Connect with us

Thrive

Celebrated local urbanist Peter Kageyama launches third book tonight at the Dali

Megan Holmes

Published

on

Nationally renowned author and St. Petersburg resident Peter Kageyama celebrates the release of his third book, The Emotional Infrastructure of Places tonight at the Dali Museum, in partnership with the St. Petersburg Downtown Partnership.

This third book follows Kageyama’s critically-renowned For The Love of Cities and its sequel, Love Where You Live. The Emotional Infrastructure of Places tackles one of today’s most urgent topics – infrastructure – in a new way.

As the United States begins a massive and frantic reinvestment in its long-neglected infrastructure, Kageyama urges city leaders throughout the country to adopt a new mindset, one less grounded in simple efficiency and more in emotional intelligence. Kageyama asks leaders to think about the unintended social and emotional consequences of infrastructure and how it has shaped our cities for the last century. Citing examples like the Lake Eola Fountain, Kageyama explains how piers, fountains and dog parks can strengthen our social bonds and bring cities together in times of joy and sorrow.

Kageyama spoke with St. Pete Catalyst to discuss the third book and how his work connects to St. Petersburg. Kageyama cites local examples like the highly-anticipated new St. Pete Pier, studio@620 founder Bob Devin Jones and Presence’s Reuben Pressman.

Space is still available for tonight’s book launch at the Dali Museum. RSVP to reserve your spot here.

Can’t make it tonight? Kageyama will be speaking to the Suncoast Tiger Bay Club Oct. 23. Get your tickets here.

See our full conversation below. 

You wrote For The Love of Cities and Love Where You Live; what made you want to continue this series and what’s the impetus for this third book?

Every good series needs to be a trilogy. I’m a big fantasy/sci-fi nerd, so of course you tend to think in trilogies. But no, as I continue to travel around, I see cities, I talk to people, I learn new things. Part of it is it takes some time to think about something and for it coalesce into an idea or a coherent thought. Then, naturally, I want to share it with people.

What’s different about this book? What hadn’t been said that you’re saying now?

Part of it is looking at where we are at right now as a country. This is happening globally as well, but certainly in the United States and it’s there in the title of the book: The Emotional Infrastructure of Places. Infrastructure is a hot, hot topic. Everybody’s talking about it. Everybody’s talking about the need for a significant investment or reinvestment in infrastructure. We’ve had decades of deferred maintenance, so we have trillions of dollars that need to be reinvested into the infrastructure of our places.

My concern is that in this rush to do all of this stuff that obviously has to be done, that we’re going to rush forward and look at the lowest bidder, “Let’s just get it done because we’ve got a lot of stuff to do.” And I’m afraid that we’re going to miss a real opportunity to build better stuff. Part of it is we have to think about infrastructure in a different way. The point I make is, we live with infrastructure for a long time, sometimes it takes time for the qualities and the effects of that to manifest.

For instance, when we built the interstate highway system, I don’t think we intended to create a car culture that was going to isolate us in our cars and put us into perpetual traffic jams as we go to and from work. When we built the suburbs and gated communities, we didn’t intend them to isolate us from our neighbors and reduce social capital, but they did. When we built ubiquitous, always-on internet, WiFi and smart phones, we didn’t intend to create a whole culture of people who are bent over their phones, alone amongst many, but we did.

So, we haven’t thought this stuff through. I would hope that as we enter this period of furious investment and reinvestment in our infrastructure, that we look at it with a slightly bigger lens than simply getting it done. Because again, we’re going to live with this stuff for a long time.

Taking a local perspective on what you’ve written in your new book, you’ve previously talked a lot about shared spaces. What role does infrastructure like the new pier play in our city?

The pier is an interesting one. In my second book, I called the whole undoing of the Lens project, the referendum and basically everything grinding to a complete halt, a self-inflicted wound. I gently chided our city – ourselves, I guess – for doing that. At the time of that writing, there had been no meaningful progress on the new pier. Obviously, we’re on the cusp of the new pier now, I think it’s going to be amazing. I interviewed the mayor about this and he rightly pointed out, the new pier has to be not just good, it has to be great. Which explains why the budget has gone up and up and up and he’s wanted more money for better design and public art. Because I think he recognized – and I agree – that the new pier has to not only be a successful public space, but it actually has to seal a breach in our community. Think about it: that was something that really divided our community. Old pier, new pier, no pier, whatever. That was a big deal. When this new pier comes in, it can’t just be good. It actually has to make the people who wanted to change the pier go, “This is what I’ve been waiting for.” The ones who didn’t want to spend a nickel of public dollars on any of this stuff, it has to be so good that they go, “Wow, this is actually pretty cool.”

What will be amazing about it? 

People tend to focus on the end of the pier. Like the old inverted pyramid, we focused on that because it was iconic, it was the visual thing and it was kind of the destination. There wasn’t really a whole lot to do between where you parked and where you ended up there. But what’s interesting to me about the new pier is that the whole approach is an interactive area. A marketplace, kiosks, vendors, a children’s playground, public art, an interactive greeting space. That’s the part that I think folks are really going to gravitate to because it’s so interactive. I can do stuff there, I can bring my kids, I can bring my dog and we can walk around out there. The new pier’s going to be really wonderful. People will be excited. I was excited just walking around it.

What do you think about the aspect of equity or having a place that is available for every type of person?

Equity is super important. Parks and green space – those are the great unifiers – open and accessible to everyone. Downtowns not just in St. Pete, but downtowns everywhere, if they are growing and vibrant, are becoming more expensive. And that is a challenge for cities. Cities need to make an investment in the most equitable places in our communities. Of course, parks and green spaces are things like that. But so are little things like dog parks, playgrounds and the library. Those become incredibly important as the economy grows and all of the good stuff that you want to have with economic development, in that equation there are some who are going to win more and some who are going to lose more and we have to be conscious of investing in the spaces that make those on the less-advantaged side still feel like this community is for them. And we do that by investing in public spaces. Really good public spaces.

What would you like to see happen with the Tropicana Field site?

The Tropicana Field site is a generational opportunity for the city. Eighty-three acres – think about how excited the folks over in Tampa were about Channelside – and that was half the size of this. The easiest thing for the city to do is to put out a giant RFP and find a master plan developer who can do the entire thing. I get that, and I’m sure whoever is selected will do a great job.

But I think it would be kind of interesting – instead of giving the whole thing to one master planner – what if we carved out 10-15 acres of that and made that an opportunity for local developers, local businesses to step up? I would like to see that because I think it would create just a little diversity. Good downtowns happen because somebody has a vision over here, across the street another guy has a vision there and down the street somebody else has a vision there. Variety, not homogeneity. My concern would be 83 acres of homogeneity. A good developer would not do that, but it would be kind of nice to throw some other – to use a biological metaphor – genetic material into the mix, as it were.

You’ve previously written about co-creators and you often use a local example of the archetypal co-creator. Can you talk about that?

Absolutely, Bob Devin Jones as the archetypal co-creator. I’ve mentioned him in all three books. In the first book, when I defined the term, he was the first example used. I still use him in my talks. Bob’s a treasure, but the point that I make when I talk about Bob is that every community has their version of Bob Devin Jones. The challenge is that we think that’s just Bob being Bob.

But Bob being Bob is extraordinary. and every community needs more of that. We should not just assume that Bob just happens. At some point, Bobs can lose energy, they can lose enthusiasm, they can move on, for whatever reason. So, we need to cultivate those and recognize them as the wonderful natural resource they are, and appreciate them. Not just say, “Oh Bob’s being Bob.” No, you need more of that. Because he inspires other people.

Are there other local examples of co-creators?

In my second book, I wrote about Reuben Pressman. At the time, he was finishing up school, his software company [Presence] was sort of an idea, but he was doing that crazy Swings Tampa Bay project. So that’s what I wrote about. But look where he is at now. He’s the city’s Entrepreneur-In-Residence, he’s got a software company with a couple of rounds of funding – that’s a big deal.

These co-creators might start out as a student or a young artist with a crazy idea that wants to do this weird project. But if we encourage them, if we support them, we give them the space to operate, and they iterate on stuff, boom, Entrepreneur-in-Residence.

Reuben has probably had the opportunity to move his company out of St. Pete or out of the Tampa Bay market. I’m sure some of those investors have said, shouldn’t you be in Silicon Valley, shouldn’t you be in Austin, Atlanta, or Charlotte, where there’s more money, theoretically more talent. But because he clearly still has this very positive association with this area and this city, I think that’s one of the reasons why he probably stays.

As St. Pete moves toward its Vision 2050, what do you think should be St. Pete’s focus in the next 30 years?

We need to address social equity, the environment, maintenance on infrastructure, all that kind of stuff. But here’s the advice I would give to St. Pete, and really this is good advice to any city: Thirty years in the future, God only knows what’s going to happen. Try to predict five years into the future and that’s hard to do. The thing is, the 2050 vision isn’t really a plan, it’s a direction. So what I hope is built into that document is: What do you stand for? What are the principles that are built into this particular vision?

In that 30-year plan, be strategically principled. When you make decisions, remember what you said you believe in. But 30 years is a long time, so be tactically flexible.

Right now, scooters are coming to St. Petersburg. That’s cool, but scooters are not the future of mobility in cities. Being tactically flexible, today it’s scooters, maybe tomorrow it’s OneWheels or hoverboards. God only knows what it’s going to be.

What are some other cities that you are talking about in your book, learning a lot from, or are good examples we can use here in St. Pete to follow in their footsteps?

In my second book, I wrote about Orlando’s Lake Eola Fountain. In 2009, the Lake Eola Fountain was struck by lightning. Mayor Dyer made a commitment to rebuild the fountain and bring it back to life even bigger and better than before. And it wasn’t cheap to fix and in 2009, cities were in a fairly significant budget crunch. So they redid it, all of the lights, all of the hydraulics and all that stuff and the mayor said people would not stop thanking him, thanking him for bringing the light back to their city. That is emotional infrastructure. When the mayor did that, he did something that had clear emotional resonance and significance for his community far beyond just fixing a fountain.

In the new book, I tell the next chapter of that story. The next chapter has to do with the Pulse Nightclub shooting. It’s June 2016, Pulse Nightclub shooting happens. In the aftermath of that, when the community is rallying to do a vigil, where do they go? Lake Eola. Forty thousand people showed up at Lake Eola. Why? Because the mayor – in his foresight – and the city had made that into one of the psychic centers of their place. Maybe the psychic center of their place.

So that emotional infrastructure, which they fixed and rebuilt to make people feel better about their city, it turns out he was actually building emotional infrastructure that was there for the city when they were going through maybe one of the worst things that’s ever happened to them. That emotional infrastructure is there not just to make us feel good, but it’s there when we want to literally fall to the ground on our knees and weep or cry out in anger. Emotional infrastructure, that’s the kind of stuff that supports us in good times and in bad times.

What’s interesting is the city changed the city flag and the logo became the fountain. Think about that. This is the symbol of us – that fountain in the heart of their downtown. In some ways, I think our pier is going to be that kind of emotional infrastructure it’s going to be the place we go when we celebrate and unfortunately, God help us, in times of strife when we have to mourn something. I bet that’s where we’re going to go.

Continue Reading
Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

By posting a comment, I have read, understand and agree to the Posting Guidelines.

The St. Pete Catalyst

The Catalyst honors its name by aggregating & curating the sparks that propel the St Pete engine.  It is a modern news platform, powered by community sourced content and augmented with directed coverage.  Bring your news, your perspective and your spark to the St Pete Catalyst and take your seat at the table.

Email us: spark@stpetecatalyst.com

Subscribe for Free

Share with friend

Enter the details of the person you want to share this article with.