Celebrate your City this Weekend with Jane’s Walk!
By TH!NK by IBI
Date
May 4, 2018
Jane’s Walk is a three-day festival of free citizen-led walking tours in celebration of urban activist Jane Jacobs. Taking place across the world this weekend, city dwellers can participate in guided tours which highlight observations, activism, local histories, or other topics of interest. Walks are open to people and families of all ages and are a perfect weekend activity to celebrate all that Jacobs fought for!
Jane Jacobs was an urban activist and writer whose community-based approach to urban planning is continually celebrated to this day. Jacobs had no formal background as an urban planner and instead, collected her insight through firsthand experience and observation of the city around her. Jacobs’ most famous work, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, is a commentary on the failed state of orthodox urbanism in America in the 1950’s and 60’s. At the time, planning rhetoric rested on highway-centric policies and urban renewal projects that traded blighted slums for high rise towers. Jacobs saw these approaches as “elaborately learned superstitions” and instead advocated for human-scale planning, including mixed-use neighborhoods and an “eyes on the street” approach to safety.
Jane Jacobs is one of the most influential urbanists in history and dedicated her life to advocating for urban communities. After all, when we think of the cities we love we tend to visualize hole-in-the wall cafes, and vibrant street life, rather than tall housing projects and highways.
Take this weekend to celebrate the charming neighborhoods in your city and explore the metropolis through the eyes of Jane Jacobs! Learn more about what’s happening in your city on Jane’s Walk.
Image by Ser Amantio di Nicolao via Wikimedia Commons.
