# Challenger Cities EP64: Tourism as a Stress Test with Maryam Siddiqi

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/challenger-cities-6959558/challenger-cities-ep64-tourism-as-a-stress-test-with-maryam-siddiqi
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/challenger-cities-6959558/challenger-cities-ep64-tourism-as-a-stress-test-with-maryam-siddiqi.md
Podcast: [Challenger Cities](https://stenobird.com/podcast/challenger-cities-6959558)
Published: 2026-02-10T14:28:06+00:00
Episode link: https://rss.com/podcasts/challengercitytoronto/2537309
Audio file: https://content.rss.com/episodes/278784/2537309/challengercitytoronto/2026_02_09_17_41_10_2fddf697-f6e6-4b70-b131-52c2519e32c9.mp3
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/challenger-cities-6959558/episodes/challenger-cities-ep64-tourism-as-a-stress-test-with-maryam-siddiqi
Duration seconds: 3608

## Resource

Tourism is big business. Cities spend vast sums attracting visitors, promoting landmarks and polishing their image. What they’re far less good at is thinking through the experience of actually being there. How a place works once you arrive. How you move around it. What makes sense, what doesn’t, and what quietly undermines the affection people might otherwise develop for a city. In this episode, Iain Montgomery is joined by Maryam Siddiqui, a Toronto-based travel and culture journalist who came to travel writing sideways rather than by design. Starting out in PR before moving into business journalism, then arts and culture, Maryam brings a critical, socially minded lens to how cities are marketed, experienced and lived in. Our conversation treats tourism not as leisure, but as a stress test for cities. We talk about over-tourism and the post-pandemic reckoning it forced into the open. About why cities are often better at selling themselves than explaining how they work. About transit systems that feel like puzzles, wayfinding that assumes insider knowledge, and why visitors notice problems locals have learned to tolerate. We dig into regenerative tourism, not as a buzzword but as a philosophy rooted in care, stewardship and Indigenous knowledge. If cities invite people in, what responsibility do they have for how those people move, behave and experience the place? And why are metrics like “heads in beds” still crowding out harder questions about emotion, memory and whether people actually want to come back? Toronto becomes a case study, from the confusion of its transit system to the disconnect between what’s officially promoted and what people actually love. Small theatres. Independent restaurants. Neighbourhood scenes that don’t lend themselves to brochures. As Marya…

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## Transcript

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