As last year, I'm dropping a plug for the May 1 and 2 Jane's Walks, which commemorate urban thinker and Toronto resident Jane Jacobs. There are a gazillion walks now, and in just four years, they've spread from their birthplace of Toronto to a multitude of cities across North America as well as in Ireland, Uruguay, India and Spain.
I'd especially like to tout walks that are being led by friends of mine in Toronto and in Kitchener. Diane Dyson is doing two in Toronto that resemble the one she and I used to lead in Little India, but, unlike me, Diane has considerable research-based expertise in what makes a neighbourhood work because of her many years as an activist and working with the United Way and Woodgreen Community Services. (See link to her blog below.) She's leading a walk called "Neighbourhoods 101: Theories of Place-based Community Organization," and, with our neighbour, affable and wise historian Doug Fyfe, she's co-leading Greenwood-Coxwell: Belonging Community. Either walk will tell you why I love where I live.
In Kitchener, you can find out from my friend Rosemary Kelly what it's like to be a single woman who lives in the downtown core of the city without a car -- yes, it can be done -- during her walk "Living in Downtown Kitchener."
And also in Kitchener, another old friend, Jim Bindernagel, is co-leading two walks on the Iron Horse Trail, where the old train tracks have given way to walking paths.
Or choose from many, many other walks that illustrate Jane Jacobs's contention:
No one can find what will work for our cities by looking at … suburban garden cities, manipulating scale models, or inventing dream cities. You’ve got to get out and walk.”
-Downtown is for People, 1957.
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1 comment:
Cool that Rosemary is doing one in Kitchener and to know about the other one as well -- thanks for posting! I have to work that day, but otherwise would definitely participate. Did one in Waterloo last year that was most interesting.
K.
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