Jane’s Walk is an annual festival of free, neighbor-led walking conversations within a city space, inspired by urban activist Jane Jacobs— the activist and author who helped stop an expressway from slicing through lower Manhattan and contributed to the New Urbanist movement. Inspired by her legacy, on the first weekend of May, thousands of Jane’s walks will take place around the world in hundreds of cities. Seventeen of these will be in Providence neighborhoods including Fox Point, the West Side, the Jewelry District and Elmhurst — plus, for the first time, Woonsocket. For a list of these walks, visit here.
Jane’s Walks were founded in Toronto in 2006 by friends and colleagues of Jane Jacobs, to honor her life and activate her ideas. Her championing of neighborhood preservation grew out of clashes with the policies of Robert Moses, the powerful head of New York City planning in the 1950s and 1960s. Critics charged that Moses preferred cars to people, and the expressways he promoted in the New York area destroyed numerous neighborhoods and displaced hundreds of thousands of residents. Jane, for her part, led a grassroots movement that prevented construction of the Lower Manhattan Expressway, which would have sliced through the southern part of the island. Neighborhoods including Greenwich Village and Soho were saved from destruction. She would be thrilled to see her legacy expand around the world, drawing the attention of city-users to the beauty, value, and history of their local spaces.
Barbara Barnes, one of the leaders of the Lifelong Learning Collaborative’s class on Jane’s Walks and longtime Director of Tours for the Rhode Island Historical Society, will be leading a tour on Food, Culture, and Community in Fox Point. When asked about what drew her to leading a tour, she says: “When I first learned about Jane’s Walks, the only tours I knew were the professional/historical walking tours that had become my work. Then someone told me about Jane Jacobs. And my eyes were opened to a new way of understanding urban spaces and urban planning.”
She continues, “I began asking myself: Who lives in this city? Why? What has happened here? How does the neighborhood feel? Is there something for everyone to do? How is this place special? Is there something more that could be done for the people who live in this place?” Explore these questions with Barnes and walk co-leaders Joe and Bobbi Fisler on Friday, May 2 at 10 am. They will be meeting at George Araujo Park, at the corner of Ives and Preston St. in Fox Point.
Andy Nosal, who owned The Map Center for 31 years, will also be leading one of the Providence Jane’s Walks tours this weekend. His tour is titled “Mapping the Aesthetics of Urban Hiking,” and is aimed at engaging community members in an unusual state-wide project, “2 Feet & 2 Bucks: Fun Places to go in Scenic Historic Rhode Island.” He’s already produced a series of hand-drawn postcard-size maps, which he calls “folk maps,” of areas elsewhere in the state, to encourage exploration by foot or bike. Each map has the number of the RIPTA bus that will take you there, along with trails and parks to enjoy, all without using a car. (These cards are available at The Map Center.) Andy’s next step is to create folk maps for walks in Providence, and he would like input from his Jane’s Walk group. This walk will happen Saturday, May 3 at 1 pm, starting at the Dexter Park circle of stone benches in the West End.
Traci Picard, the official head of Jane’s Walks in Providence, explains that her interest stems from her penchant for taking walks, observing, and asking questions. She’s been a researcher and tour guide for many years at Providence Commemoration Lab and Brown University’s Simmons Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice. Through Jane’s Walks, she is again enjoying the power of being with people, in a specific space, for the purpose of sharing, asking, and observing. Her group will meet her at the center of Locust Grove Cemetery at10 am on Saturday, May 3, for a walk titled “Trapezoid of Doom; Opportunity for Change,” focusing on Columbus Square in Elmwood, as well as the adjacent area.
Although Jane’s Walks began as an annual event in 2006, the event’s reach is still spreading. When Jed Hancock-Brainard, a Newport native, and his wife, Rebecca Noon, took Jane’s Walks in Providence, they were inspired to bring the event to Aquidneck Island. In preparation, they read Jacobs’ book The Death and Life of Great American Cities, watched the film “Citizen Jane: Battle for the City,” then established CenterAquidneck for the purpose of nurturing a Festival in Newport, Middletown and Portsmouth. “Put out the word and people will come,” was their premise – and it has worked.
On Sunday, May 4, at 2pm, Veronika Vega will lead a Jane’s Walk exploring downtown Woonsocket. She says she was motivated to lead a walk this year because “I want to foster more engagement from residents. Jacobs’ book inspired me to take a more active role in my community, and I joined the Board of the Downtown Woonsocket Collaborative a few months ago. I want to help Woonsocket’s historic Downtown District, and I think this could be a great way for people to meet like-minded neighbors and brainstorm ideas.”
The legacy of Jane Jacobs’ people-centered approach to urban planning lives on through these community-member-led walks exploring the neighborhoods and built spaces of Providence and beyond.
The walks take place rain or shine Friday May 2 through Sunday May 4, and no registration is needed. Wear comfortable shoes and a hat, meet your walk leader where specified, and get ready for a lively discussion. Most walks will take 1-2 hours. Here’s a list of all the walks.
Sarah Gleason has been passionate about historic preservation since moving to Fox Point in 1970. She has experienced the connection between people and places in many settings: as a teacher at the Dorcas Place Parent Literacy Program, as the first Director of ReachOut&Read/RI, and as founder of the BeavertailLighthouse Museum when working for RIDEM. Now, she is happy to be writing about this subject for The Providence Eye.
