Amplify your work

with a Jane’s Walk!

A Primer for Community Organizations


Amplify your work with a Jane’s Walk!
Since 2007 communities across Canada, the USA and
around the world have been hosting Jane’s Walks, ‘walking
conversations’ to create fresh thinking about active citizenship,
urban planning, local history and community building.
Inspired by the ideas and legacy of urbanist Jane Jacobs,
Jane’s Walk gets people out exploring their neighbourhoods
and talking about what matters to them in the places they live
and work.
What is a Jane’s Walk?
A Jane’s Walk is a volunteer-led tour that explores a local
neighbourhood or civic initiative and fosters open discussion
amongst neighbours and citizens. The main Jane’s Walk
festival event takes place annually on the first weekend of May,
and this past spring, more than 600 walks were held in over
100 cities in 22 countries worldwide.
A firm believer in the importance of local residents having
input on how their neighbourhoods develop, Jacobs 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.” -
Downtown is for People, 1957.
Jane’s Walk would like to partner with you to help capture
citizen ideas and create more equitable, liveable, walkable
civic spaces where you live. We are on the lookout for a key
organization in each city and town to guide and promote the
program. With very little heavy lifting, Jane’s Walk can help
you create more depth for your existing programs and expand
your reach.
Five reasons you should support Jane’s Walk in your
community:
1. It’s easy and accessible.
Everyone is an expert in their own community, and anyone
can lead a Jane’s Walk. The walks are volunteer-led and
free for participants, so there are very few barriers to
getting people involved. This enables your organization to
reach both established and emerging community leaders
across many classes and sectors.
2. It requires very little organizational capacity.
Your organization only needs to provide support by
publicizing the event; it is community walk leaders who
design and upload their walks autonomously to the main
Jane’s Walk website. Individual citizens benefit from the
profile of the international festival. Mary Rowe, VP of The
Municipal Art Society of New York says, “Our approach
has been to promote Jane’s Walk as an opportunity for
self-organization, where MAS provides overall guidance
and coordination, and media and marketing promotion,
but local organizers-- groups and individuals-- pull
together their own walks and benefit from the profile and
exposure we provide them.”
3. It can foster strategic alliances.
Though some organizations use the walks as a platform
to promote dialogue about their key issues, when the call
out is made to the general public, individual walk leaders
will come forward and supply the event with thematic
breadth and nuance that is only possible in a grassroots
movement. The resulting walk guides are natural
champions for supporting your programming at other
times of the year. They bring their networks in touch with
your organization and, says Rowe, “new strategic alliances
are formed, which in turn benefit both our larger work
and the work and mission of our walk leader partners. Its
been a total win-win for us and them, and every year we
increase our number of partners, walks, participants, and
supporters.”
4. It creates real change.
Walks are a platform for genuine community discussion
and collaboration. They create an appetite for action that
catalyzes interest groups and inspires citizens to convene
around the issues that matter to them. In Toronto, Canada,
a city-wide parks advocacy group called Toronto Park
People stated, “In the past 3 years, more than 10 ‘Friends
of’ parks groups have used a Jane’s Walk as key first step
to mobilize the community. Many other well established
groups have hosted a Jane’s Walk to highlight a success,
such as new improvements to the park, or a challenge. The
walk is so simple to do.”
5. It’s fun!
Jane’s Walk is not a public meeting, or a town hall. It’s
a fun and informal format that inspires people to come
together to talk about their communities and meet their
neighbours. Your organization will benefit from the feel-
good spirit of the event, and the wave of positive energy it
delivers to urban issues.
Three quick videos to show you the walks in action:
(click the blue links)

1. Pan Am Path Toronto

Jane’s Walk inspired a major community

campaign advocating for the construction of a
multi-use path to connect over 80km of trails in
the city. This active-living legacy will be built in
time for the 2015 Pan Am/Parapan Am Games.

2. Jane’s Walk in Phoenix Photo by Sarah Anglin: Regent Park Walk – Toronto 2013

Organizer Yuri Arbitase says, “Unlike traditional

walking tours where you have a tour guide, an
expert, coming in and saying ‘This is the official
history of this neighbourhood’ or ‘This is what
you need to know,’ I view them as walking
conversations.”

3. Jane’s Walk Harlem

“People organize walks with friends, neighbours

and colleagues. They take people on walks to
celebrate Jane’s common-sense approach to
urban planning. Showing off your neighborhood
is a great way to show your expertise in your
community-- the people who work and live there
really are the experts.”

Photo by Nathan Storring: The ‘Lively Experiment’ Walk – Providence 2013

Photo by Diego Yriarte: Recorregut Jane Jacobs Walk – Barcelona 2013