Peter Kageyama met Richard Florida in 2003 and it changed his career path. He had started a web development firm in 1995, but once he and Florida met the game was changed. Over time, his work became heavily focused on community development, talent attraction/retention and creative industries development. He puts on the annual Creative Cities Summit, produced the documentary “Charles Landry and the Art of City Making,” and recently just released a book called For the Love of Cities that focuses in part on Detroit.

In the book he discusses the notion of “lovable cities”– the idea that in some places people become more invested in the social being and welfare of their city, creating a stronger tie between the city itself and its people. In many ways, Detroit has a lot of this lovin’ going on, and Peter discusses a few local efforts in the book– Sean Mann’s Detroit City Futbol League and Kate Daughdrill’s Detroit SOUP to name a couple. Both initiatives demonstrate non-traditional ways in which once can strengthen the bond between people and place. The benefits of such strong relations, as Kageyama points out, is that “we open up new possibilities in community, social and economic development by including the most powerful of motivators— the human heart— in our toolkit of city-making.”

Peter’s book is available, signed, for the time being, at Bureau of Urban Living, but something in me says this will not last long. If you miss the book at Bureau, stop by Leopold’s and Greg can probably order it for you. If all that fails, buy the book on Amazon.com.

If you miss all that, catch Peter speaking at the upcoming Rust Belt to Artist Belt Conference on April 6. He is giving a talk around lunchtime. Pick up your tickets for that event and check out the full schedule.