JANE JACOBS WALKING TOUR

LEAD A JANE JACOBS WALKING TOUR

“No one can find what will work for our cities by looking at …suburban garden cities, manipulating scale models, or inventing dream cities. You’ve got to get out and walk”
– Jane Jacobs

ANNUAL JANE’S WALK MAY 1 & 2 2010

Jane’s Walk is the street-level celebration of Jane Jacobs’ legacy that combines the simple act of walking with personal observations, urban history and local lore as a means of knitting people together into strong and resourceful communities. Over 10,000 people explored over 315 neighbourhoods across Canada and the United States last year – and it went global with one tour in Mumbai, India!

We are inviting you to lead a tour in an area where you live, work or play. It simply involves
planning a route, thinking through the stories, places and people you want to hear about and discuss, then walking participants through it – you decide what’s important. If you like, you could share the guiding duties with a few other resourceful friends or colleagues.

Jane's Walk aids in the socially desirable goal of getting people out of their cars and onto the sidewalks for the basic tasks of daily life, shopping, schools and work. Jane’s Walks are meant to be fun and participatory – everyone’s got a story and they’re usually keen to share it. All tours are given, and taken, for free. We help with the publicity, logistics and website management – you need to get the word out with your local networks and friends. We also have useful resources and ‘tips for tour guides’ available through our on-line forum that connects you with Jane’s Walks guides from around the world (will be launched on Jane’s Walk website by March 2010).

You don’t have to be familiar with Jane Jacobs’ work to lead a tour, but this is a great way to get familiarized with some basic ideas. In books such as “The Death and Life of Great American Cities” (1961) she championed the interests of local residents and pedestrians over a car-centered approach to planning, made the case for refurbishing old buildings instead of tearing them down and building new ones, and demonstrated the desirability of increasing the density of cities instead of sprawling endlessly outward.

Jane’s Walk first happened in Toronto in 2007, and has since spread to a dozen other cities including New York, Ottawa, Calgary, Halifax, Guelph, Salt Lake City, Regina, Winnipeg, New Orleans, Montreal and Vancouver. For details of what Jane’s Walk has been like in the past visit our website at www.janeswalk.net.

We hope you’ll join us in offering an insider’s take on your city’s vibrant and fascinating neighbourhoods. Please get in touch at janeswalkregina@gmail.com or call 737-7185 for more info.