Discussion: finalist Cities - North American Urban O tour 2014

Please add more. I didn't add the non- US / Canada cities because I'm not sure who would put on those events?

Let's make a schedule of events. If you could organize, add a date or a city and date.

(they are already doing this in the UK - Nopesport Urban League )

1. Boston
2. Pittsburgh
3. downtown LA
4. Vancouver
5. Ottawa
6. Quebec
7. San Francisco - July 4, 2014 / Rex
8. Oakland - January 26, 2014 / Rex
9. Seattle
10. Portland, Oregon
11. Portland, Maine
12. New Orleans
13. Charleston, SC
14. Santa Fe, NM
15. San Antonio, TX

Even if your city is not as high-profile, don't let that stop you from adding it! For example, Wichita, Kansas would totally work!

How about BELOW a city!

Toronto P.A.T.H. (aka the underground) is 28km of tunnels below the downtown office towers (largest underground shopping complex in the World!)

http://urbantoronto.ca/sites/default/files/imageca...

When PATH first opened (ie. their new maps) CTV had Nina Wallace (AP: Backwoods) navigate using their map system. It was terrible with tunnels on the map that didn't exist.. SInce then I've had the idea of a race down there but it would need to be high profile to make the map making worth it. Checkpoints would be based on which stores gave the most money. :-) People do get lost down there.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5IrIikzLOg

Looks awesome. Adding Toronto to the list. Updated the San Francisco, Oakland entries.

1. Boston
2. Pittsburgh
3. downtown LA - December 2014 - series finale??
4. Vancouver
5. Ottawa
6. Quebec
7. San Francisco - July 4, 2014 / Rex + a few more events surrounding
8. Oakland - January 26, 2014 / Rex + 2 sprint A events on Sat. 1/25, new maps
9. Seattle
10. Portland, Oregon
11. Portland, Maine
12. New Orleans
13. Charleston, SC
14. Santa Fe, NM
15. San Antonio, TX
16. Toronto Underground

@Backstret Boy - what are the criteria for being part of this?

(for example, would Canadian Sprint champs in Whistler count? Or would we need to expand it to be longer?)

Even if your city is not as high-profile, don't let that stop you from adding it! For example, Wichita, Kansas would totally work!

What works well about Wichita is the size of the market. For the 'Hood Hunt that I did there, I really didn't know anyone there. There's no real orienteering scene, but there are several large running communities (two running clubs have 2500 Facebook likes, and one running store has over 8000 likes). I pitched the idea to one of the running clubs, and it made their online calendar and email newsletter. I posted links to the event on the other big running Facebook page.

My only local contact suggested that I contact the local TV and newspaper. The TV station didn't bite, but the newspaper did, and that resulted in an article in the Sunday paper, which led to a radio interview elsewhere. By the time the event rolled around, we had double the largest previous 'Hood Hunt attendance (80+). All of this from basically 5 days of free marketing.

Wichita is large enough that it has sizable communities, but small enough that interesting events don't get drowned out by everything else. In Seattle, the media coverage and major running outlets cover too much ground to care about a tiny little neighborhood orienteering event. And the neighborhood news blogs don't have the reach.

I'm not volunteering to do anything with Wichita and this project, but I do have a few contacts now.

Are you looking for cities suitable for sprints, or for regular-length O events (winning times of, say, 45-90 minutes), or for longer-length (3-6 hour) events, or all of the above?

Louisville KY (OLOU) does an urban score O every summer. The downtown area is pretty rectilinear but there are lots of interesting features. The waterfront parks area breaks things up a little.

Small cities with large college campuses might also be interesting. Bloomington, IN and Athens, OH come to mind.

@AZ, you can add it! Sorry I overlooked Whistler. You might consider having more terrain than the Olympic Village.

@RLShadow, I was thinking 5k to 15k for the range of course lengths for a point to point course, but why not also have a 3/6 hr score/rogaine/scramble the next day?

@Pink Socks, if you build they will come (and so will I.) O-Festival Wichita! What a great way to start more orienteering clubs in other areas...

For example, the Oakland weekend will be:

Saturday: 2 sprint courses on 2 new 1:5000 maps, probably Lakeside Park with access to Children's Fairyland and the Garden paths, and Laney College + the surrounding parkland. Also might map and use the Morcom Rose Garden, Piedmont Park and high school campus, or Jack London Square.

Sunday: 5-15k courses - probably a 5k, 8k, 12k - on a new 1:15000 map with about four 1:5000 blowups on the reverse for detail areas, two of which will be the previous day's maps.

@mikeminium can you add contact the OLOU folks about adding Louisville to such a series?

Los Gatos Street Scramble has been on the calendar for Saturday 25 January 2014 for a while. There is a permit. It can be moved, but I would have certainly appreciated a note.

There appears to be a perfectly fine weekend of 04, 05 January on the working schedule. I was also hoping to have a number of people over for training for the first 10 days of 2014, and I'm sure they will find a 2× sanctioned Sprint plus urban-O a welcome agenda item. I can move the Street Scramble to that weekend, but it's not as good a fit for visiting training orienteers in itself as a 3-event pack of shorter formats on detailed maps.

And I absolutely love the 2× Sprint + something more endurance-based format. It's a great way to explore a city that can be produced in quality with minimum mapping/cartography effort. I would highlight New Orleans, Pittsburgh, and Portland, OR on the list above as places where I'd love to participate in an event like this. Of course, it's a question as to how many other people would also love to do the same.

Definitely tempting to go visit my friends in Oakland! if you want an idea of what we've done in the UK here's a link to last year's london routegadget
http://www.slow.routegadget.co.uk/cgi-bin/reitti.c...

longest course is about 12k running distance (I think) - for planning tend to do a mix of long legs with route choice and short sprint- like control picks.

Sprints in NOLA, Pburgh, or Portland? Sure, count me in!

If a 3-6 hour score-O type format is an option, then I'd suggest Rochester. Probably not interesting enough in detail for a sprint, but we've had a couple of pretty enjoyable score-O's in the SE portion of the city, with 3 and 5 hour time limits.

@Jayne, was at last September's London City Race, had a great time! forgot to put my route on the gadget though...