This weekend, Spencer Lindsay will walk the talk.
Lindsay is an assistant for the annual Jane’s Walks Vancouver and a leader for the walks held in Vancouver and around the world from May 1 to 3.
“It’s a walking conversation,” he said. “It’s a way of collectively imagining what a better city would look like.”
The walks, which involve thousands of people in the Lower Mainland, honour Jane Jacobs by walking around their neighbourhoods. They occur every spring to celebrate the Pennsylvania-born activist who saw cities in a different light. Although she had no formal training as a planner, her ideas about how cities function, evolve and fail, which she wrote about in her book The Death and Life of Great American Cities, spurred modern day urbanists and architects to put her philosophies into practice. She wanted to foster connection by making cities more walkable, and for people to simply know about where they live.
This year, Vancouver has 25 Jane’s Walks planned, spanning from Coal Harbour to the Downtown Eastside.
Lindsay is leading Knowing the Land Beneath Our Feet: An Indigenous Tour of UBC this year. A recent grad of the Indigenous Community Planning program at the University of B.C. School of Community Planning, Lindsay wanted to connect his walk to the tour he also leads around the UBC campus which educates students about the Musqueam Nation’s historical presence in the area.
“People were really keen on learning the natural, the indigenous and the settlement history of the neighbourhood,” said Lindsay, who has a deep interest in communities and city design and said that Jacobs was “very influential in the planning field.”
“She changed the way we look at cities,” he said, noting her idea that walkable neighbourhoods improve communities is now common sense to planners and architects.
“In order to develop and envision what your city is going to look like, you can’t get that through architect models,” he said. “You really have to walk your city.”
Jane’s Walks take place from May 1 to 3 in more than 100 cities worldwide, with 60 different walks across the Lower Mainland. For Lindsay, changing the way neighbours interact with each other is what Jane’s Walks are all about.
“I think that’s really part of Jane Jacobs’ legacy,” he said. “We’re not only meeting neighbours, we’re not only learning historical tidbits, we’re connecting.”
Longtime North Surrey resident Grant Rice took part in a Jane’s Walk last year in New Westminster. He liked that the walk revealed New West’s old railway.
“One of the fellas wore one of these conductor hats so that was kind of cool,” said Rice. After talking to the Jane’s Walks organizer in New West, he agreed he should lead one in his own neighbourhood near St. Helen’s Park.
“There’s a lot of interesting stories and history and I’m hoping that’s how people will join in and share those stories with us,” said Rice.
As well as rallying against the Kinder Morgan pipeline, Rice joined others in 2006 to preserve the character of his neighbourhood by stopping the development of small vintage houses. Rice thought leading a Jane’s Walk would be a good opportunity to show people his neighbourhood.
On his walk, Rice said people will discuss some of the new and old buildings along the way to generate ideas and input. He likes the historical part of the walks, but that it’s also about who joins.
“When people go on these walks they have different things to offer so there isn’t just one person speaking,” said Rice. “What I’m hoping to do with my walk is the same sort of thing where people will join into the walk and they may know some part of the history.” Though Jacobs’ vehement community activism is what has inspired him the most about Jane’s Walks.
Rice said when residents discuss potential developments in the neighbourhood, people don’t necessarily talk about initiating change.
“It’s not so much about change I don’t think as it is about having people connect,” he said. “Going out for a walk with other people and connecting with other people and having conversations.”
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