League of MN Cities Training: The Loveable City

I know you read that title and think, "Boy, that sounds corny." It kind of does, but the substance of the training was actually very good. The speaker for this training was Peter Kageyama, a public organizer who has spent his life doing a number of eclectic and strange things on his path to writing a few books on city development and the emotional attachment that people have to their places.

He started off the training by asking us how we talk about our City. What are the things that we actually SAY when we talk about our City? How about if we are talking to neighbors? How about to visitors? How about to family members or close friends who don't live here? I thought this was really interesting because sometimes I talk about the problems that I have had put in my face by being the mayor and sometimes I talk about the social structures in our communities and sometimes I talk about the amazing, awesome, incredible things that happen here... But I don't often talk about all of those things to the same people...

Then he asked how we think about our City. What goes on in your head when someone else talks about your City? What internal monologue to you have running when you are running errands? This was really interesting as well. There are some critical/cynical things that I think about our City, but it was mostly good stuff I recalled thinking of. Sure there are things that drag us down, but we can overcome most of those things...

Of course, he had us to this exercise to illustrate that everyone in your City is probably at a slightly different place in those conversations... Fair enough... Then he showed us a graph that said that only about a quarter of people were actually attached to the place that they live. What does that mean? About 25% of people in any given City view part of their personality and existence being directly linked to the place that they live.

I thought, "It has to be more in Grand Marais..." but I wanted to hear him out.

This was all introduction to show that there is a lot that can be done to create this sense of attachment and investment in your community. He shared a few examples of things that make people feel a stronger emotional attachment to their City:
- Bike friendly cities typically have a higher attachment rate
-Walkable cities similarly do
-Pet friendly cities do well on this as well
-Youth friendly cities excel in this-- This means that there are positive outlets for youth and safe options for youth to participate in.
-Opportunities to play also make a city more loveable as do little things around the community like parks, public art installations, gardens, murals, pedestrian spaces, etc...
*A lot of times it doesn't matter if the things offered are super polished; all of these things increase social capital and should be viewed as valuable!

He said that there are ways that cities can achieve these things, but the most valuable way is to empower what he calls "Co-Creators." Co-Creators are the people that get stuff done in your community. They are everyday people with an idea that they want to see happen, they are kids with a school project, they are businesspeople with a vision, they are that grumpy guy who really wants a place to sit that's quiet... These are people with energy that can accomplish awesome things if they are encouraged and given space to do so...

Now, I don't think that we have any shortage of these people in Grand Marais, so encouraging these people can get a little exhausting and may lead to some conflicts because we don't have that much space, but you know what, I still agree that it is important to encourage these people! Good ideas have legs, so let them walk!

He also talked about "Love Notes" and "Daggers."

Love Notes are the things that you really appreciate about your place and that make you feel a connection to it. Daggers are the things that do the opposite. Obviously his advice was to minimize the Daggers and go out of your way to increase the Love Notes. Turn the Daggers into Love Notes. Invest in the problem areas and then you try to give them new meaning to make them Love Notes. Simple and brilliant. I can identify a dozen things that would qualify for this consideration in my mind...

He spent a lot of time going over projects that other Cities have done to create a sense of space, many of which I feel Grand Marais already partially does, but there were many ideas that I thought were absolutely brilliant. For example, the City of Grand Rapids took actual video of people in their city lip syncing to the song American Pie to show that their city is vibrant and not dying. You can find it on youtube. There were entrepreneurs doing ridiculous, but awesome promotions to build community around their businesses, there were community story-telling initiatives, temporary pop-up parks that travel around the town, fairy doors, tiny public sculptures around town as a scavenger hunt, taking pieces of the City's history and developing them into public spaces, the list went on and on.

By and large it was a very inspiring experience that got me to think of the City in a new light with a number of opportunities and great energy. I have the book if any of you would like to borrow it and read it as well!

I will leave it there although there was a lot more to the training on the technical side of HOW a city can inspire and encourage its residents to get into these sorts of projects.