rather read who benefits from the new attention, what is changing, and how residents feel about it.
A neighborhood can be new to the writer without being a secret waiting for visitors to reveal it. People already live and work there. I would rather read who benefits from the new attention, what is changing, and how residents feel about it.
4 comments
Yes, especially when “discovery” sends a wave of visitors to a place with limited water, transit, or waste collection. The infrastructure belongs in the story.
I agree with the principle, but I am not sure one overused word deserves this much suspicion. A small restaurant can be both locally known and a discovery for the reader.
That is probably right for one restaurant. It grates more when a whole neighborhood is described as if nobody noticed it before a magazine did.
Travel stories could replace “undiscovered” with something more useful: how easily a place can be reached without a car, whether its public spaces still serve everyday local life, and what the transit system can realistically absorb.