Move Over Cities, We’re Going Hyperlocal!
NCR or the National Capital Region has been expanded to include 3 more districts including Muzaffarnagar, Jind and Karnal. As trivial expansion of a capital of the second most populous country of the world may be, it brings up interesting an thought.
There were times when each time you traveled to a new city, you would end up meeting dozens of distant relatives across the city, delivering home-made dishes at one end, specially procured cloth at another and greetings from your town at yet another. Be it a vacation or a business trip, such is how evenings in new cities would be spent. Quite conveniently so.
Fast-forward a decade, you cannot imagine traveling to three different corners of a new city in one day and still maintain your sanity! Leave aside corners, you wouldn’t want to even consider moving beyond a certain distance in any direction (let’s call it your psychological barrier radius)! Moreover, this psychological barrier has become true even for your own city.
Despite or because, choose as you may, of technological progress we as a people have made, distances have become longer for physical movement (think traffic, population etc) though have been rendered redundant for communication (think email, social network etc).
Irrespectively, proximity continues to be important for a large number of our requirements and experiences. With the cities becoming more densely populated and life becoming busier, what is really close to you matters much more that what’s in your city.
From hairdo to apparel, from grocery to medicine or from party to hobby, you end up preferring what is near you.
It no more matters to you whether there is an awesome launch party happening in Bangalore, it affects you whether it is in Whitefield, Bangalore. It does not matter whether a salon has great offers in NCR, it affects you if it is in Green Park, New Delhi. It does not matter whether Baba Sehgal is performing in Mumbai, it affects you if he is performing in Andheri East, Mumbai.
And it doesn’t matter if your distance relative lives in Pune, it affects you if he stays in Aundh, Pune!
The author has stayed in and traveled to cities in different corners of India, having made journeys to different distant corners of these cities to meet distant relatives. He is right now building HereNow, a platform to help people connect with people near them. HereNow is an active community with everyone helping each other nearby by sharing local know-how to exchanging stuff to car-pooling etc; and getting help as well.
