In the Gazette, today I found an interesting article from MIKE BOONE, and I thought it might interest you too…
The city’s first Jane’s Walks are happening on Saturday and Sunday.
Jane Jacobs, who died nine days short of her 90th birthday in 2006, had no training as an urban planner. But The Life and Death of American Cities, which Jacobs wrote in 1961, is considered a classic treatise on how urban environments should and should not work.
Jacobs looked at cities as ecosystems that would change and evolve according to how they were used. She believed in higher population densities, shorter city blocks, mixed-use neighbourhoods.
Her work has influenced generations of architects, activists and forward-thinking urban planners and politicians. A Pennsylvanian by birth, Jacobs studied at Columbia University, lived in Greenwich Village and moved to Toronto in 1968.
Jacobs did not like cars and was active in the campaign that stopped construction of the Spadina Expressway. She believed in studying urban life at ground level and, in Downtown is for People, wrote: “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.”
Jacobs’ enduring legacy inspired Toronto’s Centre for City Ecology to organize neighbourhood walking tours in 2007. Jane’s Walks have spread to New York, Ottawa, Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver, Winnipeg, Halifax, Guelph, Charlottetown, Salt Lake City, Chicago, Boston, New Orleans and, organized by the Centre for Urban Ecology, Montreal.
The list of neighbourhoods to be Jane’s-walked includes N.D.G., the Plateau, Mile End, Little Burgundy, Point St. Charles, Shaugnessy Village, Mercier-Est, Park Extension and Outremont. On each tour, Jane’s Walks are led by people who know the turf and have stories to tell.
For details for Montreal’s walk: Clic-clic
beautiiful blog merciiiiii