OP-ED: Jane’s Walk Brings City to Life

By Annabel Vaughan

"The ballet of the good city sidewalk never repeats itself from place to place, and in any once place is always replete with new improvisations."
- Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities

With an early spring bursting throughout the city and the streets strangely empty in the post-Olympic quiet, it seems like a great time for a walk. It's a time to walk through the streets with neighbours, historians, geographers, storytellers, activists, writers and artists and a whole host of fellow wayfinders who will help bring our city to life.

Legendary urban thinker, writer and activist Jane Jacobs (1916-2006) was an urbanist and activist whose writings championed a fresh, community-based approach to city building. She had no formal training as a planner, and yet her 1961 book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, introduced ground-breaking ideas about how cities function, evolve and fail that now seem like common sense to a generation of architects, planners, politicians and activists. Jacobs helped derail the car-centred approach to urban planning in North America and here in Vancouver, invigorating neighbourhood activism by helping stop the expansion of expressways and roads.

All of us, in our own way, are paying tribute to Jane Jacobs who reminded us to walk through our neighbourhoods with our eyes and ears open to the stories, open to the unique rituals of place and the potential of community. Jane's own habit of walking the neighbourhood has been transformed into a powerful grassroots tribute to a remarkable woman.

I have been leading Jane's Walks since 2008 when Think City hosted Vancouver's first walks. I was thrilled to find out they were happening here because it has let me pay tribute to Jane in my own way. I was brought up in Toronto in the 1970s in a political family. Some of my first memories are of rallies and the power of neighbourhood activism.

It was a time when the collective voice of the people was heard and allowed to shape the direction of our cities. Looking back on it, it was a pretty remarkable time for people across the country – we were stopping expressways, saving unique communities, fighting for the environment and turning back the nuclear clock. Our voices were heard loud and clear and we managed to make a difference.

I may be naïve, but this grassroots bottom up passion instilled in me a way to think and live in the city. I was taught that to be a citizen meant to be engaged, and to not be afraid to speak up and fight for what you believe in.

I learned that community was about saying hello to a neighbour and listening to their stories, that it was important to support local merchants and to get to know their names, that the kids were all of our responsibility, and if you hadn't seen an elderly neighbour out for a walk in a few days you knocked on their door to make sure they had everything they needed.

The adults around me were also amazing storytellers – I always wondered how they managed that - but I've come to realize that they were just talking about their encounters and telling us what they had discovered in their travels that day. I know that my own curiosity about whatever city I am in has been influenced by that experience.

Jane's Walks were started in May 2007 by a group of Jane's friends and colleagues in Toronto who wanted to honour her ideas and legacy. Think City has organized Jane's Walks on the first weekend in May since 2008. Last year, over 750 Vancouverites participated in twenty-seven Jane's Walks throughout the city. This year Think City is aiming to host even more Jane's Walks.

Since moving to Vancouver I have discovered a fascinating city full of all sorts of local curiosities and peculiar histories that have laid out the city and provided me with an opportunity to participate in it as a neighbour, activist, architect and writer.

Through Jane's lens, I have come to see Vancouver as a dynamic, young city full of exciting stories to tell. Each May, a growing number of people take to the streets to bring their neighbourhoods to life. Vancouverites will be doing it again this year. Won't you join us?

To host a Jane's Walk or learn more, click here.

Annabel Vaughan is an intern architect working in Vancouver. She is an adjunct Professor in the School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture at the University of British Columbia and has been an active voice in shaping the direction of her neighbourhood, Mount Pleasant. She is passionate about understanding how Vancouver has come to be the city it is, where it is headed in the future and how citizen engagement can affect the outcome.

OP-ED articles do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Think City. To make a submission to the OP-ED section of the Think City Minute, please email editor@thinkcity.ca for details.