"For the Love of Cities" Author Visits Largo

Peter Kageyma will be the first to tell you how cool his job is.

Thanks to his immensely popular book, "For the Love of Cities", the St. Petersburg based author and consultant gets to travel the world working with civic leaders trying to boost love and pride in their communities.

When Tanya Pistillo learned that Kageyama was willing to come to town and discuss how to improve Largo's civic pride, the owner of Wandering Star Gallery and founder of the Downtown Largo Merchant's Association was understandably thrilled.

"For Peter to come here - all I can say is wow," Pistillo said last week. "His book echoes everything I feel in my heart."

Kageyama met with Pistillo and Largo City Commissioner Jamie Robinson at Pistillo's East Bay Drive gallery on Friday for a brainstorming session on how to go about improving the love for Largo.

"I came here to get a feel for what's going on, to meet Jamie and Tanya and see what they are going to do to drum up love for Largo," Kageyama said.

"There's value to people being emotionally engaged with their city. The more people who fall in love with their city, the better," he added. "But how do you do it?"

Kageyama, who has visited more than 100 cities worldwide since his book was published in 2011, offered some suggestions to help get the ball rolling.

He said it's important to have full cooperation from "local champions," official and unofficial representatives who make things happen in the city.

And he also stressed that no idea should be considered to silly or too crazy to merit consideration.

"It's not just about volunteering, but about coming up with ideas," Kageyama said. "We want people to believe there's value to their ideas no matter how silly they seem."

Some ideas that were bandied about include having dancers perform on the median on West Bay Drive and other roads; yarn bombing; and citywide group hugs.

But Kageyama also gave some simple advice for improving people's perception of the city.

"The language and tone you use in describing things in the city is very important," he said. "Talk about things you love instead of things you hate."

The three set up a tentative plan to have Kageyama come back to town to speak at a large city event and help come up with solutions to spread the love of Largo throughout the community.

Both Pistillo and Robinson couldn't have been happier with the initial meeting.

"I'm going to do everything I can to help get city leaders involved with this," Robinson said. "I would love to see something happen and I will be working to make something happen."

"I now believe that getting people to fall in love with their city is more possible than I even thought," Pistillo said. "Peter has shown us the possibility that there's great things to come."

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