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TEDx Tampa Bay Presentation

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It was my honor to be part of TEDx Tampa Bay for the second year in a row.  As part of the team that produces the event, I have been able to work with people who are passionate about the community and the spirit of ideas and engagement represented by TED.  This year I was also privileged to be one of the speakers at the event.

I have spoken around the world but I will say that TEDx was one the most pressure packed presentations I have ever given.  The tight format is part of it but mostly it is the pressure of knowing you are part of the global TED community.  The global audience for these talks is an amazing array of people who are also doing extraordinary things.  This is a group that you want to impress and I hope the ideas contained in it are worthy to be part of that global conversation!

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Building Emotionally Connected Cities – Guest Post for Infrastructurist.com

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Last month I had the pleasure to meet Melissa Lafsky, the editor of Infrastructurist.com. We were both invited to participate at the annual Forum on Land and the Built Environment at Harvard University. She asked me if I would be interested in writing something for them and I leapt at the chance.

Read the column here.

Infrastructurist.com is a must read for city champions everywhere. The breadth of what they cover is as broad as the definition of nfrastructure itself. Check it out!

St. Louis Group Hug!

My friends Jeff & Randy Vines, the owners of STL Style House in St. Louis whom I profile in the book, have come up with a brilliant idea to spread the love for their city.  They have created a project call the St. Louis Group Hug.  Over the next few weeks they are encouraging local citizens to“scour the city for your favorite people, places, and objects—ones that define our city and/or help to explain why you love St. Louis—and HUG these subjects for the camera. Get a friend to snap a photograph of you with your arms wrapped around your favorite St. Louis building, business, monument, person, etc.”

On June 2nd they are hosting a party at their store for a viewing party of the photo submissions.  They will gather other lovers of the city and who knows what other ideas, projects and actions may result.   I am sure beer will also be involved.

These guys are total lovers of their city – in what they do both personally and professionally.  Their enthusiasm for the city is infectious and I can’t wait to see the results of this event.  Small things like this that engage people, invite them to contribute and make them smile create an enormous amount of emotional capital for places.

Check them out here.

Akron – A Lovable City

I was interviewed by my hometown newspaper, the Akron Beacon Journal, about the book and of course whether I thought Akron was a lovable city.  Of course I am biased but I do believe that Akron (and other mid-sized Rust Belt cities like it) have a particular charm that makes them endearing.  At their heart, they are hard working, middle class cities that exemplify our concepts of working hard, building things and seeing the results of our efforts.

Cities like Akron feel fair in the sense that they give most (if not all) of us a chance to make something.  As much as we love superstar cities like New York or San Francisco, they often don’t feel very fair because of their high costs and perceived barriers to entry.

For the article, they photographed me in front of Luigi’s in downtown Akron. Luigi’s is a long-standing institution in Akron (since 1949 in the same family). I love their pizza! The restaurant is not the newest, most fashionable or trendiest, but there is something endearing about it that keeps people lined up out the door on weekends. Every city has a Luigi’s and every city can build on those elements that people respond to – history, tradition, community and fun.

Check out the full story here.

The Ripple Effect in Wayne, Michigan

After I spoke at the Rust Belt to Artist Belt conference in Detroit, a group from Wayne, Michigan decided to start a blog called “For the Love of Wayne.”  The blog “lets local people share their personal stories about why they love Wayne.”

They write:  This blog is a project of the Wayne Ripple Effect, a group of volunteer citizens dedicated to revitalization for the City of Wayne and was inspired by the book “For the Love of Cities” by Peter Kageyama.

I love it when ideas turn into action and they allowed me to do a guest post for the blog.  Congratulations Wayne, Michigan and keep up  the love!

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Interview from Detroit – April 7, 2011

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While in Detroit to speak at the Rust Belt to Artist Belt conference, the Detroit Regional News Hub interviewed me.  The News Hub is a not for profit, grass roots news agency that is helping to bring the unheard stories about Detroit to the forefront.  I sat down with Jeremiah Staes and we discussed Detroit, talent and how 719 people could change the city!

“The Next City”

I have been invited to participate in the Journalists Forum on Land and the Built Environment: The Next City taking place on April 15-16th, 2011 in Cambridge, MA.  The forum is sponsored by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University, the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy  and the Harvard University Graduate School of Design.  The forum brings together about 30 writers and journalists from around the country to hear from leading urban experts and discuss current issues around cities.

Speakers include Edward Glaeser, Harvard University professor of economics and author of Triumph of the City and New York Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff.  I am honored to be invited and am looking forward to connecting with these amazing urban thinkers.

Crime & the Lovable City

Last month I presented to the American Planning Association via their national webinar series. I got to speak about lovable cities to several hundred planners from all over the United States. It was a real honor.

During the Q&A session that followed I was asked about the impact of crime on the relationship that we have with our city. I noted that crime, despite our best efforts, an inevitable part of the makeup of cities. I also noted that some places, like Detroit, wear their crime badge with a sense of pride and toughness. My friend Eric Cedo of Detroit says that real Detroiters get robbed and it is part of the deal.

But I have been thinking about crime and our relationship with our cities ever since.

In the book I noted:

Cites exist in a state of constant flux influenced by the accumulation of positive acts and deficit acts. When a homeowner fixes a broken step, or a pedestrian places trash in a recycling bin—positive act. When someone breaks a window or throws a cigarette butt onto the sidewalk—deficit act. When the tide of deficit acts grows, we see the larger manifestation of those tiny acts in the decline of streets and neighborhoods; the edges begin to fray, and the slow slide towards shabbiness and decay begins. Unchecked, negative acts accumulate and add up to blighted areas that may never bounce back. When positive acts accumulate, the opposite occurs: areas thrive and blossom like well-tended gardens and nurtured children.

And there is clearly a difference in the degree and nature of some acts:

All joys and all negatives are not created equal. Clearly there are degrees of acts (being mugged, for instance, is a far more negative experience than seeing rubbish on the sidewalk), but generally the old adage of one joy dispelling a thousand worries has merit in experiences with cities.

Upon reflection I don’t want people to think that I am understating the impact of certain crimes on our relationship with our cities. Crime is a violation – of our person, of our property. And when it occurs our community gets some of the blame for it. Crime is a failure of our civilization and thus our cities. So when someone is mugged, the result may be more than a lost wallet – it becomes a loss of trust between citizen and city. In relationship terms it is that breach of trust that comes when someone we trust hurts us.

The solution is not just more police and surveillance cameras. The solution is in perpetually filling the “love bank” with deposits big and small. By filling that account we can weather the rainy day that is a crime and still have enough love for our city so that we don’t up and leave.

The Social Animal and Cities

New York Times columnist David Brooks notes in his new book, The Social Animal, that human beings can take in about 12 million pieces of information a minute yet we can only be conscious of about 40.  Thus he notes that so much of what we are reacting to is happening on a sub-conscious and emotional level.

Think about how we experience cities every day if  only .0000033% of the experience is happening on a conscious level.  Even if the conscious stuff is the more privileged in our experience, there is a dimension, a non-rational, emotional dimension, that is hugely important as well.  Perhaps it is the timing of Brooks’ book and mine, but I am seeing more evidence that there is an emerging consciousness about the importance of emotional connections in everything from cities to politics to health and wellness.  And that, I believe, is a very good thing.

Check out Brooks at TED:

Rust Belt to Artist Belt III

Peter Kageyama, author of For the Love of Cities,  will be a keynote at Rust Belt to Artist Belt III in Detroit, Michigan on April 6th, 2011. The conference, now in its third year, centers on cultivating talent and innovation to transform post-industrial cities. It explores the ways these cities are being shaped and reinvented by the diverse skill sets of artists, esigners and other creative entrepreneurs.

T-Shirts: Holding Hands With Your City

In 2010  I was researching the book on what makes kinds of markers indicate love or an emotional connection with our cities.  I came upon STL Style out of St. Louis and several other similar companies who were making local themed t-shirts aimed at their local citizens.  These I thought were fantastic examples of a “public display of affection” for you city.  When you wear an STL Style or Rubber City Clothing (Akron) shirt you are proclaiming your affection for your city. ( Also check out Fleurty Girl from New Orleans and Detroit Lives.)

New t-shirts now available at STL Style

About a month later I was attending the Great Lakes Urban Exchange (GLUE) conference in Cleveland.  As I looked through the list of attendees and their affiliations I noticed Jeff and Randy Vines from STL Style.  These were the guys I had written about and here we were, far from our respective homes, coming together because of our passion for cities!  Of course I introduced myself and we immediately connected.

So when I started thinking about doing a t-shirt that would coincide with my book, Jeff and Randy were the obvious connection.  This shirt, which we designed together, embodies the idea of love of cities.  When we connect with our city on an emotional level, amazing things can happen.  We see when children, plants, pets or even objects are loved, they thrive.  We need to nurture our relationship with our cities and find again that which we love about them.

Leadership as a Love Note

Here is a wonderful example of unconventional and exceptional leadership by Mayor Tom Brown of McPherson, Kansas. (I write about McPherson and Mayor Brown in the book.)

In January 2010, the city was gifted the local golf course. Many thought it a mixed blessing as the golf course had never been profitable. But it was an opportunity for the city and Mayor Brown challenged the staff by saying that if the golf course turned a profit, he would jump in the lake on the first hole. For the first time ever, the golf course turned a profit in 2010 and as you can see here, the Mayor is a man of his word!

This gesture not only created news all over the city and region, it was a simple little “love note” to the community. This small gesture has had an outsized impact on McPherson and is something that people will remember and smile about for a long time.

CITY Love T-shirts Now Available

In partnership with the amazing guys at STL-Style in St. Louis, I am very happy to announce a special t-shirt design to commemorate the book launch.   I write about how retailers such as STL-Style are creating t-shirts that are aimed at locals who want to express their pride in the communities.  Wearing these shirts is essentially a public display of affection for your city.  So we hoped to come up with a design that could speak to those of us who love cities.

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A Love Letter to Syracuse

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In For the Love of Cities, I write about the Philadelphia Love Letter project by artist Steve Powers and the Philly Mural Arts program.  With the success of that project, other cities have been asking Powers to work with them.  Here is his latest work in Syracuse.  Note in the video how he uses a community engagement process to really understand what people love about their city.  And the result is wonderful!

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Can Robocop Save Detroit? YES!

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It started on Feburary 7th when a guy from Massachusetts tweeted to Detroit mayor Dave Bing that Robocop would make a great statue for the city, kind of like the Rocky statue in Philadelphia.  Mayor Bing politely tweeted in response “There are not any plans to erect a statue of Robocop.  Thank you for the suggestion.”  Too late, a meme was born.

The idea spread like wildfire and soon a  Facebook group was created by Detroiter John Leonard.  The idea sparked Imagination Station founder Jerry Paffendorf to launch a KickStarter project to raise the money to actually build the state.  They set the goal of $50,000 by March 26th to fund the project.    A website was launched – detroitneedsrobocop.com and on February 16th the New York Times featured the story.  As of today (February 19th), just 12 days since that fateful tweet, over $59,000 has been raised on Kickstarter by2187 people.  Several sites for the statue have been offered and the project has galvanized supporters of Detroit from all over the world.

I wrote about Jerry Paffendorf in For the Love of Cities regarding his Loveland Project.  Paffendorf had previously purchased 3000 square feet of land in the city and had begun to sell it off to people an inch at a time.   The “inchvestors” were symbolically buying into the idea of Detroit and taking a piece (a very small piece) of ownership of the city.  But his idea resonated with hundreds of inchvestors who bought their stake and “moved into” these virtual neighborhoods at the website.  The funds raised by Loveland are being used to support other community projects, including the Imagination Station,  a clean-up project that is turning two abandoned homes in the shadow of Detroit’s Central Station into public art space.

Some have suggested that this is a colossal waste of time and resources.  One article called it “irony run amok” and some a concerned that a Robocop statue will dilute and devalue the public art that is already in the city.  Paffendorf told the New York Times “Sometimes it takes a RoboCop to show a different way to do things.  My hope is that it sets an example and puts this kind of funding on the map, so when people see big problems, they can think, ‘If crazy people raised $50,000 for a RoboCop statue, we can certainly raise more to take on something bigger.’ ”

Is one statue going to save the Motor City?  No, of course not.  But what this project represents – grassroots, Internet fueled efforts by people who love the city – THAT can save the city.  Take this one small success, where they get people to invest a little bit of their money and time in the city.  They network with each other and realize they are not alone.  In fact there are many more of them out there than perhaps they ever thought (over 2100 supporters on Kickstarter and 7400 fans on Facebook).  This success gives them confidence to try again and perhaps do something bigger (or more serious) next time.  Repeat this ten times, a hundred times, a thousand times and that is real change.  So to those that think this is a silly distraction from the city’s real problems, I say it is exactly the type of silly distraction Detroit and many other cities need.