JANE JACOBS WALKS

Jane Jacobs was an urban thinker ahead of her time. When the great thinkers of the day were promoting freeways and auto-centric suburban development, she spotted what was being lost. To her, the best cities and neighborhoods were organic, constantly evolving communities, or networks of relationships. People knew each other and looked out for each other. Walkability was a key component in her vision of what made a city livable. One of her famous lines was that to know a city, or to know a neighbourhood, you needed to walk it.

She died just a few years ago, in her adopted home of Toronto. To honor her, friends in Toronto began the tradition of prompting people to host walks through their neighborhoods, pointed out what they like, or what Jane might have liked. In a recent interview that discussed neighbourhoods and Jane Jacobs, Richard Florida offers some reasons why we might love our home area:

So in essence a neighborhood is not just a set of individuals, but a set of relationships. I think that’s right. And the relationships are fluid. Some are longstanding and some you can plug into and play. And the places that enable those relationships to form are the places that do better.

Every time we come back to these neighborhoods that are exciting, that are great, there’s a long history behind them.

A Jane’s Walk is a chance to learn more of the local history and relationships that made local history. The experience of learning dozens of new things about your own city, and how cities work at the ground level is amazing. This year I’ll also try the experience of hosting, and sharing some recent history of my own neighborhood.

Find one in your city, or offer to host one… Click here for Canada or global cities. In the US try this direct link. They will happen simultaneously across North America and around the world on May 1 and 2, 2010.

Written by Wendy Waters at All About Cities