{"id":24257,"date":"2014-02-25T10:00:56","date_gmt":"2014-02-25T18:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacing.ca\/vancouver\/?p=24257"},"modified":"2014-04-10T14:47:28","modified_gmt":"2014-04-10T21:47:28","slug":"janes-walk-annual-book-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/vancouver\/2014\/02\/25\/janes-walk-annual-book-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review – Jane\u2019s Walk Annual: Volume One"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/em>\"\"<\/em><\/p>\n

“This book is about what can happen when people get together and go for a walk. In Guadalajara, they made a citizen\u2019s crosswalk by tracking paint across the road. In Zurich, they took turns wearing blindfolds and being led through a busy shopping concourse. In Calcutta they ventured out to the wetlands at the city\u2019s brink. In Ottawa and Colchester, children led tours of their favourite parks. In these and nearly a hundred other cities around the globe, people from all walks of life organized and participated in Jane\u2019s Walks \u2013 walking conversations about the stories, ideas and issues that animate the places where they live. In this inaugural edition of the Jane\u2019s Walk Annual, they share those conversations in their own words and pictures.”<\/em><\/p>\n

– From the Introduction<\/p>\n

Published by Blurb (2013)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Over one special weekend last May, thousands of people around the globe took a walk through their respective neighbourhoods in order to gain a greater sense of the history of where they lived. In so doing, they collectively shared in the memory of Jane Jacobs<\/a>, the celebrated urbanist and author whose passing eight years ago prompted these annual walks to begin. With this year\u2019s walks just a few months away, it is a good moment to reflect upon her legacy and marvel at how her spirit could evoke such a wonderful event. According to the Jane\u2019s Walk official website<\/a>, the 2013 walks occurred in over 100 cities \u2013 800 walks in total \u2013 from over 22 countries. Marvelous indeed!<\/p>\n

And now perhaps more than ever, in our age of virtual socializing, it is imperative for us all to get outside and meet our neighbors and to engage in conversations face-to-face, which is precisely the opportunity that Jane\u2019s Walks provides. The book Jane\u2019s Walk Annual: Volume One<\/em> was created in much this same spirit over this past Holiday season.\u00a0 Available online via Blurb<\/a>,\u00a0Jane\u2019s Walk<\/em> features 34 of the cities that have participated over the past years, from three different continents \u2013 Asia, Europe, and North America. With the communities that participated alphabetized in the table of contents, the randomness of the cities form a wonderful global mosaic, with Guelph next to Guadalajara, Calcutta next to Calgary, and Mexico City next to Montreal.<\/p>\n

Vancouver is represented by two contrasting walks in the book – one looking at the natural world overlaid by an artificial one (and coincidentally passing along Wreck Beach on the way), while the other walk is focused on the early vestiges of downtown Vancouver\u2019s settlement through the street grid of the downtown business district. This final walk also serves to illustrate the spirit of Jane, in that it speaks to Vancouver\u2019s rising up against the Gastown 200 project\u2014a project in which bulldozers threatened to demolish parts of Gastown, Chinatown, and Strathcona in the 1960\u2019s, echoing Jane\u2019s historic protest against the freeway that Robert Moses had planned to go through Greenwich Village a few years earlier.<\/p>\n

As Denise Pinto, Director of Jane\u2019s Walk points out in the book\u2019s introduction: \u201cOur global event is a story, too. One that has the potential to show how our cities are alike and to prompt the exchange of good ideas. This book is a journey through those ideas in a format that allows us to bridge extraordinary geographies.\u201d One could add also that these stories are being told in a myriad of languages: English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Slovenian, Swedish, Finnish, Mandarin, German, and Hebrew.<\/p>\n

Jane\u2019s Walk is then the inverse of the Tower of Babel, as it has enabled many voices in many languages to speak all at once, and\u00a0in the space of one weekend, on the common theme of how to live in the modern city. It is a conversation we absolutely need to be having right now as the majority of our global populations shift from the countryside to the city, from the rural to the urban landscape.<\/p>\n

Most remarkable about Jane\u2019s Walks, and often forgotten, is that it is a totally volunteer-based enterprise, with all 800 tour leaders having given their own time to give the walks. Each walk is distinct, reflecting the unique education and cause of each tour leader, whether championing the local OCP, or simply celebrating a unique neighbourhood\u2019s heritage. There is no methodology for the walks, and at any time people are able to sign-up and volunteer a walk of their own on the website.<\/p>\n

Jane\u2019s Walk Annual: Volume One<\/em>\u00a0likewise is modest for this reason – with less than 100 pages and in a tight 6\u201d x 6\u201d format, it still packs a punch with its numerous colour photos of the walks, along with the short and intimate descriptions of them. Proceeds for the book will go partially to the creation of the next book, as well as to the Tides Canada Initiatives Society, a registered charity.<\/p>\n

Spacing has featured pieces on Jane\u2019s Walk on two occasions before, one from the vantage point of the tour-goer and the other from the point of view of the tour leader<\/a>. With May just around the corner, now is the time to decide whether you will put on your walking shoes to join your neighbours for a leisurely stroll, or if you yourself will take the helm and guide a handful of folks down memory lane. With Jane\u2019s Walk turning six-years-old this May, come out and help to celebrate, and get a breath of fresh air while you\u2019re at it! Surely we can take a short break from our Netflix and TED talks for an hour or two – we might even learn something about each other and ourselves that doesn\u2019t start with a hashtag.<\/p>\n

As such, Jane must have the final word here, as she noted speaking about the proliferation of the automobile in 1961 in her The Death and Life of Great American Cities:<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is nothing economically or socially inevitable about either the decay of old cities or the fresh-minted decadence of the new unurban urbanization. On the contrary, no other aspect of our economy and society has been more purposefully manipulated for a full quarter century to achieve precisely what we are getting. Extraordinary governmental financial incentives have been required to achieve this degree of monotony, sterility, and vulgarity. Decades of preaching, writing, and exhorting by experts have gone into convincing us and our legislators that mush like this must be good for us, as long as it comes bedded with grass.\u00a0It may be that we have become so feckless as a people that we no longer care how things work, but what kind of quick, easy outer impression they give. If so there is little hope for our cities or probably for much else in our society. But I do not think this is so.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

You can buy\u00a0Jane\u2019s Walk: Volume One<\/strong> through Blurb<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

**<\/p>\n

For more information on Jane’s Walk, visit their website<\/a>.<\/em>
\n*<\/p>\n

Sean Ruthen<\/strong> is a Vancouver-based architect and writer.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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