Author Peter Kageyama urges Spokane to ‘love’ the city with small, tactical placemaking

Peter Kageyama, an author who writes about emotional engagement between citizens and cities, urged Spokane residents and officials to prioritize small, visible projects that build civic pride and downtown activity during a public presentation and Q&A session.

Kageyama, introduced by Council President Betsy Wilkerson, said cities often focus on fixing “potholes” — the purely functional needs — and neglect investments that create comfort, conviviality and “fun.” “Where’s the fun?” he asked repeatedly as a way to prompt officials and community groups to add playful, memorable features to public space.

Kageyama gave multiple examples of low-cost or tactical placemaking that he said produce outsized returns: the world’s smallest park (Mills End Park) and adult-size swings in Boston’s Lawn On D; murals and painted intersections that reduce tagging and calm traffic; small seating and swings that increase riverfront use; brass “Mice on Main” scavenger-hunt figures that draw visitors in Greenville, S.C.; and the larger, iconic examples such as Chicago’s Millennium Park.

He framed these as “love notes” — small gestures that signal care and change how people feel about a place. Kageyama argued those gestures can come from a mix of top-down investments and grassroots “co‑creators,” people who take tactical, temporary actions to test ideas (often described as tactical urbanism).

In the audience Q&A, speakers asked how the city can nurture independent civic actors while managing liability. Kageyama encouraged easing permissions where reasonable and treating many efforts as experiments: “If it fails, OK — what did we learn?” he said. He also stressed that inexpensive, tactical responses (a “garden‑hose solution”) can be appropriate when budgets are tight.

Kageyama addressed practical features that affect downtown use: adding seating that faces the river, expanding park amenities, restoring small but visible elements such as fountains, and providing public restrooms. He said lack of restroom access is an underreported barrier to downtown visitation and urged officials not to dismiss such “embarrassing” but real constraints.

The talk included a short demonstration and remarks by Peregrine Church, a street‑artist known for “Rainworks” (stencils that appear when wet). Church described his non‑toxic hydrophobic coating stencil work and said that public artists can repurpose familiar materials to create weather‑activated artwork that draws attention and delight.

Kageyama closed by urging Spokane to define its own identity rather than imitate other cities, to take calculated risks and to value intangible returns as well as financial costs: “The folks who know the cost of everything don’t seem to understand the value of anything,” he said.

The session included multiple audience exchanges about how to balance whimsy and budget, how to scale successful small projects, and how public and private partners (including the downtown partnership and local businesses) can support temporary activations and long‑term placemaking.