I found the book For the Love of Cities by Peter Kageyama (2011) an inspiring read in which the author takes an interesting approach to the passion of building healthy cities. In my opinion, the subtitle “The love affair between people and their places” says it all. While we each spend a significant portion of our professional lives dealing with day-to-day efforts to keep a community on the correct path, I’m not sure how much time and effort we spend on the larger picture.

As Kageyama points out, if we step back and look at the sum of our efforts we can see that cities of today compete to be the best places to live and where the best talent wants to be located. This book looks at residents as those with an emotional connection to the community where they live and what actually makes the difference between one city and another.

The author provides examples that inspire real placemaking. These examples look at what makes one city more appealing than another. It’s realizing a connection to the place that residents call a city. The author helps us understand that it’s not the transit system or the utilities that we connect with; rather, it’s the places and the feel of the community we enjoy or don’t enjoy.

As leaders, local government managers should all be inspired to pick up this book and read it before the next council meeting or the next staff meeting. Better yet, give a copy to both the councilmembers and the executive staff team members and challenge them to read it.

We can make our communities more livable for everyone by taking these views to heart.