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Canadian Urbanism Uncovered

Lead a Jane’s Walk!

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ALL OVER – “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 way of knitting people together into strong and resourceful communities.”

Since it’s inception in Toronto in 2007, every first weekend of May (to coincide with Jane Jacobs’ b-day), Jane’s Walk sends swaths of pedestrians out to infiltrate and explore the urban landscape. The walks honour urban activist and writer Jane Jacobs who championed the interests of local residents and pedestrians, and encouraged planning that would build relationships between a city and its traversers. A “walking conversation”, Jane’s Walks can vary thematically from architecture to street food, so long as they foster dialogue among neighbours and urban enthusiasts.

Last year saw the most widespread and most glorious Jane’s Walk ever, with walks happening in 424 neighbourhoods in 68 countries worldwide. Spacing Atlantic hosted Halifax’s own Jane’s Walk, tackling the theme of transformation in the downtown, and sharing leadership  — via megaphone —among any walk participants who had a story, fact, or anecdote to tell about the changes they were seeing around them.

With the big weekend approaching on May 7th and 8th, it’s time to start thinking about what kind of walks you’d like to participate in — or better yet, lead! With support from the Jane’s Walk community and Spacing Atlantic — who will help with publicity, logistics, and web management — feel free to get inventive, and dream up new routes and themes that might make us think about and experience Atlantic Canadian communities differently.

View the invite here, and get in touch with Operations Director Emmy Pantin (emmy@janeswalk.net), Executive Director Jane Farrow (director@janeswalk.net), or local Spacing Atlantic contributor Emma Feltes (emmafeltes@spacing.ca).

photo by Katie McKay

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One comment

  1. Emma – thanks for the Jane’s Walk plug. We sure would be thrilled to have more walks like the one you did last year. I am particularly enamoured of Halifax and Dartmouth having lived out there for a few years – it’s such a great friendly, chatty town – a natural home to walking and talking about cities and neighbourhoods. And so much going on out there. So yeah – here’s hoping you get some bites on leading walks – it’s all pretty simple and there’s lots of help available from us and the website. One thing – last year featured 424 walks, in 68 cities and 9 countries….. 68 countries would be truly amazing but hey, we keep growing quickly so maybe someday!