LOVE YOUR CITY AND DARE TO BE DIFFERENT

The Bank of Ideas presented  Peter Kageyama, the author of Love of Cities at the East Fremantle Yacht Club this morning and it turned out to be some sort of ‘love in’ because Peter’s talk was all about loving the city we live in and to create an atmosphere for visitors that make them love our cities. What is comes down to is basically common sense; less red tape and allowing creative people to implement their ideas with the support of local government. Relationship between the city and its people is a two-way street and what kind of relationship we have with the place we live in. Do we see the beauty or are we mainly concerned with rubbish collection, parking, traffic, pot holes, maintenance, etc? Loving the city one lives in is all about fun and that applies to visitors as well, Peter told us. It is also about people interacting and communicating better through creating space where people can meet. For example pop up dog parks, where the dogs are the ice breakers between people. Peter showed photos of a now pedestrian friendly New York Times Square, a traffic bridge that once a year becomes a long dining table, people leaving love notes, stencils that read It’s Good To Be Here! Signs around cities that point and say It’s only a 12-minute walk to the Arts centre, etc. It basically is about the low hanging fruit, things we all can do and that don’t have to cost a lot of money. I agree with Peter that sometimes we have to break the rules, and councils need to be more flexible, to create the place we want to live in. Sometimes it needs to be shown how silly some of the rules and regulations we have are. It is essential to have time and places for fun and play as that is where we form a relationship with other people who live here. Cities need to surprise and delight people, so they return for another visit. An important message Peter gave us that if it is all about the money we will never have great public art, and I will add, we might not have had the Fremantle Youth Plaza. Great ideas do not have to have immediate economic return.  Value exceeds cost if it has a high impact. Maybe the solution we are looking for is a solution we have never seen before, so it is essential to be open-minded and embrace new ideas, even if at government levels those ideas are not fully understood. It should be an absolute objective to involve those who are not part of the decision-making, and not to forget that love is the best thing people do. It is always inspiring to listen to people who step away from the norm and dare to be different. Fremantle has many creative people and many good ideas float around in our city. All it needs is for council to be brave enough to embrace as many ideas as possible and not to get bogged down with nanny-state mentality.   Roel Loopers