Click here or here for list of walks near you.

My Walk, Retracing Stop Spadina, begins at 12 noon in front of the Eglinton West Subway Station.

The City of Toronto has officially proclaimed today as Jane Jacobs Day starting what would have been Jane Jacobs’ 91st birthday weekend.

Jeff Gray has an item in today’s Globe and Mail titled City honours urban vision of Jane Jacobs.

Tomorrow, we’ll post a complete listing here of all the Jane’s Walks along with maps and directions to starting points, making it easier to choose your one or two walks for your day.

For today, now that Jane Jacobs is gone, let’s wonder who the NEXT Jane Jacobs is and where do we find her?

Paul Smalera pens a piece in the New York Press:

SWEEPIN’ DOWN BROOME
Observing the inevitable changes of one of the city’s last great nabes

Taking it to the Streets

…If New York has a Jane Jacobs anymore, she probably lives in Brooklyn. But maybe, maybe she might live in the Lower East Side somewhere: nose rings, body tats and polka dot dresses. She observes the “sidewalk dance,” as Jacobs put it, playing out on her block of Broome, while she gets her coffee at 88 Orchard on the way to the subway. It’s not as pretty a dance as it used to be, but then again, maybe we want to remember the dance as being pretty, when it’s always been a little dirty and gritty….

Before Jane Jacobs arrived in Toronto, she was a New Yorker who stood up to Robert Moses and his desire to entomb the Lower East Side with his Lower Manhattan Expressway.

You can read the rest of Paul Smalera’s vision of Neo-Jane Jacobs here.

How well do you know our fabulous city?

On Saturday May 5th, a number of prominent Torontonians will be leading walks around the city’s neighbourhoods to celebrate the life and work of the late Jane Jacobs. Each walk will highlight the people, places, and public spaces that make that particular community interesting and unique.

Jane’s Walk is a great opportunity for Torontonians to discover their own city; both the places they think they know well and the places they want to explore.

Visit http://www.JanesWalk.net/ for more information, or the Jane’s Walk page on Torontopedia!

The Centre for Social Innovation is a proud supporter of this great initiative!
“For illustrations, please look closely at real cities. While you are looking, you might as well also listen, linger, and think about what you see.” – Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities

Proclamation

May 4, 2007

WHEREAS Jane Jacobs was born on May 4, 1916 in Scranton, Pennsylvania and moved to Toronto in 1968. Until her death in 2006, she inspired and taught the world how to understand and value our cities, almost single-handedly transforming our ideas about urban life.

Jane Jacobs was a writer, outspoken urban activist, a philosopher of everyday life and an innovator. Her book "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" brought into focus the premise that cities are engines of growth whose vitality stems from the variety of activities people engage in. In other books she analyzed how cities function with one another and how to live in a world of conflicting moral principles.

Jane Jacobs’ arguments were from the ground up, with in-depth observations of everyday places, teaching us about ‘eyes on the street’, life on the sidewalk and that walkable, dense, compact and diverse neighbourhoods were the hallmarks of a healthy city, where people join their creative energies.

NOW THEREFORE, I, Mayor David Miller, on behalf of Toronto City Council, do hereby proclaim MAY 4, 2007 as "Jane Jacobs Day". I encourage all Torontonians to celebrate and honour the foremost urban thinker and activist of our times by participating in the first annual "Jane’s Walk" on Saturday, May 5, in neighbourhoods throughout the city.

[signed]

Mayor David Miller

www.Torontopedia.ca/Jane’s_Walk