10:00 a.m.

Retracing Stop Spadina

Time: Saturday May 3, noon
Meeting place: In front of the Eglinton West Station
Tour Guide: HiMY SYeD

This Jane’s Walk begins where the Spadina Expressway was stopped, the three foot wide sidewalk that then Premier Bill Davis ceded to the Old City of Toronto to block Metro’s desire to complete the expressway south of Eglinton Avenue West.

The tour will then head south, winding our way through neighbourhoods which would have been drastically reduced if not removed had the Spadina Expressway been completed all the way to downtown.

Rest Stops along the way include:

• Forest Hill Village,

• Spadina House beside Casa Loma,

• The park at the top of Albany Avenue at Barton - St. Alban’s Square where we will see the little known “Jacobs Ladder”.

Strolling through The Annex, we will arrive at 69 Albany Avenue, Jane Jacobs’ House, where this Jane’s Walk will end.

A history of the Stop Spadina controversy will be presented throughout the walk, along with stories and archive photos of each of the neighbourhoods we will be walking through.

A limited number of printed materials will be available on a first come first served basis as keepsakes of this Jane’s Walk.

How well do you know our fabulous city? On the weekend of May 3 and 4 the Centre for City Ecology celebrates the legacy of urbanist and writer Jane Jacobs with a series of over 60 free neighbourhood walking tours across Toronto.

The second annual Jane’s Walk spans the range of Toronto’s vibrant and diverse neighbourhoods, from Parkdale to East Scarborough, and the West Donlands to Jane/Finch. The tour guides leading the walks range from former mayors, community gardeners and high school students to urban planners, activists, artists and psycho-geographers. They’re a fun bunch of folks to take a stroll with, so lace up your sneakers and discover your city!

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

Visit http://www.janeswalk.net/ for more information.

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

Mayor David Miller announced in November 2006 that May 4 would officially be “Jane Jacobs Day” in Toronto.

On Sunday May 5, 2007, it will be Jane’s Walk Day in Canada:

Many of Jane’s peers, colleagues, friends and admirers have discussed how best to honour her legacy and have settled on the idea of “Jane’s Walk”, to reinforce her idea of walkable, dense, compact and diverse neighbourhoods as the hallmarks of a healthy city. These characteristics help knit together the people of a neighbourhood into a strong and resourceful community.

The First Annual “Jane’s Walk” will take place on Saturday, May 5, 2007, in numerous locations throughout Toronto. Each walk will feature a tour guide who can speak knowledgeably about the neighbourhood, and will highlight the people, places, and public spaces that make that particular community interesting and unique.

Self-organization is part of the philosophy of Jane’s Walk, hence anyone can start a walk of their own.

For information on featured walks, or to organize your own walk, please visit the Jane’s Walk website.

More on the Spacing Wire and the Jane’s Walk page on Torontopedia!.

This Jane’s Walk begins where the Spadina Expressway was stopped, the three foot wide sidewalk that then Premier Bill Davis ceded to the Old City of Toronto to block Metro’s desire to complete the expressway south of Eglinton.

This Jane’s Walk begins at 12 noon and will head south. We will wind our way through neighbourhoods which would have been drastically reduced if not removed had the Spadina Expressway been completed all the way to downtown.

Rest Stops along the way include:

Forest Hill Village,

Spadina House beside Casa Loma,

The park at the top of Albany Avenue at Barton.

Strolling through The Annex, we will arrive at Kensington Market where this Jane’s Walk will end.

A history of the Stop Spadina controversy will be presented throughout the walk, along with stories and archive photos of each of the neighbourhoods we will be walking through.

Meet in front of the Eglinton West Station at 12 Noon on Saturday May 5, 2007.

Following originally published in the New York Observer:

In the midst of all the hype about, reconsideration of and admiration for Robert Moses comes news from the other side: The Municipal Art Society will hold an exhibit this September about his polar opposite, ur-urbanist Jane Jacobs, in conjunction with a new $200,000 prize that the Rockefeller Foundation will fund. The annual prize has been dubbed the Jane Jacobs Medal.

MAS President Kent Barwick couldn’t say whether it would be as large as the Moses ones now under way in three separate venues (Jacobs would be the first to say that size doesn’t matter), but he will certainly feel the pressure to make it as good.

“It was a complete coincidence that we are doing this at the time that the Moses shows are going on, but a great coincidence,” Mr. Barwick told The Real Estate. “We are really enjoying the opportunity to work with scholars and revisit Jane Jacobs and to look at her with fresh eyes. This is not so much to weigh in against Bob Moses.”

Asked for his own opinion of Moses, Mr. Barwick said, “That’s like saying, ‘How do you like the Himalayan Mountains?’ It is a very big subject.”

- Matthew Schuerman

The Rockefeller Foundation has announced the creation of a $200,000 award, called the Jane Jacobs Medal. It is meant to recognize individuals who have made a significant contribution to thinking about urban design.

Two people will receive the medal each year, one who is at the dawn of their career just starting out, and the other who has made a lifetime contribution. Both living individuals will be recognized for their contributions to New York City and for their ideas and activism that reflect the ideals of Jane Jacobs

Jane Jacobs was herself a young and unknown in 1958. It was then she received a $10,000 grant from the Rockefeller Foundation to write what would become “The Death and Life of Great American Cities.”

Published in three years later, the book, which described the intricate network of relationships in neighbourhoods, it continues to influence contemporary thinking about how cities work.

“Jane Jacobs’ way of seeing things has really held sway over the last 20 years,” the New Yorker architecture critic and New School professor, Paul Goldberger, who is on the jury for the medal, said. “And that’s all to the good.”

Complete details about the Jane Jacobs Medal is available on the Rockefeller Foundation award webpage.