Title:تجدید رابطه عشقی ما با شهرها

۲۰۱۱-۰۳-۱۰ ارائه دهنده: Peter Kageyma این وب‌کست فقط برای مشاهده در دسترس است، برای اعتبارات AICP CM قابل استفاده نیست. تمرکز این جلسه بر بررسی دلایلی است که ما شهرهایمان را دوست داریم. او تحقیقاتی را در مورد میزان علاقه یا نفرت مردم از شهرهای خاص بررسی می کند. این جلسه روش‌های نوآورانه‌ای را بررسی می‌کند که شهرها یادداشت‌های عاشقانه را اضافه کرده‌اند، لمس‌های کوچکی که مردم متوجه آن می‌شوند، تا ارتباطات قوی با شهرهایمان ایجاد کنند. Kageyama نمونه هایی را در سراسر ایالات متحده به اشتراک می گذارد که چگونه شهرها یادداشت های عاشقانه منحصر به فرد را در پروژه ها ادغام می کنند.

قسمتي از متن فيلم: Speaker for today’s event is P Peter I’m sorry excuse me Peter kageyama who is with creative cities productions peter is the co-founder and producer of the creative City summit an interdisciplinary event that brings together practitioners around the big idea of the city the next creative cities summit is going to be coming up

And you might want to look that up for more information Peter travels the world speaking about issues of local community development talent attraction and retention of creative industries peter is also one of the founders of the Sarasota international design summit presented by the Ringling College of Art and Design he’s been the show’s

Co-producer and the host and moderator since 2007 he’s the past president of creative Tampa Bay a grassroots not-for-profit organization championing the creative economy in the Tampa Bay area between 2007 and 2090 organized in lead groups of community leaders from Northern Ireland on their learning tours the United States looking at creative

Cities and an innovative community development projects in Washington DC Chicago Baltimore Austin Memphis and Tampa Bay he holds his bachelor’s degree from Ohio State University and a law degree from case western reserve university peter has a brand new book out that he’s going to be talking today

Titled for the love of cities and we’re looking forward to hearing more from Peter as we go throughout today’s session at this point I’m going to turn it over to Peter Thank You Jennifer all right perfect alright good afternoon everyone thank you for having me I’m very excited to be speaking with you

Today this is kind of a new thing for me I’ve not done too many of these webinars like this used to actually being able to make eye contact with people so if my joke run a little flat I apologize for that ahead of time I just wanted to say

Thank you very much the ohio state university for Jennifer for the the Ohio Chapter the American Planning Association for having me here today as a native of Akron Ohio and somebody who went Ohio State it’s actually always kind of fun to come back and do something related to the University so thanks for

That as you can see on my screen this is me it’s always good to put a face with a name and today we’re going to talk about this little book I’ve written alter the world Peter I’m just going to interrupt for a second and we’ve got some folks

That are asking you to speak up so they can hear you more clearly okay sorry about that i will put on my best presentation voice and enunciate to the back room as I said this book I’ve written about lovable cities I’ve been traveling around the country and around

The world talking with people who are passionately engaged with their cities I’m trying to understand what is the common thread what is it that makes people do extraordinary things for their cities and I found some great stories I’ve found some great examples here and I’ve tried to put that into this

Particular book that hopefully inspires other people to go out and do some amazing things and speaking of inspiration the genesis of this conversation actually started about six years ago when I happen to be in Toronto was working with a gentleman named Charles Landry who’s the founder of the

Creative City movement and he was speaking in Toronto and we’re in the the grand city hall there where it’s eat several hundred people and David Miller gets up and does his welcome and then he brings up this particular gentleman whose name is Giorgio de chico and at

The time Giorgio was the poet laureate of the City of Toronto and instead of speaking a poem he said he would speak poetically instead and what he talked about was something that was so fundamental and so interesting but I was struck by the fact that I had not really

Heard it before he talked about love he talked about the in this idea of what makes a city fall in love with itself and at the time he was talking about arts and culture but he intoned that this idea that we had this emotional relationship with our city that I had

Not heard before I mean of course we have that you know a dialogue about making vetter cities more creative cities and things like that but love something as fundamental to our human nature was missing and I found that very very interesting so that was I think the

Idea of the book maybe began there even before I knew there was a in the offing now why is this interesting why is this important well it kind of comes down to something that the Gallup Organization in conjunction with the knight Foundation discovered when they did this soul of the Community

Survey which is a three-year project that they did from 2008 through 2010 and I tried to determine sort of what is the state of our relationship with our cities and sadly the results were not particularly good what they found is that forty percent of us say we are unattached to our communities thirty-six

Percent of us are neutral and just twenty four percent of us are quote attached now how did we get to this particular sorry state and how perhaps our planning decisions how are the things that we do as a profession how are they may be culpable in arriving at

This particular state so let’s look at this and since we are a highly educated planning group I thought let’s go back a little bit let’s look at what seemed like good ideas at the time but obviously we know have had bad ad implications we go back to the Federal

Housing Act of nineteen forty nine cabrini-green is a good example here pruitt-igoe in st. Louis again at the time we thought this was the way to deal with poverty and affordable housing Pru diagonal was so bad they had to tear it down less than 20 years after it had

Actually been built the federal highway act in 1956 oh men like Robert Moses you who’s that act to cleave neighborhoods and to all in greater service to the car now clearly there are huge benefits to actually the the interstate highway system and I’ve denying that but there were externalities and there were

Factors that happened to our cities that we really didn’t plan on we didn’t think would would result in maybe the situation we’re in today and part of that that now is this idea of the suburbs and sprawl and look where you know this is a has taken us we are we

Have created communities that live in service to the car and all of you know that our cars essentially act as prophylactics against us having any sort of meaningful contact and meaningful interaction with our our fellow citizens and in greater service of the car we’ve created things like parking decks that

Of course you know become central to any planning and development issues because we always have to make room for the bloody cars and of course the result here is strip malls and things like this places that are not really worthy of our love and in fact games puzzler who many of you have

Probably heard of who wrote several books including his best-known one the geography of nowhere he said that the public realm is the physical manifestation of the common good but fundamentally he said that we’ve created places not worth caring about now that’s a very sad state so how do we change

That how do we move from living in these types of environments to places that actually inspire us the places that actually make us want to have an emotional connection we can do better than just as a quick example this happens to be a the first leed-certified parking structure in Santa Monica it

Catches their civic center and it opened in 2008 I thought you know that’s actually a pretty cool parking deck that’s actually a parking deck that people might say that’s kind of cool that’s lovable and things like that so it’s not that it can’t be done I think

We haven’t been challenged I think we haven’t been inspired enough to maybe move forward in this direction as purposefully as we should so let’s talk about this idea why lovable cities matter now goes back to this gallup soul of the Community Survey what they found from 2002 to 2006 that the most attached

Communities had the highest local GDP growth and they found a significant relationship between how passionate and loyal people are to their communities and local economic growth is it causal um I don’t know I’m not I didn’t do that particular research and I would suspect that it’s probably not causal but it’s

Certainly related enough that it should be something that we take notice of and the impact of this I think was was quite profound it actually put some numbers and put some data behind this notion this idea that you know loving something actually matters and the best example I

Can use of this you know this does love really matter well you know certainly when children are love they thrive so 21 plants or pets or even objects I mean just look at this particular car I mean it’s clear that this is a car that is that somebody who loves cars owns this

Particular car now most of our cars probably look more like this i said i know mine certainly does and if you’re in ohio or up north i’m sure your car probably looks like this right now too covered in salt and things like that now that’s not to say this car hasn’t been

May be well taken care of in the sense that it’s been serviced regularly it does the job and get you from point A to point B but there’s clearly a difference in the way this car looks and feels versus again that’s a car that’s an object that is love now what would the

Manifestation of our city if it is loved and similar in a similar way what would that look like so what we’re really talking about here is this idea of creating sustainable level lovable communities and that’s a set of conditions that creates more emotional engagement that creates more lovers of

Cities how do we motivate these people who are in love with with that and it taps into something that is beyond pure economics and I think if we can do this we can add a bit of the human heart to our toolkit for city making I think we

Make much better cities i think we create incredible places and i don’t think it costs a lot of money so we’ll get to that but i’m excited about these these ideas now one thing that as planners and as any developers economic developers everyone’s been talking about

This for a number of eaters this idea of becoming an amenity rich city and certainly that’s a that’s a powerful lure or business for talent and things like that but the problem I find with this idea of the playing this amenity game is that there are very few winners

And most of us are actually loser because inevitably when we play the amenity game we are preparing ourselves to other places that that almost always have more you’re comparing yourself to the Chicago so the New York’s to the seattle’s San Francisco’s the you know the star city’s if it were and that’s

Hard to do if you’re a Cleveland or a Detroit or Milwaukee or smaller places like you know in Akron Ohio you can’t do it you lose by playing that game now what I’m suggesting is that if we play a different game and we look at meaning not just amenities but meaning where

Your impact on your community is tangible where it feels like you make a difference that is incredibly powerful especially to the number of people who are I call them sort of purpose driven people the ones who want to feel like their contribution makes a difference in their community that’s not everybody but

It’s certainly enough people that this is the way for cities to maybe look at attracting a really different type of talent than they have maybe historically within the past now party oops pardon me all right so what we’re talking about here is meaning rich and when I’m talking about

More than amenities cities that are open cities that are democratic that feel like they’re accessible to your imprint that feel like you can make a difference that’s not just about consuming a city’s now and we all consume cities I’m not going to deny that but the way most of

Us you know think about our cities is that we consume them in the sense that we pay our taxes we obey the law and the city provides the needed infrastructure for us that’s fine but some of us look for more out of our cities we’re looking for again that ability to make a

Difference the ability to make an imprint and maybe even be challenged by our cities you know cities that need us there’s something kind of interesting about that all right now in this continuum of engagement I wanted to look at this these numbers forty percent are under tension 34-6 are thirty-six

Percent of neutral twenty-four percent are attached well I don’t think that tells sort of the complete story because I think there’s a lot that’s hidden within those big categories so I’ve created what I call this continuum of engagement and it looks at the idea that you know not everybody who is disengaged

Is hostile to the city in fact most of them are probably not most of them are probably sort of bored with their city you know and even within the neutral category those people who are leaning one way or another maybe a little bit maybe towards more curious or bored

Whatever and then within that engaged sector there are a few people at the far end of the spectrum who are very much in love with their community now why I think this is important is because out here at this particular end I think these are the people who make things

Happen that’s not to say it’s exclusive you can’t I’m not saying that you can’t be bored or detach from your community and create something of value for the community or do something that’s that’s cool and engaging and things like that I’m just saying it’s far more likely

That it’s going to happen by this particular group out here at this end now the people who are in love their cities I’ve called them co-creators because in since they are co-creating the city that the rest of us consume they are making the content that

The rest of us sort of take in and this is my friend Bob Devon Jones bob is the creative director of a small community arts program here in st. Petersburg I’m based in st. Petersburg Florida I called this video at six-twenty and Bob is sort of the archetype of this idea of the

Co-creator now he is a central node in the network that makes up st. Petersburg but he doesn’t show up on any official sort of org chart of the city but he’s an incredible resource he’s on boards he’s making things happen he is a connector of people and I submitted it

We lost Bob Devon Jones we lose far more than one particular person but again he doesn’t show up on the typical math that that makes up you know who we think of as making cities here’s some other people they’re in love with their city so on the left is Phil Cooley from

Detroit on the right Claire Nelson also from Detroit Phil is a young guy he bought a building in Corktown neighborhood of Detroit rehabbed it into the hottest restaurant in the in the city Claire opened up a little design shop sort of a cratenbarrel type store in the Woodward area of the city and

They are champions of the city not because they’re doing something extraordinary but sort of where our they’re doing it and sort of how they’re doing it these people are absolutely in love with their city and they do things above and beyond what we typically think of retailers our restaurant tours this

Is my friend Robert Fogerty Robert runs a not-for-profit in New Orleans called of a cute ear well in order to fund a package here which trains people and how to evacuate the city in the case of another hurricane or an emergency he created this photography concept called

Dear New Orleans and you might have seen some of these photos he’s got a lot of attention nationally about this where it’s a photography service where they bring people in at an event and they write these messages to the city on their hands it’s sort of a non-permanent

Marker and this is a good example and he’s actually expanding this to other cities and he’s only out which happens pretty excited and again one of those people who’s absolutely in love with his city and it manifested now within this there’s an idea here about

The one percent rule and some of you may Peter I’m going to ask you to pause for a second it sounds like yes is that your speaker okay Peter go ahead and try again hello yes I can hear you yeah go ahead all right I’m gonna continue all

Right so that’s one percent rule and a Guinness it’s the call to power law distribution by statisticians or participation in equality by demographers but the best example I can think about this is though is Wikipedia I’m sure almost everyone in our audience has used wikipedia at some point or

Another it’s a it’s a great resource and I’m imagining that some people in our audience a few probably even made Wikipedia entry and there might be one or two folks out there in the several hundred that are on the call who may be made five or ten or even many more

Wikipedia entrance but the point is is that the actual number of people who make with the PD entries is very very small in fact it’s less than a percent so what you can say is that of all of the the content that is Wikipedia less than one percent of the total users of

Wikipedia actually built Wikipedia now that’s a fascinating statistic because I think that actually applies to physical communities as well so if you actually just making the cities that we live in it’s a relatively small of official actions certainly but there are other people out there like the Bob Devon Jones robbed

Part of this coke read hey Peter I’m very sorry to interrupt you but I think there’s somebody who’s on the con that has not gotten themselves muted and I can’t figure out who it is so if everybody can make sure that you’re muted then that will prevent the

Feedback that we’re hearing yeah I’m hearing an echo there when you did that so okay we shall carry on the vagaries of Technology notwithstanding so but I want us to start thinking about these co-creators as a natural community resource because these types of people who are going to do extraordinary things

For cities and oftentimes you know they’re not getting paid for this is maybe he’s not part of their official job but the manifestation of their their emotional connection of their City creates these incredible projects and crippled opportunities creates these very lovable elements that the rest of

Us sort of naturally gravitate to so I want us to think about co-creators as a natural community resource now if you think about who makes the community I go back to this point we have the typical sort of idea about who makes it government business the faith-based

Sector in the problem is is that as resources have dwindled and they’ve wiggled in every particular group the gap between the ski we desire and the city we can afford is getting bigger and bigger now into this breach what are we going to see it’s going to be these unofficial players these unofficial

Actors who were going to hopefully be able to step up and do some of the things that the close the gap it makes those cities makes our cities particularly lovable and again I think that in this particular area co-creators are absolutely key to this particular section and I’ve got a pretty cool

Example of this this actually comes to my friend Sean and Sean lives one of the negatives in western Detroit and and I’m hearing somebody typing right now so if you’re typing you’re the one who didn’t nuture your your thing so anyways hope Phylly will get that squared away um the

Unofficial actors sort of idea here Sean and his friends see parts of their neighborhood are abandoning homes and that’s like that rather than just let them completely go to seed into the scrappers or not what they do is they come in and they will the lawns and they will actually paint

The you know come for the windows with these plywood things and then paint them something simple the whole idea here is to create the sense that hey look somebody actually cares about this somebody’s watching that the neighborhood we’re not going to let it completely call me to see they’re not

Paid for this but it’s in there sort of own entry here’s a good another great example right near his own neighborhood there was this whole viaduct and obviously this is a typical run down viaduct as a magnet for graffiti and things like that what these guys did is

They brought in their own forklift they they close off the street themselves and this is the result they did not have permission certainly to do this but certainly the the citizens of Detroit are benefited from that now I know as I hear that somebody somebody is muting

Their line as we speak I’m gonna I’m just going to continue that ok so these unofficial actors are becoming a resource but how do you marshal these particular folks because i’m saying i don’t think that the playbook for how to do this is you know has been written

It’s being written right now but i think at least if we know about these challenges maybe we can be in a better position to sort of work with these folks and not work across purposes and things like that because at heart these people want to make their cities better

Now what’s the role of planners is now option control planners is about marshaling resources for the greater good in the development of the community the problem is that your toolbox has been now empty then there’s more limited and you’ve had a bunch of these funky

New things to consider so I want you to think about this I’m sure no one has ever thought of you yourselves as being sort of a cupid and it’s in this idea of creating lovable cities because you’re not going to outshoot love arrows into your citizens park so what are you

It kind of comes back to this idea from the soul of the community they found three magic ingredients for creating emotional engagement which they’re placed aesthetics of a place the social offerings of a place which is obviously things to do and openness which is a failure of tolerance and acceptance

Hello are we back okay so these three things now clearly as as planners we would probably feel a sense of ownership around the aesthetics of a place the problem is is that you know as we have control over this we may not be the designers but we certainly frame the

Problem we write the specs we approve the plans and unfortunately I think that also we’ve been you know as planners we’ve probably been beaten down by the bean counters and the risk managers who tell us that the extra landscaping is too expensive or that fun element that

You want maybe want to add on to a new building is an attractive nuisance and a potential lawsuit it’s like okay I get that needs a valid consideration but there is a cost to venality there’s a cost to indifference and a cost to ugliness and if our design and our

Planning decisions are actually turning people into indifferent disengaged citizens then there’s absolutely a cost to this that we have to start factoring in to how we think how we talk about our cities I think planners will need to take on roles that they have not previously done and in fact you guys are

Going to have to wear some new hats you’re going to become community engineers choice architects who have to influence by subtle means rather than by prescription or by law and I think you’re going to have to become students of the human heart who engage our

Emotions as well as our minds um this is actually the great challenge and I hope that maybe by framing the question we start getting us to think about this a little bit more so new rules for planners now how many of you are actually trained in health or fitness

Yet I’m imagining that all of you have been asked to take part in your city’s wellness agenda you know how do we create healthier citizens and things like that well again that it wasn’t typically part of your job before Aging in Place how many of you are geriatric specialists probably very few the

Happiness of citizens I’m sure that is being discussed well yet none of you probably have a psychology degree and that’s fine again same thing with you know economic development talent attraction retention strategies new roles as these community you know engineer choice architects and societal planners now I submit to you

That maybe five or 10 years from now it won’t seem that unusual for you guys to be taking part in the discussion about happiness sociology sociality and this love agenda because five or ten years ago you probably didn’t think you had a place at the table regarding wellness

And things like that these are I think are moving targets and we’re moving towards this so this new role for planners now part of this has to do with building the lovable city now of course it’s at its base we have to create functional and safe cities the problem

Becomes is when that becomes sort of the the litmus test and that is the only thing that we focus on and certainly when budgets get tight it is easy to sort of fall into that particular trap of saying okay is it good enough then great it’s out the door but I think we

Can do better we have to do better we have to figure out ways to making our cities more comfortable convivial convivial in the sense of creating those social interactions and interesting interesting and fun now why don’t we aspire to those types of things and like you know it asks and begs the question

Why can’t our cities be comfortable convivial and fun now part of I mentioned the happiness agenda and I have to make a quick mention about this because this is Sigmund Freud by the way and he had sort of a fairly negative view on this whole thing he said

Happiness or pursuit of happiness he called it a doomed quest and he said that happiness is not included in the plan of creation instead he said we should aspire to a state of ordinary misery great you know I’m sure that would sell really well in our city it’s

Like well we’re going to a style aspire to a state of ordinary misery here in in Akron Ohio its Imperial Florida wherever I think that that the happiness and love become these aspirational goals for our cities and it’s even something that’s being measured now oddly enough in England David Cameron under with the

Tories it actually instigated masonary happiness is a key metric he calls it a general well-being and whatnot and they say that that which is measured gets done well I’m suggesting that happiness and love are we should maybe start thinking about how do we measure how do we quantify some of

These things moving forward and move beyond this idea of ordinary misery thanks Sigmund and that’s let’s ask this idea here what do we love and what we hate about cities this is a question I’ve been asking people for years now and it’s actually kind of fun because it

Makes people really think about what they really care about within a place and I can tell you this what people tell me they hate about cities they hate big things they hate the transportation system I hate the education system maybe the lack of green space ugliness on the

Haight above ground wires they hate bad parking they hate things it’s like pothole filled streets now I submit to you that we have to address these things but the problem with addressing these kinds of things is we can spend a ton of money on trying to fix these things but

No one ever fell in love with the city because they fix the parking no one ever fell in love with the city because they fixed all the potholes at best what they’re going to say is well you know parking doesn’t stop quite so bad that’s not love now we have to address these

Things but at the same time we need to pay attention what I call love notes and these are these small intimate little things about cities that do resonate with us I will equate these things to their the cherry on top of the sunday their the chocolate on the pillow

They’re the heated floor and the really nice hotels things like that those are the kinds of things we respond to and in cities they can be maybe a particular view an old street festival a comfortable park bench quirky little things that make you smile so I want to

Maybe consider some of those and how do we create more love nuts so I’ve got some good examples I’d like to share with you this is the new Curtis Hixon park in downtown Tampa right on the Hillsborough River now the park itself costs you know some kenton odd million

Dollars was part of a greater larger redevelopment and it’s wonderful and i think it’s it’s great and then creating great beautiful green space is very important but i noted this in one small paper right near the waterfront they actually added this they call it the marrying bench because just to the right

Of this there’s actually a bench and things like that where people can sit will you marry me now it’s one of those tiny little touches that most people wouldn’t plan for think about but it’s one of those things that if you see this you remember it and if there was people

Who may be actually used as this and maybe you have you asked your significant other to to marry you there you’ll always remember Tampa you always remember this place and you’ll always have a good feeling about and even if you just want constant you if you’re not married or you’re already married it’ll

Make you smile right along those same lines the the tampa museum of art great new building stanley saitowitz design– out of san francisco the building a self cost about 31 million dollars the city paid a little over 18 million of that but what they also did is they put a dog

Park in the back they put a playground in the front now I love the new museum but I submit to you that for most people these two little touches the dog park and the the playground are probably more meaningful on a day to day basis and

More of a reason to love the park and come down there yes you may go inside you see the great works of art things like that but you’re far more likely to want to bring your kids down or your dog and play down here and that to me is one

Of those small little love notes it’s easy to get overlooked and it’s easy to get written off in the line items of budgets as we start moving forward and saying what can we get rid of and these are the kinds of things that unfortunately get sacrificed but I

Believe they are the things that actually endorse most to our our cities now here’s a little example most cities have this problem especially if they’re all have older sewer systems they have a combined sewer system and then and dumping is a problem well the city of Lexington figured out well let’s do a

Creative way to solve this and highlight the attention there so they commissioned the painter to go out and paint the the storm drains in the city to bring attention so people won’t dump there and it’s a small little thing a touch it advances what the city is trying to do

But it creates this nice little moment when you look at that guy and that’s kind of cool at least it makes you look and against it maybe you look storm drain awareness a love note another love note dupont circle in the grand scheme of washington DC dupont circle is a

Pretty small thing but yet it’s one of those sort of central kinds of things it’s it’s the intersection of all of these major streets the huge metro station their acts like a giant heart it pumps people in it pumps people out and this is sort of the place to go if

You’re in washington DC to sit to relax enjoy the space and the people watch a love note another great example of that same idea if you folks have been to a new york city within the past year or so you’ve seen veteran-friendly Times Square and it’s a huge difference from

What it was before before you went there it felt like you were taking your life at risk if you walked around and try to watch it or people watch a look at the buildings cars were everywhere that the sidewalks were packed what they did Mayor Bloomberg and Janette sadik-khan

Is the head of transportation there they want they they blocked it off they made it into a pedestrian friendly zone and they even added chairs and Wi-Fi so now it is a great place to sit not so much on this cold winter day when I was there

Last year but you get the idea same thing in New York City High Line park now this was an elevated train line down in the Meatpacking District in lower Manhattan and it’s about a mile and a half long and what they did is they took this old structure that haven’t been

Used as a rail line for 30-odd years and they turned it into green space much-needed green space for the for the that part of the city and it’s wonderful you walk along there you see these sort of native plants that are sort of integrated in this unique sort of

Environment and it’s beautiful and it’s one of those things that in the grand scheme of New York yeah it cost millions of dollars certainly but in the grand scheme of New York it is again a very small thing a little bit closer to home is here in st. Petersburg where I live

Is the Saturday morning market that’s one of those typical farmers markets started out pretty modestly in 2002 but has since grown to actually the largest one-day market in the southeast on a Saturday morning they will get 10,000 people will come through there 120 vendors with hundreds more wanting to

Get in and it’s the place where st. Petersburg goes to sort of heat itself and you see incredible things people walking their dogs interacting with their neighbors and again it’s a small little thing in the grand scheme of st. Petersburg and this one is literally a love note it’s actually from a

Philadelphian you might have seen some of this stuff about these love notes from this artist by the name of Steve powers and he’s actually a graffiti art it’s being worked with the mural arts project up there and they created this love letter project these 50 murals across like 50 different buildings that

Are really only visible or primarily visible on the train line as you sort of ride to and from in and out of the city and it is sort of this this love letter of this one person to another about their relationship and it’s a wonderful thing because clearly it’s about the

City as well hug me like I hug the block and things like that open your eyes I see the Sun rising again it created an event here now every valentine’s day now they do what’s called the love train where they bring people in and they do this sort of tour

Of these uh these murals on this train that goes very slowly and whatnot and actually this year they made national headlines because somebody actually got married on the Love Train this year so a great sort of little investment in love now I want also talk a little bit about

Some some things that make your cities lovable but maybe not for the reasons you would typically think bike friendliness now bike friendly to me means people friendly because it’s saying that that not only cars are important but people are important and if you think about bike friendliness it

Says something and pretty positive about your community values if your bike friendly it means that you’re green means that you’re healthy and it means that you’re actually have maybe a sense of fun because remember bike riding is fun where it should be fun another example walkable cities of course we

Know that you know part of that wellness agenda is trying to get our citizens to walk more but walking is a form of courtship with your city you can experience your city in a way as you walk that is completely different from writing in your car it’s also maybe the

Most democratic form of transportation it you know the richest and the poor some you know among us walk the same sidewalks it brings us together and walking allows or discovery and improvisation in a way that clearly being in a car does you can turn down a

Street you can walk into a new shop you can check out a new coffee shop you may see those things while you’re driving but at 45 miles an hour it’s really a pain in the butt to try to pull over and maybe check that out walking and improvisation you know things about

Relationships always great to discover new things now 60 thirty percent of u.s. households have pets now only forty-six percent actually have kids and with respect to you know yeah cats and birds and snakes and things like that dogs are really the marker here because dogs require the largest accommodation of our

Lifestyle and more resources than any other pets we just don’t walk our cats and the great thing about dogs is that they actually create social experiences they create vitality on the streets as we walk the streets there are the eyes on the street that Jane Jacobs said

Creates safety out there so this weird paradox is that dogs and cities make for a more human plates so how do we become maybe a more pet friendly city places to sit and people-watch as you know as primates as soul we are social creatures we are endlessly

Fascinated by watching each other and if you can figure out ways to just accommodate people’s desire to sit and people-watch you make for a happier more lovable City play psychologists will tell us that play is an incredibly important part of our psychology and I submit to you that maybe how we’ll play

With our cities a lot of times manifested public art and this of course is millennium park and the cloud gate the the great being and whatnot the waterfall that kids love to play in during the summer months it’s basically like a swimming pool for folks and that’s great and I’m sure you’re saying

Well that’s fine but show me one that doesn’t cost 475 million dollars like okay I hear ya how about this one this is called the planing on yours it started out this street piano project in sheffield england and it sort of grew from there the idea that they put these

Pianos out on the streets the sign says planing and they encourage people to sit and come and bang out a tune or something like that and what happens is people will gather around especially somebody’s kind of talented and the cost of this almost nothing I get the impact

On it is quite it could be quite nice where you have a great experience of communal experience where you bring people together around that play my quick public art test by the way is it fun does it invite you to touch it climb out and engage with it I I say even

Skateboard on it we’ll talk a little bit more about skateboarding here in a minute does it bring people together and does it make people smile if that’s the litmus test for a public art and I think that’s pretty good because it’s a lot a lot of times the zombies are pretty easy

For people to second-guess the utility public art but I think it’s much harder to do that when your kids are playing on it and people seem to be enjoying it on a pretty visceral level now young love it is also kind of an important aspect

Of cities and young love is one of those things that manifests in a couple of ways what do young people love about cities well tends to be things like like music scenes my friend Rogers France and I have talked about this you know many times we talk about how these are

Underrated and undervalued assets because this is what the young people in a city typically love use live music venues and skate parks and I know that you know people look at skate skateboard parts literally just lawsuit waiting to happen yet some cities have figured out how to do it and

The trick here is is that these are the things that express an openness to young people we fall all over ourselves to keep our young professionals are young people here once they graduate they have degrees and skills that we need but the problem is their idea and their notion

Of the city has been fermenting long before we started paying attention to them it may be in college and if we continue to say no to them for years noted a lot of music venues noted skateboarding and things like that it’s really hard to get them to say yes when

They’re older and we really want them so something to think about and a quick note here about love park at skateboarding a love park in Philadelphia is one of the world’s great destinations for skateboarders I don’t know if you’ve known this but since the 1980s it is the place to go and skate

Skateboard it’s even appeared in video games and whatnot but the city of course doesn’t like skateboarding and things like that yet they tried to figure out a balance between the two where they escaped wearing a certain times in certain places and things like that and a California company even offered the

City a million dollars because they’re a skateboard related company if to the city to support skateboarding in their city turned it down I don’t think the serendipity have happened becoming a world-class or world-renowned city for a particular thing just happens easily and I think Philadelphia’s maybe turning its

Back on something that could be brought into the fold and valued in a slightly different way but it’s an interesting debate now some things we also love about cities are rituals and traditions this is water fire in Rhode Island and if you’ve ever been up there it’s this

Incredible scene where they have I think 120 of these braziers that sort of exists that and the river that snakes through downtown Providence is created in 1994 by artist Barnaby Jones and its use me Barnaby Evans Barbie challenge TV show and it’s wonderful it’s primal it’s

Fire and water and as you walk around the city at night when this is going on you smell the pine smoke you hear the crackle of wood you see these the shadows dancing on the walls and things like that it’s amazing I mean how many

Of us have ever just SAT and watched a fire and a few years ago I had the opportunity to participate in what’s called a lighting ceremony where we carry these torches down from City all down to the waterfront we lit these things it was very very cool something i

Always remember about Providence um Keeneland in Lexington Kentucky I’ve heard this race a place described as the Augusta National of race places for horses and in april in october they have their racing seasons and it brings out the men in their suits women in their finest dresses and of course their hats

And there’s the whole city is awash in this sort of gentility around horse racing gambling too but it’s a wonderful time to be in Lexington in in April and October and it’s something that everybody locals and visitors look forward to every year and here’s a pretty fun one uh this is actually a

Zombie walk in downtown Pittsburgh now you go why is downtown Pittsburgh and zombies what does that have to do anything well movie aficionados may know that George a Romero Dawn of the Dead was filmed with the Monroeville Mall in Pittsburgh and that has become sort of the mecca for zombie aficionados around

The world and these zombie wants attract hundreds if not thousands of people and they become these sort of you know big-time events I mean you know we want parades in our cities maybe we should start thinking about zombie walks and things like that but it’s an interesting

Example of a tradition and a ritual that grew out of something kind of weird and pop culture that happens to be a zombie movie now here’s the question how do you know if it’s love and you know be immortal David Coverdale of white snake ass is it love than I’m feeling well

That’s a tough one because how do you know if it’s love we can look at these two and say are they in love you know well they’re kissing and things like that maybe and things like that but the whole idea here it’s more of an anthropological experiment how do you

Know if it’s love well you look at what people say they say they’re in love you look what people do they hold hands they kiss and things like that behaviors um you know they live together they know things like that we aggregate these and we make a judgment based upon it’s sort

Of an anthropological experiment and the same time we maybe look for proxies of love so I’ve tried to figure out some of the proxies for love and annoying if your city is maybe on the right path and I ask the question how do you hold hands with your city and that’s a pretty

Interesting one because it’s a public display of affection and I came up with this site the city theme t-shirts now this is I’m wearing a rubber city clothing t-shirt Akron where the weak are killed and eaten not really but it’s kind of fun and these are sort of these niche

Retailers have arisen that created that really cater to locals and they create these city t-shirts that are not sports related that are not sort of trip tourist related but they sort of are sort of the inside joke as it were and they’re popping up all over the country

Here’s one from Detroit they actually use funds from this particular one to fund other projects and things like that around in the city stl style of in st. Louis these guys are great I interviewed them for the book here they are Jeff and Randy vines they’ve actually opened up a

Store where they sell all kinds of crs unique st. Louis related merchandise and it’s incredibly popular this girl Lauren Tom opened up what’s called flirty girl and in the midst of a recession she opened not one but two retail stores in New Orleans that cater to the folks who

Have this emotional connection go through these t-shirts or other kinds of New Orleans related material this is how you hold hands with your city it’s a public display of affection how do you marry your city well this is an interesting one because a tattoo like marriage is probably a near permanent

Connection you can get out of bolt they just can be kind of painful and expensive to do so but the Florida lead is kind of funny because it’s actually become a bit passé I’m told by my friends in New Orleans because so many people have them I think this is an

Interesting long this is my friend Dave who actually got that the Katrina stood jilba the mark that the army put on the houses as they were sort of categorized he tattooed that on his wrist you’ll always remember Katrina and where he was and that he wanted to make that that

Marriage to his City here we have an Akron one this is a double whammy because he’s got not only that in a current a two and a t-shirt this is the Roberto Clemente bridge in Pittsburgh I thought that was a pretty interesting declaration of love this is the

Cleveland skyline this is the mayor of Braddock Pennsylvania he’s actually got his the zip code for Braddock tattooed on his arm after he won election John Fetterman and he was 2005 he won by one vote as the commitment to his City he got this tattoo saying he’s in for the

Long haul so that courage but the queen of all this happens has to be Katie O’Keefe and she’s from Cleveland if you notice here on her arm she’s got the Terminal Tower and the Cleveland skyline going and behind her here she’s got the 2 16 for

The the akron area code she’s a web designer up there in cleveland and she came back after living in I think was New Jersey and said she was in love with Cleveland she wanted to mark that this is how you do it breaking up with your city actually happens to and I think

This is actually an interesting one because this there was a designer in LA who got a job offer in back in i think was New England Boston and moved back there and he had a public breakup with the city of Los Angeles and he said sorry la it’s over he did like five

Different billboards around the city I love you la I’m just not in love with you and it’s not you la it’s me and I think this is kind of interesting because at least he’s recognizing that he was actually in a relationship with our city and I don’t think this is

Actually as a bad thing I think it was actually sort of a creative and a good-natured way to go about this and really what it was is a powerful reminder to all of us or to all those in LA or are you are actually in a relationship with your city it just may

Not think about it that way now a few other things how do we major love friend of mine from Savannah Georgia I mean Chris Miller came up with what he called the Google love/hate index and this is not a scientific kind of thing but it is

Actually a lot of fun he took the ID aces I love Savannah Georgia I hate savannah georgia and he put those two together and search in google which is the closest thing we have to a sort of collective consciousness he got some interesting results and he applied it to

Other cities and you see that the loves the hates actually sort of maybe mirrors behind you might think about certain place chicago does well Atlanta not so well and of course use the time he was comparing Savannah to Atlanta and things like that Detroit challenge divorce Cleveland as well st. Petersburg that’s

Pretty well on this I thought that was kind of interesting a lot of people love the bird here and smaller to these like Paducah does phenomenally well a friend as well things like that sort of traditional cities like Portland and whatnot is this scientific no but there’s something about it that kind of

Feels right because you know when you put so much data into Google and it’s looking at all of these kinds of things it’s really hard and full Google like this with a PR stunt or something like that so there is some validity to this maybe it’s something worth at least

Considering tracking over time now of course you can like things on Facebook i’m sure most probably are in cities and you’ve created had to create a Facebook page for your city and you want to know how many people like well it’s a fairly simple way to do this and you hopefully

You get people out there and they’re actually pressing the like button and whatnot and you have a planned are you tracking this over time I think you should because it actually does matter because this whole idea of social media is really far more important I think

That a lot of people have discussed in the past I want to talk a little bit about this in death Robert Putnam Bowling Alone where he sort of created the idea of social capital that our connections with each other are important that have value and a lot of

People have decried the internet as sort of the death of social capital they say we have friends on Facebook instead of having real friends well some of the the studies are coming out now in this sort of area they call neuroscience or excuse me euro economics which is this combination of economic psychology

Biology and neuroscience they took a measure they had people tweet and they’ve measured the levels of oxytocin in their brain which is the octa toast is what they call the cuddle hormone and it’s generated between like people as sort of known for like mothers and their newborn children sort of how we bond

Things like that so these these neuro scientists measured the levels of oxytocin between sort of face-to-face contact and social media-based contact and it found that when people use social media their brains interpreted tweeting in the experiment was like interacting with people they actually knew and they cared about so this each connection

Thing is actually pretty important now I clearly understand that if you are you know to you know our grandparents you’re 65 years old this may not be nearly as meaningful to you as if it is a 15 year old and I’m get that but there is something there that says that social

Media connections are social capital building so we need to be tracking this and paying attention to this over time especially as these younger younger people who come into the city making rolls these community building rolls and there emerged in social media we may not be as interested or you know we’re not

Facebooking we’re not tweeting at the same rate but we got to pay attention to this because that where the next generation already is and they’re coming into their own and I looked at things like social media volume per capita as a measure of cities vitality I think that’s something kind

Of interesting maybe you track that over time you can do that with Facebook and their advertising tool they call it reach just as you know you know how what’s the reach of your local newspaper or a magazine or Facebook can tell you that as well um food and love are two

Incredibly important things and if there’s anybody here from Pittsburgh you immediately know what this is it’s called a perm aunty it’s sort of a famous sandwich from the Primanti Brothers it’s basically a hamburger with its french fries coleslaw and toppings all put together on this sandwich and

The whole idea here was this was food and guys they could take it and they could eat it sort of on the road quickly and easily i wanna is if the healthiest thing in the world no but it’s really pretty darn good what are the local food

Things that your city is famous warrant resonates with so that’s something that we absolutely love about our cities is the local food sustaining love when we love something we wanted to be healthy we wanted to last a long time so I looked at how do we measure that and I

Came up with a sort of green love measure and there’s lots of cities that are trying to figure out how to be to measure green and this is a I would say it’s a blunt instrument but it is indicative of something I looked at the number of LEED certified projects per

Capita and measured that and it was kind of surprising because most of us would not think of Grand Rapids Michigan as being sort of the greenest city in America yet based upon the number of LEED certified projects to the population it’s huge and especially compared to some of the traditional of

Green powerhouses what we think of you know San Francisco Chicago Portland and things like that they do well if you don’t do nearly as well as Grand Rapids I think this awareness of having all these green projects in these green things out there in the community

Creates this tense of green love and a sense of sustaining the community in a way that are visible and persistent reminders of our commitment to our environment and that’s why I think it’s kind of an interesting and important partner same kind of thing with giving back I looked at the number of

Grantmakers per capita this doesn’t necessarily look at the the amount of money per se that obviously privileges certain older communities do very very well here I mean the Cleveland foundation I think it’s a second largest foundation in the country I mean with billions of dollars in assets and things like that but it

Did look at grant makers because I thought that giving back instead of that altruistic sort of relationship we have with our community the number of grantmakers the community that kind of felt like it was a relevant number so we looked at that as well so in a few

Minutes of working on a hacker and I’m sure you’re asking okay how do we start how do we move people into these directions how do we start thinking and acting on this notion that this emotional connection actually mump be kind of important well I want to go back

To that continuum of engagement and I want to say that the I think one of the key points here is this is curiosity that stage from neutral to being curious about your environment is maybe the most important one because once you start being curious you are at least starting

To move in that that right direction it’s as simple as wanting to see what’s down the street or behind this door hey what would happen if we did this with a curious mind other things become possible because we’re not going to move people from being angry or detached

Being in a committed or in a loving relationship with our city overnight no it has to be sort of this pace and sort of purposeful process that moves people in that particular direction so I want to ask us as planners what barriers to curiosity have we may be inadvertently

Erected in our sympathies and this may or may not apply to your city but these are some things that we I’ve heard from folks you know admission fees now we have a lot of these public institutions and things like that art museums and things like that and I understand the

Need for having admission fees because it helps to pay the bills but are we you know by charging that are we deferring are we encouraging people not to come in it’s you know a couple bucks if it’s ten months of its more are they not experiencing something that might enter

Them to the the city parking obviously is always going to be an issue and it’s not that parking has to be right in front of a building but it people have to know make know it’s predictable but at least they know that when they come to a place they can park somewhere and

Then get to someplace else that they need something fundamental like bath having good public bathrooms is a way to ease people into the idea coming back downtown maybe they didn’t you know come downtown for a number of years and it’s like okay where can I park where can I

Go to the bathroom where can I sit when I want to be comfortable the idea of closed doors lock oftentimes wheeling insists on bars and things like that closing doors because we want because we’re afraid to the noise okay I get that but closed doors don’t let us see

What’s happening in there it’s a barrier to our curiosity when we see other people having fun we’re far more likely to have fun ourselves one way streets this is a huge bug a move for cities you know one way streets basically live in service of moving power from point A to

Point B in a most quick and efficient manner but it doesn’t allow us to do those things that I was talking about it doesn’t allow for improvisation it doesn’t slow traffic down enough but we can look around we can see what’s happening that the car and the

Pedestrians can exist you know in sort of a more friendly in a more equitable manner and things like that and needless regulation and I’ve got a good example here from Clearwater Florida there’s a local sign ordinance which I’m sure good and well intentioned but the way it’s interpreted it actually prevents artists

Who have studio space from actually putting their artwork out in front of the studio space where people could actually see it finding that balance between regulation which I’m sure there’s an there’s important point to that and you know balancing out the need for encouraging the sort of curiosity

And things like that so I want to go back here to this particular point because I want to say this is important that the people who make things happen how do we find more of them because again they’re going to prove they’re going to step into this gap they’re

Going to create the environment they’re going to create those things that we consume are going to create these things that make lovable communities over and above us as official makers remember these folks how do we find more of those and I’ve come up with what I call the

One tenth of one percent solution and I quite this to the idea of spices you don’t need a lot of the most powerful spices you need just the right kinds and maybe it’s not the same one it’s a little list to dash of that but you need

Just a little bit of that extra flavoring that makes the the zest that makes the great dish so you need of course you know your stock your vegetables your meats and things like that that’s great but you need a little bit of the most powerful faces in the right sort of percentages

Now if we go back to this idea about 1% making a community I give you st. Petersburg and Tampa here at an example population of st. Pete is about 245,000 population of Tampa 343,000 that means about 2,400 people and 3,400 people are responsible for creating the experience

Of the city that there is st. Petersburg in Tampa what would happen if we added one tenth of one percent of those co-creators to the mix think about the exponential impact the 245 or 344 people might have in these cities if we create if we found 245 more Bob Devon Jones’s

What a great impact that would have in our community I call this sort of the new math of talent attraction and retention because what we’re talking about here is the way we think about the problem the way we think about the problem has been in the past we cast a

Wide net and when we had resources we could do this that’s great the challenge right now is we don’t have those same resources we don’t have this big net that we can throw at particular problems and this one tenth of one percent solution applies not only to the people

But I think it applies to those love notes again those little things that we are talking about those small intimate things that don’t necessarily cost a lot of money and it’s how we think about the problem is got to change so instead of the net casting I think we need to start

Thinking like spear fisherman spear fisherman it’s a very different process it requires patience it requires a bit of skill and knowing when to strike and going after the right kind of fish the challenge here and I’m sure that all of you have been have been hearing this you

Hear the phrase you got to do more with less and I find that incredibly problematic because it’s wrong and we all know that that’s not really sustainable what we’re talking about is having more of an impact in spite of having fewer traditional resources more of an impact not doing more more of an

Impact that requires creativity requires innovation requires this new resource pool and new players and participants at the table now little things in this scenario like the love notes they really do matter emotionally engage citizens really matter and we’re recognizing that we are in a relationship with our city it

Matters you guys as as planners you probably have to take a leadership position in this area because you guys again you set the frame you set the tone you are the professionals in the room who are talking about managing those critical resources that we know are traditional get you’re going to have to

Figure out how to add these spices that are these new players these new resources to this particular next glove matters because it’s going to take more than just the profit motive to build the community is that we desire and it is now everybody’s job to help spread and

Maximize the love and it’s two o’clock I hope that is something for you guys to chew on I would love to have any follow-up conversations and questions now if you’ve got something you’d like to email me we’ll definitely will answer your questions but I think it’s

Important to get in front of you guys as planners because again I think you are in an incredible position to lead in this particular area and make some amazing things happen with our cities thank you very much and Jennifer I will happily answer any question okay wonderful thanks so much and I

Apologized earlier for our audio difficulty but I’m glad we were able to get it resolved all right we have a comment here from John he says regarding your references to skateboarding the city of Portland has become the skate parks skateboard park mecca of the world is there any evidence that this has been

Anything but great for the city I doubt it I suspect it’s been very great for the city are there any studies out there that support the construction of skate parks as a positive thing I don’t know of any specific studies and most of the kind of things are far more anecdotal

People try it they have a good experience they have a bad experience and why not I think it’s got to be something that is done it’s left any it’s like anything you could add public art you can try that you can try that a skate park is is an experiment you know

If it’s done right it’s put in you know the right spot if the right rules are put around it if it’s well-designed if it’s done within the context of an overall plan I think it’s a wonderful thing and it sounds like Portland has figured out how to balance the interest of a skate

Park with the interest of you know the people who you know want to walk their dogs and who want to you know they have their kids out there and things like that it’s all about finding the right sort of balance I do know that Philadelphia despite the fact that they

Have issues with love park has been doing a lot of stuff around this I met some designers some some planners and landscape designers who specifically work in the area around Philadelphia so if you’re looking for maybe some information around that particular issue I suspect that Philadelphia and I if you

Email me with that particular question i will see if i can dig up the contact that i have up there at regarding that but again i think the point is is that it’s got to be done in the greater context and figure out how to balance it

With other kinds of stuff i’m a big fan of the skate park the low pants hanging kind of stuff i don’t get it but they seem to like it and i think it’s important for our cities okay great how he has a question about how has the availability and quality of public

Transportation factored into which cities seems to seem to have more love I think that’s an incredibly important one I mean nobody loves getting stuck in traffic right cities that have figured out ways to help get you out of your car and make you less car-dependent I think are definitely going to these cities

That endear you more I mean maybe you like maybe you do like being but most of us don’t and in fact Robert Putnam found that if we increase our average commute by ten percent over the average we actually decrease our quality of life by a corresponding ten percent that was a

Astounding figure that he threw out in Bowling Alone but it sort of makes us think yes how can we you know how can get out of her car because we’re isolated in our cars it’s not just the time and the frustration of driving it’s the fact that almost all of us are

Driving alone we’re listening to the radio or maybe on the phone or maybe texting which we really shouldn’t do things like that we’re just not connecting with other human beings when we’re in the car so of course we’re going to be happier anytime we can actually interact with other

People and even if it’s sitting on a bus or a subway train together there is still something social about that we feel that we are actually connected with our fellow citizens in a way the cars simply don’t let us I will make one interesting note about public transportation of all the 50 major

Metros in the United States all but one now have either some sort of light rail system either in progress in an action or in planning the only one that doesn’t is tampa bay we actually struck down a penny sales increase in hillsborough county over in tampa in november would

Have facilitated the beginning of a light rail projects we’re actually the only major metro in the united states that does not have any form of light rail even planning and whatnot and that I hear this all the time especially from the young professionals in this area

That they bone the fact that they don’t like having to drive and they really really want public transportation okay great so Richard wants to know how do you convince developers to include or municipalities to require the spice it’s a good one some of them mandated the city of Clearwater actually and one of

The more progressive things that they did despite that silly sign ordinance that I reference about three years ago they created a one-percent public art requirement for all development over or I think a minimum of it I forget the exact minimum but it required one percent of the cost of the project to be

To include some sort of public art component and that could be design features that were created by artists and things like that it doesn’t obviously have to be the statute it’s that front of the lawn and things like that but the arguments that we did to create that they all kinds of studies

Show that public art actually increases obviously things like the absorption rate the things that are well designed and sort of beautiful and aesthetic they get sold faster even in this you know obviously challenging economy you know you make that argument so one hand you can sort of force folks to do that like

Clearwater did by the way that was both public and private development which is what made that particular or that’s pretty progressive lots of places will do public development you know we’ll have to include that I think the market will sort of will help to bear that out and

I’m sure that the the smart developers that I know my friend Phil Hollenbeck is a developer in downtown Lexington and he was putting he’s not required to put public art or great design in any of the stuff he does but he absolutely lose by he swears by the fact that that makes a

Difference and as a competitive you know developer he wants his stuff to tell more and faster than his uh his competitors oh he knows that that spice is actually what you know the cost is sort of incidental to the overall thing but it actually pays off for him in the

Long run so I think that the thing the wise ones already get that but maybe we as planners we help nudge them along the way by encouraging that with maybe little things like all right so chuckling wants to know is a planner in a city that lost ten percent of its

Population in the last ten years what suggestions do you have for engaging diverse populations and the mainstream diversity not homogeneity make cities interesting and exciting places there’s a i right about Braddock Pennsylvania in the book and you guys may have heard of erratic you’ve probably seen some of the

Ads on TV and what not the Braddock is a satellite of Pittsburgh that’s lost ninety percent of its population in the last generation or so they’re going to like less than three thousand people and whatnot so yeah losing population is a huge issue in fact most cities are you

Know losing population as well but I think the trick is is that you can’t rely on one particular thing it’s you know go back to that continuum of engagement there’s not not everybody’s going to be interested in the same things and we tend to focus on sort of

Like the mega project and I did show obviously millennium park and millennium park has you know its successes but it also has its critics because a lot of cities become enamored with the idea of creating like one great big thing the mega project and things like that and

Millennium park is always held up as the great shining example of that well a lot of those mega projects 10 Gail um but it’s a lot easier to get political will and resources behind those kinds of big things because we sort of understand that I think it’s

Much harder for us to to make the argument that we should be doing instead of one big thing we should be doing one hundred a thousand little things and spreading out those little kinds of opportunities and letting people figure out what they do love about their

Community I think about doing that if we if we move away from you know those big sort of centralized you know ideas and to this idea proliferating lots of ideas and encouraging people to go out and create and become participants in in their community those people are going

To come up with the interesting stuff and I think it’s just a mindset of encouraging those if you will those small fires versus the one big bonfire which is easy to become fascinated with okay great so Douglas wants to know generally and proportionally do Europeans or any other non-us residents

Love their cities more than the people in the u.s. love their cities and why did not comment I’ve been do you know to Europe and I spent a summer there in 2009 working on a project I’ve spent a good deal time in the UK and Ireland and

Things like that and I just didn’t feel confident enough not because you write about what you know and if you don’t really live there and you’re not immersed with it it’s it’s a different kind of conversation I suspect every place has people I know that every place

Is people that love it I think that the European relationship with their cities is a little bit different it certainly has far more history and it goes much further back where you know you see cities that are hundreds if not thousands of years old you see buildings

Same kind of thing streets that you know once you know Roman chariots rode down now you know Stu Peru’s rolled out there’s a different feeling about that but I think that the the European sensibility and the relationship with their city is clearly influenced by that

And I just as an American I just didn’t feel like I could wrap my own head around that so I sort of make the excuse in the book that I’m writing primarily about American cities of North American cities I do talk about Toronto but I think there is something about

That longevity and that history that does color the European relationship with their cities in a different way not saying it’s better I’m not saying it’s you know it’s worse but I think it clearly is a big difference between the two maybe maybe the next book that’d be

Great right Todd wants to know about crime you haven’t touched on crime very much I think it’s one of the major factors that cause people to hate cities do you agree any experience with reducing crime to increase the love yeah it goes back to that remember the pyramid that I should you about

Functional and safe you’ve got a you know you’ve got you know meet most of those markers you can’t just move to the interesting and the convivial and the fun and all that stuff without covering your basics so certainly there is that but I had this interesting conversation

With some friends of mine in Detroit and they all say you know Detroit is not a safe city and people get robbed in Detroit a friend of it says yeah if you live here 23 years expect your card and get broken into at some point expect to

Get mugged it happened but what was interesting about the folks who are sort of in that in Detroit for the long haul the ones who love it it didn’t matter to them that there was the countervailing things about the city that it held them despite the crime so I think that the

Trick is is yes crime is important and I don’t really touch on it in the book I’m writing more about sort of on the other side but I certainly you know do touch on it in the sense that your basic tap and cover and crime is part of that

Basic sort of infrastructure but every city has crime and to some extent certain places are obviously a little bit more wild west but if a wild west you know doesn’t deter some folks or water flips in Detroit but the other interesting stuff compels them to stay

Then I think people are far more likely to forgive the unfortunate thing of getting their car broken into are getting mugged or something like that I think the trick is is too attention to the crime I do your best to take care of it but that can’t be the

Only thing because you know you can make the safest city in the world and I guarantee you would not be lovable you know so it’s finding that balance like paying attention to that but doing the other things the things that will you know the one joy that will dispel a

Thousand Marie’s on the other side so make more of the love I think people will you know will forgive the occasional spike in crime or something like that it’s a tough one though so Heather wants to know what your favorite love note is that you’ve seen something

In a city that you think is great maybe it’s because I live here but the one that I think is so important and I’ve seen it revitalized the city of st. Petersburg is that silly Saturday morning market thing and I remember when it started almost ten years ago it was

On like one block and you probably had two three dozen vendors and it looked kind of sad but it was an excuse people started coming out the quality of the vendors gets a little bit better the food you know the foods and things like that and it became something that you

Know you went down there every Saturday morning just because you wanted to see you know who else was down there your friends started to show up down there and things like that and it was this little tiny thing and the city had to make some small accommodations to allow

For the zoning and a permitting you know blocking off the street at one point now it’s actually held in the parking lot of the minor league baseball stadium here in downtown st. Pete but it’s amazing to think that how small that started again you know a couple dozen vendors and

Maybe you know 100 people or the first time to 10,000 people on a typical Saturday morning will come down there and it is the people will drive from all over you know Tampa Bay to come down here and then we’ll spend the day and you know not and those little things

Have allowed other stuff to happen there’s a new salvador dali museum here there’s a Chihuly collection of glass works and things like that but i think that those things are even made more successful by this little tiny excuse to come downtown interact where other people meet and i’m not being a complete

Home or on that but i do love that one and i have to say i love the idea of the love notes or love letter project in Philadelphia it’s one of those things it’s a visible and persistent reminder issue riding in and out of the city if you’re walking the

Streets and things like that you see those murals and it’s an amazing expression of art and creativity and fun and I guarantee you it makes people smile when they when they walk past it I’m gonna go with those two great and we had a question about where to find those

City theme t-shirts that you hadn’t talked about yeah it’s kind of fun um my website I’ve got a link there to a library of images and things like that there’s a bunch of other photos but rubber city clothing com is the one for akron flirty girl it’s flirty girl

Dotnet is the one in New Orleans also dirty coast in New Orleans dirty coast calm stl style calm CLE clothing and Cleveland and I mean just do a search for you know City t-shirts vintage things like that you’ll find it but it’s one of those things it’s like you know

There’s all kinds of places making tourist related t-shirts but in some of these other cities and think about the cities i just mentioned Akron Cleveland Detroit um st. Louis and New Orleans those are all search Allen jingly TSA’s I know there’s all kinds of t-shirts for New York and San Francisco and things

Like that but it’s these little entrepreneurs who recognize that there is a there’s something about wanting to be in this relationship and loving your city that they’ve created pretty successful little cottage industries around these simple t-shirts but yeah check out rubber city clothing com I love that stuff again being a homer okay

And Douglas wants to know are cities that attract more tourists necessarily more lovable that is that’s a great question because it’s always a balance between the two because a city like Savannah Georgia is it’s an incredibly beautiful city but so many of the locals there why I friends there I spent some

Time up there um they they have this sort of love hate relationship with the tourists because the tourists come and they sort of the crowd out the locals and you know and that granted there’s the vogelstein and then there’s the tourist scene and there are places where they

Overlap and things like that but part of the challenge is to is to maximize the authentic and a lot of times are our tourist stuff is not very authentic I live in a tourist state florida is all about you know bringing in tourists and we sort of have that same love-hate

Relationship you know with tourists as well I mean the tourists come and that’s one of the reasons why there’s no state income tax you know here in Florida so you got to respect that but the trick is finding that balance I think the interesting thing here is that too much

Of our orientation especially in Florida has always been trying to satisfy the tourists I think if we flip that around and we said look one is going to be interesting and engaging for the locals the tourists will love that if you make it something that the locals love I

Guarantee you that the tourists are going to want to come and see that because they want to see they want to have that experience they want to go to a place and say hey what’s it really like to be here in you know in Chicago in austin in st. Petersburg where do the

Locals go where the locals eat nobody’s clamoring to go and you know eat at the local Outback Steakhouse nice and I say this in the book nobody ever fell in love with you know the you know plans because the local out back at the best

Food and I like outback but it’s one of those things that doesn’t make for an authentic sort of experiences it works so I think if we switched it around and we focused on creating great stuff for the locals the tourists will absolutely follow okay def wants to know how do you

Convince officials to balance making art touchable Klima bowl with potential risk exposure and liabilities yeah it’s the bloody risk managers of the world have created you know places where you know they want to take all of the the risk and I think taking the risk you take

Certainly a lot of the fun out of a place I think it’s got to change the conversation from no to yes if yes you can build the statute that allows for skateboarding and climbing and whatnot if you do this this and this to help mitigate that it’s not like i’m actually

A lawyer by training years ago i call myself a recovering attorney um so take this with a huge grain of salt one that it’s not an official sort of legal opinion but it is referencing back to that if you don’t you’re not responsible for getting rid of all risk

You just have to address it in sort of a reasonable way yet i think that the risk managers of the world are so afraid of even the the width of a lawsuit that a lot of times it goes much further um i think then in situations like this it’s

Best to actually point to other places to figured out how to do it how did they do something how did they get you know the city’s blanket coverage around this to allow for that particular skate park to allow for that particular jungle gym to allow for that bungee jumping bridge

Something or other and whatnot then i think it’s easier for you know or the risk managed to say well somebody else did it then I’m a little more likely to sign off on it so i guess the trick is is to get them to you know to recognize

That you can’t get rid of all the risk and then i guess you guys as the planners and as the city managers and things like that do you can find other places that actually pull something like that off and so the risk managers know they’re not the first one in the pool

They’re going to be far more comfortable with that okay and what did she think about the Detroit commercial that aired during the super bowl I loved it I’m glad you brought that up I thought that with more that was the one commercial and a lot of friends people talked about that that’s

The one commercial people really remember it isn’t it I thought it was brilliant and in fact I thought it was more of an ad for the city of Detroit than it really was for Chrysler yeah of course Chrysler’s mentioned in there but that was one of those things that

Absolutely touched on a vital nerve in the American side you know where it says you know this is not a new york city it’s not the Emerald City it’s not sin city this is the Motor City that’s at the core of the American identity our cities like like the truck like

Pittsburgh like Cleveland where we made stuff you know now you know the cities are obviously you know in challenging States and one but we respond to those cities in a very sort of visceral and primal lat and as goes Detroit so goes I think the American spirit and I write a

Lot about this in the book because I think Detroit is an important marker Detroit in New Orleans clearly two cities that are incredibly challenged but if they fail I think it says something about us as a country far beyond the failures of two municipalities it says that we can’t get

Stuff done anymore it says that we can’t in reinvent ourselves we are not the great country that we once works I think everybody is rooting for cities like New Orleans and certainly I think people are rooting for Detroit and that ad absolutely caught the zeitgeist of that

But people want to see Detroit succeed because they know that if Detroit can succeed their own cities can succeed as well well great Peter thank you much for joining us today for those on the call we will be ending today’s webcast and you can complete the

Evaluation form that will pop up on your screen as you’re leaving today’s session Peter thanks so much for joining us and talking to us about your new book I’m sure we will look forward to reading more my pleasure thank you all thank you Peter I will follow up via email with you thanks

You

ID: gfigIPkkkA4
Time: 1344306573
Date: 2012-08-07 06:59:33
Duration: 01:21:05

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