Jane's Walk Season is Here
Discover your neighbourhood, or one that you have always been curious about
It’s Jane’s Walk Season!
On May 5th, I am leading my first Jane’s Walk since moving to Winnipeg. We will spend a couple of hours wandering and discovering my neighbourhood of West Broadway.
https://winnipegarts.ca/janes-walk/discover-west-broadway
There’s Something About Jane
Every year during the first weekend of May community members right across Canada (and in over 20 other countries around the world) set out to explore and share their neighbourhoods. Jane’s Walks were started in Toronto in 2006 to celebrate the life and legacy of Jane Jacobs (1916-2006).
Jane Jacobs was a community leader and activist. Prior to moving to Canada in 1968, she is best known for writing the seminal book “The Death and Life of Great American Cities” and for stopping the destruction of New York’s Greenwich Village by a planned freeway through it’s heart.
Jane was ultimately about community. Not a planner by training, she brought a community perspective to how we build and live in cities. She advocated for cities being people-centric rather than car-centric as we see in so many North American cities. (Yes, 50 years later, we still have a very long way to go!). Whenever you hear people talking about “eyes on the street”, or “social capital” they are talking about Jane Jacobs’ ideas.
She is a premiere thinker about what it means to live in a city, and how we can grow and build resilient communities together. Her writing and activism has influenced urban planners and thinkers for decades.
Jane’s Walks as Celebration
So when Jane Jacobs died in 2006, people in Toronto decided there was no better way to celebrate her legacy than to host a community walk and talk about the things that Jane loved.
Jane’s Walks were born.
Celebrating My Communities
I led my first Jane’s Walk in 2008, the first year they were organized in Calgary. That first year I was thrilled to host a group of people exploring the Garrison Woods neighbourhood in Calgary. Between then and 2017, I hosted 10 walks in different neighbourhoods and areas around Calgary. We explored the local area planning around Anderson Station, the potential in the redevelopment of Currie Barracks, the history of Rouleauville, Calgary’s original Francophone area, and how transitways would integrate within existing communities.
It was a joy to share these amazing neighbourhoods, explore the history and share ideas about the future. And it truly is about sharing. While there is a Walk “leader”, everyone connects and relates to their community and surroundings differently. Everyone has a different story about what community means to them. A Jane’s Walk gives us a chance to share those stories and connections.
We set out together on a Walk to discover and connect with a community, using the built environment as the door in. Spending a couple of hours walking the sidewalks and paths, stopping at the community gardens, admiring the architecture opens us to connecting with each other.
Discover West Broadway
Finally, after living in Winnipeg for almost 5 years, and after leading 10 different Jane’s Walks in Calgary, I feel comfortable enough to lead one in my new home. I moved into the community of West Broadway the summer of 2019. I was immediately struck by how open and welcoming my new neighbours were. Within a week I knew more people on my block than I knew after 5 years in Calgary. Yeah, the license plate is right, Manitoba is a friendly place.
Since then I have learned so much about my neighbourhood. I have discovered the wonderful gems sprinkled throughout West Broadway. It has become my home, my neighbourhood, and most importantly, my community. As I talk about where I live with others, I think it’s also a deeply misunderstood and dismissed community. I am excited to be able to share some of that with others.
Join me on the afternoon of May 5th: Discover West Broadway Jane’s Walk
Enabler Places
As we think about our neighbourhoods, new and old, we should think about what we build as enabling the very human connections we need to build real community. We have moved away from thinking about what that enabling “infrastructure” looks like at the very local level within our neighbourhoods. It is many things big and small, but mostly small.
Every interaction we have with each other builds community. Our neighbourhoods should contain opportunities to do exactly that at every turn. How we interact with each other, on a human level and scale, should be the primary determinant of what we build.
If we consider enabling human connection as the main driving force in neighbourhood design and renewal, then we end up with wide sidewalks, pocket parks, community gardens, small playgrounds, benches, public art, splash pads, libraries, local community centres, neighbourhood rinks and pools, local shops and services, and any other place where people can “bump” into each other and connect.
This is what enabling infrastructure looks like, this is the type of neighbourhood that is designed to build community where people live. I am lucky that West Broadway has all these things. And what West Broadway has in spades is a connected, caring, and sharing community.
And I can’t wait to share that with others.
Brian
ps. The Winnipeg Arts Council is the organizer for the Winnipeg Jane’s Walks. I am thrilled they have taken the lead for Winnipeg. Check out their website for more Jane’s Walks across Winnipeg May 3rd - 5th: Winnipeg Jane’s Walks