“literally every aspect of our lives feels narrativized, like a TV show with no final season”.
In the new issue of appraisal we aim to start a conversation about the core aspirations and wants that drive us, exploring themes of ambition, fulfilment, and the often-complex attempt to achieve our aspirations. The distance between the ‘walk’ and the ‘talk’, between what people and organizations communicate as their ‘aspirations’ and what they actually end up doing.
Misalignments are noticeable in the positions and propositions of both individuals and businesses, in their different perceptions, motivations, and interests as well as their agency, leading to diverging ideas of what is wanted and needed. Awareness of these contradictions could help us to reframe our perception of the current state of things—at least in our immediate environment—to help us design what we want and, most of all, understand what we need.
For example, there has been a general interest in self-improvement and living well over the last few years, with health and well-being trends dominating the discourse both on and offline. Despite this, our consumption habits, food choices, and fitness regimes don’t necessarily reflect this trend.
Interest in healthy and sustainable diets is declining. Eating well is a costly and often laborious activity, especially for those living in food deserts in both the East and the West. Despite the popularity of ‘foodie’ culture and the growing appreciation for gastronomy, lifestyle changes as well as elevated prices have driven down traffic to restaurants—particularly in the top tier. In contrast, sales of takeaway and delivery food have been steadily growing, causing a significant increase in the use of disposable materials and, therefore, posing a serious threat to declared sustainability efforts.
Conversations about sustainability are now widespread in public and corporate environments; the push towards new systems, models, and solutions supporting a green future is strong. Concurrently, there are significant contradictions: people’s aspirations do not translate into effective decisions.
Because of limited discretionary budgets, sameness, steep price increases—as result of the constant quest for better margins—and limited formal occasions (power lunches now feel slightly anachronistic to many), premium fashion is stalling. Native sustainable fashion brands are closing.
Fast fashion, on the other hand, is booming. Shein—the leader in the sector—is expected to grow by 30% in 2024. Fast fashion is consumed by all generations, and it is popular even among the ‘climate warrior’ youth. Mounds of discarded products are piling up in the Global South and, according to WEC, only a 1% will be upcycled.
Companies are struggling with the bureaucracy of sustainability, while expressing their commitment to ESG goals. Customers’ suspicions about possible greenwashing are strong.
The conundrum is difficult to reconcile. Sustainable fashion is pricey, the upcycling process requires commitment , and it is becoming increasingly clear that the only real path to a sustainable fashion industry is to produce and consume both better and less.
Similarly, entire divisions of traditional car-making are posed to be abandoned in the name of climate change, with important risks for countries’ economies. Yet, electric or hybrid car sales are generally poor. In the current market, prices are high—uber will be using Chinese electric cars—and a widespread distrust in governments’ ability to stay on course in implementing ‘current’ innovative models curbs people’s enthusiasm.
Instead, there is clear enthusiasm for AI adoption, despite concerns about how the proliferation of servers and infrastructure will impact energy consumption worldwide. Just take the decision by Google and Amazon to opt for nuclear power to sustain their servers.
Concerns about tech industry’s activities don’t stop at AI. Issues of data appropriation and privacy violations are highly scrutinized, with several governments and legal entities trying to restrict the tech giants’ allegedly predatory interference in people’s lives.
In the name of convenience, customers are releasing masses of personal data. In 2024, about 20% of global retail is expected to occur online and the global subscription economy is projected to reach 1.5 trillion US$ in 2025. Digital payments are trending, generating troves of personal information that users are often unaware of.
In July 2024, 67.1% of the global population, or 5.45 billion were internet users and, of these, 5.17 billion, or 63.7% of the world’s population, were social media users. People increasingly participate in a jungle of online ‘communities’ with people they have never met, while, at the same time, an epidemic of loneliness is breaking out ‘offline’.
Contradictions are also evident in the world of work. Companies present themselves as families, raising concerns about their employees’ work-life balance while insisting that they return to the office to preserve corporate culture and foster innovation.
In contrast, preliminary studies seem to show how hybrid positions and working from home not only increase focus and productivity but also improve mental and physical health. Employees—particularly women and disabled minorities who have been campaigning in favor of remote working for decades—display robust reluctance. The viability of WFH varies across sectors, and the solution—as with many things in life—could lie in the middle. Yet, trying to rewind the clock to a previous way of working does not look at all possible, and in the meanwhile, new opinions about corporate careers and work attitudes emerge.
The narrative is likewise complicated when it comes to the travel and hospitality industries, sectors that have cannibalized almost every other customer-facing business, without much resistance.
In the last decades, cities and countries have promoted tourism and encouraged investments in an attempt to boost their economies. After the pandemic ground travel to a halt, many cities and countries have sought to revive their tourist industries by marketing themselves as premium holiday destinations.
At the same time, newspapers and media outlets have been flooded with a narrative emphasizing a world plagued by visitors, alleging that tourism is responsible for damaging local communities and eroding heritage cultures.
The concerns and protests are legitimate. Overcrowding at top destinations around the world is a significant problem. Nevertheless, the narrative that surrounds it feels increasingly contradictory.
While it’s true that many destinations are beyond their limit, is over-tourism solely the responsibility of tourists? Of course, travelers, despite their often earnest attempts, may not always understand local etiquette and—being on vacation and relaxed—may not always act as responsible citizens. They tend to look for straightforward, sometimes ‘standard’ travel choices that may not take local specificity into account.
Similarly, residents are not happy, but this is not a straightforward picture either. Are they dissatisfied not only by the ‘unregulated invasions’, but also by the perception that tourist revenues do not trickle down to their communities? That their cities cannot cope structurally with high volumes of people? Or that the popularity of their cities doesn’t translate into a benefit to their inhabitants?
In discussing the contribution of tourism to cities’ economies (it clearly emerged as important during lockdown), it may be useful to consider the ‘back-end’ of the story. The issue of over-tourism is the result of several factors and contrasting agencies, including the reach and effectiveness of some marketing campaigns rather than others. The role of destination managers who have often indulged in proposing the same cities instead of developing alternative long-tail products that could popularize broader regions. Years of low investment have resulted in crumbling infrastructures and poor accessibility that fails to serve residents, let alone visitors.
Over-tourism may not be the tourist’s fault, but rather a shared responsibility.
Likewise, tourists are hardly solely responsible for undermining the authenticity and culture of places. That is shared too. Citizens often don’t pay attention to what is happening in their cities. The liberalization of rules regulating, in particular, city centers has resulted in more and more private entities redesigning commercial and community areas, sometimes in an elevated manner, sometimes not. This has, in some cases, contributed to the commodification of cultural characteristics—think of the thematization and rationalization plans that create homogenized landscapes, seldom truly conceived with final users in mind.
Even the latest mall developments and re-qualifications have been juggling contradictions for their survival. More malls are built using the latest sustainable practices and aim for environmental responsibility, but their baseline need to drive sales, and therefore exhort people to buy more, undermines these aims. Malls are rebranding themselves as ‘community’ spaces. Yet, probably only surviving strata malls are able to foster authentic representation of real communities and guarantee engagement (being an expression of the very diverse agency that, in turn, may be an obstacle to innovation). Privately and multi-owned malls as well as other public organizations, struggle to build multifunctional experiences that both attract the glitzy clientele and online ‘hype’ that drives footfall, while continuing to serve the communities of regular patrons who guarantee their survival.
In the age of ‘experience’, desires are fleeting, contradictory; the line between wants and needs is increasingly blurred.
Identifying the intersection between aspiration and possibility could foster an authentic conversation that meets people where they are rather than where are imagined or wanted to be, providing a clarity that could inform decision-making and align it with actionable change—beyond slogans that don’t really work.
READ MORE AT AP3. WHAT DO YOU. REALLY.REALLY.WANT.