Hi,

Personally I like my stories to be very people oriented to a point where the location appears in little details that readers (or attendants of any kind) will learn by consequence of the story itself. Here's my example (sorry if the writing seems strange, I usually write fiction in Portuguese). The location is Lisbon, Portugal.

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João

"Monday again..." whispered João while trying to find a seat in an 8:30 AM metro carriage traveling towards Lisbon center. He was not being very successful. He rarely was on rush-hour. "The story of my life" he figured. Recently finished his engineering degree and already had a job. Parents were proud and friends congratulated him on his achievements. And João, well... João was not that certain about his accomplishments. He didn't really like the job and boss kept telling him things were hard ever since the economic crisis started. Considering that was more than half a decade ago, João just figured it was a diplomatic way of telling him to make even more unpaid extra hours. Another sad characteristic of his largely uneventful life. "It's a career jump start, things will get better eventually." - as his father constantly tells him. He was remembering this piece of useful ancestral knowledge when someone bumped him from behind...

Mariana

Mariana was already late for the morning class. "That painting is not going to finish itself Mariana!" - Professor Ana would tell her once she arrived. Unlike most people thought a course in the Fine Arts University isn't all bliss. But Mariana wasn't one to run away from challenges. She put on her headphones and turned on the player for the latest single from the punk anarchist band "Miseráveis". The metro doors were about to close when she jumped inside. "A lot of zombies today" she acknowledge while looking inside the carriage. They were easy to spot. Usually had nice suits with colorful ties with white smiles worthy of tooth paste commercial. 9:00 to 17:00 routine employment can do strange stuff to people and Mariana was determined to make her own fate. She just had to keep moving, not forget who she was, and above all, keep her distance from the zombies. She was doing just that when stumbled upon something. The following second was enough to understand that she just stumbled on a duffel bag from a tourist on her left and was inevitably falling over a guy. But not just any guy. This guy is wearing a suit..., and a tie..., she couldn't see but figured he must also have the blinding white teeth. "Shit. A zombie!"- Nothing she could do now - "Ups!"

Tom

"Hey lady, are you all right?" - said Tom when the hippie girl rammed on his duffel bag and fall over a guy. She didn't really answer. Both her and the guy were too busy looking at each other and saying..., hmm..., absolutely nothing. Just this long philosophical stare like each had found their own antithesis. Strange folk these Portuguese. They seem to be having a... thing. Like fire and water finding out they actually like each other. Maybe it was just that romantic streak in Tom. He always seemed to find love everywhere after smoking a joint. The weed Miguel gave him yesterday was pretty good and now he's heading to the nearest surf beach for some awesome waves. Yep, that can leave a guy in a pretty good mood. "Saldanha" said the female robotic voice from the metro. Just the place he needed to get out and so he did. Curiosity made him look back one last time before the train left. Hippie girl and suit guy were still looking at each other even when her phone started ringing. Strange folk these Portuguese.

Andreia

"HI SUCKER! THIS IS MY VOICE MAIL - BAM BADAMM BAM BAM - LEAVE YOUR MESSAGE AFTER THE BLEEP. ... BLEEP! ... JUST JOKING. I MEANT THIS" Bleep! - Bummer! Mariana isn't answering the call. Probably still sleeping. Her little sister wasn't exactly known for waking early but still..., it's school day! She would talk to her latter anyway. Right now Andreia needed to bring Tiago and Sofia to school and than get to court. Her client had been accused of laundering money and things weren't looking good for him. Andreia didn't knew exactly why she wanted to speak to her sister. There was always some jolly honesty in her rude remarks - "Hi Sis! Still defending King Zombie?" - She wouldn't tell her but she secretly liked that feature in Mariana. It made her think about things. "Justice is blind" they say, but it always seems to be more loose when the defendant can pay better attorneys and more and more appeals. A couple of years ago Andreia joined a debate group about the reform of justice and, with a lot of work, they've managed to build up a proposal to submit to the Assembly of the Republic, i.e. "The Zombie Fest". "Mommy! Sofia is pinching me!" - Yep, it's Monday morning. "Sofia stop pinching your brother." From the rear mirror Andreia could see her grin - "I'm just playing with him." - "I don't like that. Mommy tell her to stop." - Yep, it's Monday morning indeed.

This is not mobile focused but an interesting and interactive way to use multiple voices to tell a story about a place: http://hollowdocumentary.com/ ...

I also like these:

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/pages/interactives/harvest-of-change/

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/08/26/us/ten-years-after-katrina.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=photo-spot-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=1

and 

http://www.fortmcmoney.com/#/fortmcmoney

They all take the idea of many stories making up the bigger story and giving the audience agency to explore those in a (mostly) nonlinear way.

I am from Edinburgh in Scotland.  If you stroll around the city you will see many statues and plaques that commemorate military men, wars and battles.  You will also find a lot of statues of royalty, famous writers and even a famous dog (Greyfriars Bobby).  These artifacts inscribe the stories of the few rather than the many onto city space, and privilege a top-down perspective on the city's history.  I'd like to hear the vast range of varied stories that belong to the everyday folk of the city, and see them also inscribed onto the city landscape.  The GPS-equipped mobile digital interface makes this a practical possibility.  

Mobile apps are available that allow people to record their stories and tag them to a geographic location, so that they can be discovered and accessed via that location.  Take, for example, an area of the city of Edinburgh called Newhaven.  The fishwives who used to live there in the early- to mid-20th century were a feisty bunch.  There is a story about how when they heard that some locals were planning on attacking an Italian immigrant community in the city, and burn down their shops, the Newhaven fishwives went to the Italians' defense.  The would-be attackers were too scared of the fishwives to carry out their plan, turned tail and fled.  This part of the city has undergone a lot of regeneration in recent years, with lots of young, upwardly mobile types of people having moved in.  It's old character has completely gone.  The unique accent and dialect that the fishwives spoke in has faded from parlance.    It would be amazing if some of the old fishwives' stories, told in their unique patois, could be dug out of oral history archives and be made discoverable to the masses via a mobile app.  An app like Streetmuseum could make it possible to overlay pictures of the old Newhaven onto the modern environment.  This would preserve the character of this part of the city at the virtual level, and "reterritorialize" Newhaven with the voices of the fishwives forever.  It would make it possible for the ordinary folk of the city to know and experience their history in an engaging and meaningful way.  

It is an interesting question, and it reminded me of my participating in a contest of recording city sound. 

The contest was held by British Council in Shanghai, and asked the us to recording the sounds of the city Shanghai which we think best represents the city.

Some people record the hourly rings of the bell tower at the Bund, where used to be the colonial area inside the city and is seen as a symbol of Shanghai. 

The sound I recorded is the sounds of the ferry that goes across the river that runs through the city and divides the city into two parts. The eastern part known as Pudong of the city is newly developed since 1995, and the western part known as Puxi is the old and prosperous area in the past.

Before 2008, when Beijing would be hosting the Summer Olympic Games, the city radio station published a special record titled "Listen, 2008 Seconds of the Sound of Beijing"(You can listen to it here: http://5sing.kugou.com/yc/1919537.html), which is a huge project in documenting various sounds in Beijing, some from nature and some from people.

In conclusion, the polyphonic recording of city's sound is one kind of cultural project that aims to preserve the culture of a city besides visual means, and is amusing and compelling to audience.

Hi Kapiolani, 

There are a couple ways to do this. Now I have necessarily done either of these with a spacific local. But I have done this sort of research with my own family and in a local non profit organization, trying to get at the multiple and sometimes conflicting meanings we use to co-construct these entities.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/254191429_Narrative_as_an_organizing_process_Identity_and_story_in_a_new_nonprofit

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233296520_Losing_Things_Was_Nothing_New_A_Family%27s_Stories_of_Foreclosure

Article Narrative as an organizing process: Identity and story in a ...

Article “Losing Things Was Nothing New”: A Family's Stories of Foreclosure