Peter Kageyama - For the Love of Cities: The Love Affair Between People and Their Places

Published by Creative Cities Productions

Copyright 2011 Peter Kageyama
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher: Creative Cities Productions, 337 4th Ave. South, St. Petersburg, FL 33701

ISBN: 0615430430
ISBN-13: 9780615430430
E-Book ISBN: 978-1-61397-245-8
Library of Congress Control Number: 2010942754

Contents

Writing seems like a solitary task but this book has proven to be an effort that has been touched by many people over a long period of time. Some of them were helping me to write this long before I ever knew I was going to write a book!

Thank you to:

Michelle Royal, Charles Landry, Larry Quick, Giorgio Di Cicco, Richard Florida, Rana Florida, John Howkins, Michelle Bauer, Bob Devin Jones, Phil Cooley, Claire Nelson, Rodgers Frantz, Chris Miller, Eric Cedo, Grace Wilson, Kim Huston, Paul Schutt, Brian Boyle, Ashley Aidenbaum, Karen Gagnon, Gary Heidel, Jodi Willobee, Kate Daughdrill, Vanessa Miller, Trevor Douglas, Robert Fogarty, Shawn Micallef, Craig Christie, Tom Wujec, Rebecca Ryan, Phil Holoubek, Marnie Holoubek, Nathan Cryder, Jay McChord, Anthony Downtown Brown Wright, Scott Clark, Barbara Hubbard, Jeff Vines, Randy Vines, Kwende Kefentse, Russ Crumley, Hallie Bram, Sarah Szurpicki, Carol Coletta, Tim Jones, Anamaria Wills, Keith Evans & the CIDA team, Carla Fonseca, Bill Strickland, Deanne Roberts, Tom Butler, Seamus McAleavey, Mike Lydon, Cherylyn Tompkins, Kim Finn, Tom Brown, Herb Snitzer, Diana Lind, Jennifer Thomas, Dan Gilmartin, Arnold Weinfeld, Sean Mann, Lou Musante, Tony Collins, Laura Williams, Chris Steinocher, Nancy Loehr, Debra Hensley, Kirsha Kaechele, Teresa Greenlees, Julia Gorzka, Jason Busto, Christine Harris, Tony Michaelides, Nathan Schwagler for additional research, Brad Askew for the book design, my fabulous editor Megan Voeller, Ken Walker, my sister Amy and my Mom Molly.

Special thanks to some folks who are no longer here with us but live on in the lessons they taught and the gifts they gave me: My father Paul Kageyama, my grandmother Gladys Hazen and my brother in spirit David Honeycutt. Each of them shaped me in profound ways and I carry their spirits with me every day.

The heart is a bloom.
Shoots up through the stony ground.
- U2, Beautiful Day

Overturning a previously accepted paradigm does not come about simply from gathering new facts that call the paradigm into question. Mere logic does not suffice to change peoples minds. Against logic scientists often cling to old models until their grasps are finally loosened by something other than logic, something far deeper and more difficult to articulate that we call by various names: emotion, the irrational, the metaphysical. Or faith.

- Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions 1962

Love is the ultimate act of faith.
- Peter Kageyama - 2010

C ollectively we have been having conversations about how to make cities more livable for many years now. In pursuit of livability, we routinely invoke the importance of a better built environment, more cultural amenities, increased economic opportunity, and preservation of the natural ecosystem. Livable is goodits a fine aspiration that we have yet to achieve on any large scale. But I think we can do better.

Instead of merely livable, I think we need to start thinking about how we make our cities more lovable. I dont mean this in a kum bay yah kind of way, nor am I suggesting its as simple as lets all just get along. Rather, Im advocating for the importance of deepening the relationships that we have with our cities and that our cities have with us. When we love something, we cherish it; we protect it; we do extraordinary things for it. When we are loved, we flourish as people and are enabled to achieve great things. This mutual love affair between people and their place is one of the most powerful influences in our lives, yet we rarely think of it in terms of a relationship. I believe that needs to change.

If cities begin thinking of themselves as engaged in a relationship with their citizens, and if we as citizens begin to consider our emotional connections with our places, we open up new possibilities in community, social and economic development by including the most powerful of motivatorsthe human heartin our toolkit of city-making. This book is an effort to wrap my head around what it means to have a relationship with a place, why it matters, how such a relationship grows, how it can die, and how to better understand it. It is about understanding those rare individuals who are in love with a place and how they shape those places by the expression of that love.

What follows here is about renewing our love affair with our places and the incredible things that can happen when more of us fall in love with our cities. I have seen what happens when people find that emotional connection to their city and the impact on their place and on them is amazing. It is my hope that the stories and examples here inspire you to a better understanding of the relationship you have with your place. It is my hope that the official leadership of cities add love to their vocabulary and their repertoire of development tools and we bring the creativity, innovation and good will of our citizenry into a joint process of city building.

Chapter One
Why Lovable Cities Matter

I did not become interested in or even aware, really, of cities until my mid-thirties. I was too busy running a small web development firm with my best friend. It was the mid 90s, and everything was moving very fast in the tech sphere. We grew from our apartment to an office space in Tampa with 16 people working for us. During that time, I paid almost no attention to local politics, to local issues, to development or to anything much beyond the immediate sphere that was my business environment. My interest in community was limited to my local taxes, the quality of my school district and whether my neighbors were keeping up their lawn. I consumed my city like it was an all-you-can-eat buffet where I could pick and choose what I liked and leave the rest. In other words, I was a pretty typical community resident.

Did I love my community? When I was asked on a plane where I lived, I would say St. Petersburg or Tampa Bay, Florida. When people heard I was from Florida, they would typically say, Oh, we love Florida. Me, too, I would reply reflexively. I really did not think much about why I loved my community, and I am not sure I even really did. Like most people, I took my relationship with my community for granted, and it went unexamined.

That changed in 2003 when I first met Richard Florida, author Rise of the Creative Class and current head of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the University of Toronto and heard him speak about creativity and our cities. Whether you agree or disagree with him, whether you love or hate him, you cannot deny that Florida is the most recognized North American voice on this topic and has been an incredible fire-starter for getting people to think about cities. That may be his most enduring legacytaking the ideas of city-building out of the hands of architects, planners and politicians, and empowering and emboldening dilettantes like me to start getting involved in their cities.

Over the next couple of years, I got to know many other thinkers and practitioners who helped shape my burgeoning thinking on cities and communities. Larry Quick from Australia and the U.K.s Charles Landry, author of The Creative City , were of tremendous help. But it wasnt until late in 2005 that I finally heard something that would forever change the way I think, talk about and even experience cities.