A VIRTUAL STROLL
DOWN HISTORIC AVENUES

esd loves San Antonio. We love her heart and arts, her beauty and music, her hot climate tempered by a green canopy, the mix of military and Mexico that give her a cosmopolitan personality wrapped in an embrazo of small town friendliness and social neighborhoods.
With the Neighborhood Tours, a project for the Office of Cultural Arts, we got an opportunity to fully express our passion for San Antonio. The Neighborhood Tours are a set of three walking tours of San Antonio’s Eastside, Westside and Downtown “North River.”

step-by-step or choose your category

To create the tours, esd developed an interface that allows visitors to explore the neighborhoods from a variety of approaches. Visitors can “walk” step-by-step through the selected neighborhood, viewing cultural highlights in a geographical sequence, or they can “filter” the tour to focus on food, art attractions (sculpture, galleries, installations), notable people, landmarks or unique shops. Each tour also has a series of films, winners of a city-wide competition, that portray the unique character of the neighborhood.
Each “stop” in the tour offers:

  • a slideshow of images
  • a google map locator
  • information about the artist or proprietor
  • brief historical context

create a tour that follows the visitor

The important consideration for any website is to make its resources readily available. The beauty of interactive communications is the ability to follow the visitor’s interests, to allow the visitor to jump to the next piece of information quickly and easily. The neighborhood tours will move in a linear direction, and even download a printable guide, but they also offer a tour index that allows the user to “browse” the neighborhood’s features and jump to anything that strikes their fancy.

easy access to San Antonio’s quirky soul

San Antonio Neighborhood Tours launched in October 2009. esd met the challenge of placing unique pieces of culture in a context befitting the funky, soulful side of San Antonio. Visitors from every corner of the world and life-long residents are discovering places and people that give depth and life to our legendary city. esd enjoys showing off the San Antonio we love – a proud, sublime city full of art and history – displayed at the click of a mouse.