Toward People-Centered Cities: Civic Engagement and the Legacy of Jane Jacobs

Full Panel
Transcript

Note to readers: This video session was transcribed using auto-transcribing software.  Questions or concerns with the transcription can be directed to citytalk@canurb.org with “transcription” in the subject line.

Community Innovation in Uncertain Times: Building Resilient Main Streets with Local Solutions

City Talk, April 24, 2025

Mary W. Rowe Hi everybody, it’s Mary Rowe from the Urban Institute. Glad to welcome you all to CityTalk, and to, really a fabulous, fabulous topic with great people coming from around the world, actually, to talk about the legacy of Jane Jacobs and how it is exemplified in Jane’s Walk. I happen to be in Toronto, as you can see today. I was in Ottawa yesterday, tomorrow, and then Halifax, but today is Thursday and I am in Toronto which is the traditional territory of many Inuit and First Nations peoples. As many of you know, we try to make a practice here to make sure that we’re acknowledging the traditions, but also the legacies of our ancestral roots and whose territories we occupy or have settled on. So in the case of Toronto, covered under a treaty – so many of you are coming in from unceded places, but Toronto has a treaty, the Williams Treaty and Treaty 13. And its home has been home to the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishinaabe, the Wendat, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee peoples. And we continue to explore what the legacies look like on this and appreciate everyone contributing as best they can to remind us all about the legacies of exclusion that urbanism perpetuates through a lot number of colonial practices. So here we are and going to talk together about something pretty fundamental, taking our eyes to the street and walking on them, or seeing them, or rolling on them or being present in actual places. So I’ve got a number of guests that are going to come on and talk about their experience of, particularly of Jane’s Walk and of Jane Jacobs and how they see that as being relevant. But I also have to, I was just showing in the practice round here that I have a T-shirt that I can only really wear a couple of days a year, but here it is. There it is, that’s my favorite T-Shirt. And New Yorkers will know what the Mark Jacobs reference is and perhaps one of them will punch into the chat why we want more Jane Jacobs and less Mark Jacobs. And also we encourage people in the chat to share any reflections they’d like to about Jane’s work, Jane’s legacy, their experience with the Jane’s Walk. I suspect many of you have led Jane’s Walks or participated on them. They’ve been going for almost 20 years and as I suggested, just a wonderful. Illustration of a remarkable set of ideas that were introduced by someone who made her home initially born in Scranton, then went to New York and then eventually came to Toronto. And Torontonians are very proud of their association with Jane, as are New Yorkers. Slightly different kind of temperament, I would say, that the residents of both cities express this attachment to this figure, but let’s have that conversation. So, welcome to CityTalk. Glad to have everybody here. I’m going to go first if I can to Celia to come on and talk to us a little bit about her particular experience of Jane’s Walk and just tell us where you are now Celia, and just a little of your own history or your sort of association with Jane’s walk and with Jane and what your sort of sense would be now. Why do you think Jane’s walked matters now in 2025?

Celia Beketa Yeah, sure. Thank you so much for having me. So, hi, everyone. My name is Celia. I’m currently based in London, UK, but I, as you can maybe tell from my accent, I’m from Canada. I am from Vancouver originally, but moved to Toronto and spent a few years there, and that’s where I became acquainted with Jane’s Walk. So I have been involved with the steering committee for a number of years. I was the co-chair for, I think, I always struggle to remember exactly how many years, I think around three years or so, with my partner in crime, Wes, who is not on the call, but we’ve since transitioned and passed on the torch to Sarah, who was one of the co-chairs who is on the call, but basically my sort of origins with Jane’s Walk kind of stem back to me becoming acquainted with the city of Toronto and wanting to understand the city better that I had just moved to, hearing about this wonderful organization that was literally about city dwellers or residents themselves being the experts on their cities and so being the ones to lead walks in their city and I thought that was just such a fantastic idea. So I first volunteered as a photographer and went around to as many walks as I could documenting them through photographs and became really really … I just fell in love with the festival and everything it stood for, and so became involved with the steering committee shortly after and have been involved I think for about, I don’t know, coming up on, I think like five years now, or just over five years. And I became so passionate about it that I think, like Wes and I often talk about how it really shaped our careers and our trajectory, both personally and professionally. And so I ended up doing a master’s in urban studies, where I hopped around and lived in four different cities over two years. And so it was very much like a program that kind of carried that essence of Jane’s walk as well. Living and breathing and experiencing your cities that you’re in and yeah, I have now found myself in London, UK, working for local council as a service designer, so improving the services that they offer. And in terms of why, I think Mary, your kind of question was why is this relevant today? Like, why is Jane’s Walk in particular relevant today and important? And I think the biggest thing for me that comes to mind is sharing dialog and generating empathy for, for people who might come from vastly different experiences as you. And so that’s, I heard some very magical stories when writing my thesis actually on Jane’s walk, which was about the notion of belonging and whether participating in the Jane’s Walk festival or festivals or, organizations like Jane’s Walk can help instill a sense of belonging in cities, especially cities that are quite diverse, like Toronto. And so, I won’t say too much about that research, happy to kind of dig into it more later, but I will say that what came through for me is really that how do we relate to other people? How do we related to ideas of difference? And I think Jane’s Walk is a phenomenal tool to kind bridge the gap between difference and generate empathy for people that are different from you. So that’s what I would say in a nutshell.

Mary W. Rowe It’s interesting that what you’re identifying as empathy building, because I often say that cities are fundamentally about empathy. They put us into proximity with people that are in different circumstance, different background, different priorities, different values, and we’re thrust into proximity so that we have to build empathy. So it’s interesting what you are suggesting that you see Jane’s Walk’s about that, and about connection and belonging. Where did you come from to move to Toronto?

Celia Beketa I came from Vancouver, yeah.

Mary W. Rowe Vancouver, right, you mentioned that. Sorry. So that you just came right in. Okay. Well, isn’t that great that something like Jane’s Walk existed for you to be able to, and that you have the instinct to say, if I’m going to learn something about the city, I better learn about it from the people that live here.

Celia Beketa Yeah, absolutely. And to be fair, I worked closely with Zara, who was formerly involved with the committee as well. Zara Ibrahim, who’s just a wonderful human being. And so I found out about it through her initially. But yeah, from my thesis as well, I heard of so many people who actually use Jane’s Walk in a similar way, where it was, you know, okay, I’ve just moved to the city. I heard about this thing. I’m going to use it to like learn more about my city, but also maybe have, you know, encounters with strangers and build connections in the city too.

Mary W. Rowe Yeah, there is something about the stranger piece, isn’t there, and how Jane’s Walk sort of enables that, that suddenly you meet, it’s random, you meet somebody. And I’ve been on Jane’s Walks where the people that are on the walks, it gets bigger and bigger because strangers see the group and come over, what’s going on, then they join too. And before you know it, by the time you finish the walk, you’ve got a lot more people than you had before. Right. Okay. Well, great, Celia. Great to have your particular perspective on this. I’m going to invite, as we keep going, I’m going to keep sort of going around the circle here, a bit of the Hollywood squares, in terms of how we’re going to sort of stitch together the narrative on this. So let’s go to Calgary, where I’m sure it’s a beautiful sunny day, Adam, isn’t it? Always a sunny day.

Adam Schwartz Absolutely, the sun has melted all the snow we got over the weekend.

Mary W. Rowe Oh, be like that, okay. Well, at least I was abated. So talk to us about the experience, your particular attraction to Jane’s Walk and the work of Jane Jacobs and what your experience has been, and how’s it look for you this year coming into the festival next weekend?

Adam Schwartz Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, the Jane’s Walk Calgary edition is run by the Federation of Calgary Communities where I work here and we were able to take over the festival from the Calgary Foundation about three years ago.

Mary W. Rowe Right.

Adam Schwartz And yeah, since then we were kind of tasked with bringing it back to pre-COVID numbers. And I can successfully say we’ve blown past that this year with over 70 walks and currently on pace for over 2000 participants, which is super, super exciting to see that this wasn’t something that we were going to let COVID take away from our city, but now more than ever, Calgary is a city that’s really having to change very fast. Um, in the face of, you know, housing and different things. So it’s, more and more people are recognizing, you know, that urban planning and, you know, neighbourly connections are more important than ever as we’re facing some of these challenges. So that’s why, Jane’s Walk is such a great tool for, people to connect with one another, get to know each other, tell the stories of our neighborhood from the past, dream about the future in Jane’s Walks. So it really is, you know, we have such a wide range of walks from, you know, developers leading walks on their developments, to seventh graders leading walks to the playgrounds in their neighbourhood, to nature walks, you know, cultural walks and everything. So just to see that spread and interest and how people want to tell the stories of their communities in their neighborhoods is, you know, super inspiring for us.

Mary W. Rowe I appreciate the bit about storytelling. One of the interesting things about Jane Jacob’s writing style is that she was a storyteller too. And grounded a lot of her, you know, if anyone, we always want to encourage people to not just do the walk, but you know do some research on Jane Jacobs. It’s a good excuse to do that, go read some of her books and you’ll see they’re almost like fiction. They tell stories of particular circumstances, particular experiences. Sometimes in made up places, but sometimes in real places. And so I hear you on that, Adam, why it’s so valuable to have storytelling. And I’m also interested, as you suggest, that Jane’s Walk is an interesting sort of post-COVID act of a way to demonstrate our commitment to the spatial city that we get back.

Adam Schwartz Oh, absolutely. I was just kind of maybe on the less fictional side, I was reading Wrestling with Moses recently, which is a little bit more kind of.

Mary W. Rowe Sure, another good book. Let me just warn everybody, let’s populate the chat. Here’s our challenge to the City Talkers. Let’s populate the chat with really interesting books that people can refer to. We always publish the chat afterwards. Really valuable. And let’s add Wrestling with Moses into that. There’s a good list of books. Jane’s own books, I’m sure my colleagues will start posting Jane’s books of hers. But then there are books like Wrestling with Moses that are about Jane and about her particular battles. But go ahead, Adam, what did you have?

Adam Schwartz Yeah, that one’s a little bit more of just kind of the, you know, it’s a little bit of a factual account of how, you know, Jane was taking over some of these projects and relating to her community. And yeah, like you said, of you know the post-COVID age, I think what I was struck by was just kind, of some of these movements in a non-digital age and the meetings in the living rooms and the way community halls are being used and different things. And I think coming out of COVID, I think that’s the big thing, too, is people. Wanting to escape some of those digital connections and really meet people in person. So I think, yeah, walking on the streets with, you know, other people and chatting face-to-face is just what makes I think Jane’s Walk so attractive to so many Calgarians.

Mary W. Rowe Yeah, we’re having to go counter-cultural a little bit. I had a very sobering statistic batted at me yesterday, which is that the number one use of AI are personal companions. Oh my goodness. In that world, let’s just remind ourselves that the actual physicality, the spatial reality of the city is really valuable. And the thing that some people have disabilities that might restrict their capacity to actually be physically in the city in certain kinds of ways. The Jane’s Walk concept is that you’re in a community, just as Celia just mentioned, you’re actually meeting strangers and you’re having that kind of exchange. Adam it’s great to have you on City Talk, and of course always happy to hear about more sun in Calgary. Let’s now go to Toronto, we’ve got two folks in Toronto. Sarah can we go to you first and then we’ll go to Mehedi and then we’re going to go to Genevieve. So Sarah, over to you. You took over the, you filled the boots that Celia left behind I gather, so you’re there coordinating the Jane Jacobs Festival. How’s that going?

Sarah Luca We’re so excited about this year’s Toronto Festival. We have an incredible lineup of activities. We’re actually on track to break our record of submitted walks. So we’re at about a hundred and forty walks. Last year we had a hundred and twenty one. So, we’re really excited to kind of like blown past that. We’re also hosting two panels and they’re both about designing public space. It is sort of this question of who belongs in public space, who gets to make the decisions about public space? I think we’re also quite lucky in Toronto that we have some really, really incredible, innovative public design, public space, public engagement activities going on. So we’re excited about those. And then we’re doing a free film screening in partnership with Innis College at University of Toronto. So we are screening Citizen Jane, which is the documentary, and we’re quite excited about that to sort of, walking is really important and so, you know, doing the actual getting out there, meeting with people, connecting with people, but we also wanted to provide different ways for folks to get engaged, so whether that’s attending a virtual panel or coming to a film screening, like we want to make these principles and the festival as accessible as possible so we’re really excited, we have really like an incredible team on board this year. Our, for those who may be unaware, our volunteer, all volunteer steering committee is about 13 people. And we’re really lucky to have two amazing festival co-organizers with us this year. And yeah, I’d say, I feel like I’m filling really, really big shoes because Wes and Cecilia have really done such an incredible job bringing Jane’s Walk to not only Toronto, but really helping the festival take on this sort of life of its own and spread across not just Canada, like we’ve got festivals, for example, in Vancouver, we’ve, we got festivals in Calgary and Ottawa and Windsor, Halifax, Guelph, like they’re happening all over, but it’s also global. So Jane’s Walk happens in about 500 cities across the world. And, uh, you know, it’s really incredible when you see something that’s just like a completely grassroots festival take off like this.

Mary W. Rowe That’s great. Sarah, it’s wonderful. And as you suggest, it has grown and it grows differently in different places, it sort of takes on its own flavour. I see we have somebody in the chat from Qatar. I’m interested to know whether there’s a Jane’s Walk in Qatar? Tell us, please, Qatar participant, if there might be a Jane’s Walk, because it’s not too late to lead one. The great thing about Jane’s Walk is anyone can lead one, and so you get that fabulous, important, Jacobs’ principle about diversity, welcoming diversity. One of the great things about Jane’s Walks, if you were to read a list of them all, you would see remarkable diversity in terms of who’s leading them and what they think is interesting. And back to Celia’s comment that she, when she moved to Toronto, she thought, well, what better way to find out what’s going on here then from some locals. And it’s so interesting to see what people propose as a Jane’s walk. It’s not often predictable. So let’s go to New York and then Mehedi, you’re going to do clean up here at the end. Genevieve, you’re in the city of great diversity. Not that we’re too competitive here, Toronto and New York, but you just heard Sarah throw down the gauntlet that she’s going to have 141 walks. How many in New York City do you think?

Genevieve Wagner Uh, we have two hundred and nine.

Mary W. Rowe Just saying, of course, you are a wee bit bigger than Toronto, but nevertheless, it’s a happy little competition that we’ve got going. Talk to us about Jane’s Walk in New York. Is it across the five boroughs? Of course, MAS runs walks year-round, tours, but this is actually Jane’s Walk, so talk to us how it works for you, why it’s appealing to you, what MAS’s connection with it is.

Genevieve Wagner Yeah, for sure. Thank you, Mary. And thank you for having me today. Yes, so Jane’s Walk is hosted by the nonprofit that I work for, the Municipal Art Society of New York, or MAS in shorthand. And this nonprofit has been around for over 130 years. And we advocate for a more livable city across New York City’s five boroughs, which includes Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, Bronx, and Manhattan. And we do this advocacy through programming like Jane’s Walk, along with education and policy and all sorts of public programming and tours. And I feel that Jane’s Walk is a really wonderful like culmination of all of the work that we really care about. And we got involved with doing the festival in 2011, and I think that when we first got involved, we had about like 27 walks and then now of course we have over 200. So it’s a really exciting, yeah, culmination of the work that we do, we have a really rich history of doing advocacy and doing preservation. We helped create the Landmarks Commission in New York and advocate for historic districts in New York and there’s also just like certain zoning ordinances and things that we’ve advocated, you know, to support or not support, and the walks that we get each year really kind of match this history and many of them are exploring things that MAS was involved in throughout our long history. And yes, the festival does happen in all five boroughs. Like I said, and this year we’re really excited, we have a lot of walks in the outer boroughs, which are the boroughs that aren’t Manhattan. Manhattan is always the most popular borough to have walks in. We have many in Queens and in Brooklyn as well, and it’s always really exciting to see what organizations and individuals are leading walks. They are often led by city agencies and non-profits, but then we also have a lot of individuals who either have their tour guiding license, or people who are just really passionate about New York City, who lead a walk about a topic that they’re really passionate about. And yeah, Jane’s walk was really interesting to me. So I grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. I went to university in Columbus, Ohio, and I studied printmaking, but during my first year I was also taking a lot of classes in city planning. And I learned about Jane Jacobs, as you do in your foundational city planning courses, and I was really inspired by her work. So honestly, a lot of the prints, the zines that I was making in my printmaking courses throughout college like were related to her. And sometimes I would use like her text in in my work. So I feel like I’ve always had this connection with her. And then when I moved to New York after graduating from college, I found this job at the Municipal Art Society and I learned about Jane’s Walk and it felt like the perfect role for me, because I’m like I love this girl. I’m, you know, nerdy about her and her work. So it felt really kismet, and also I love Toronto, I grew up going to Southern Ontario to visit family throughout my childhood, and visited Toronto a lot, and I feel that it’s the first city outside of Cleveland that I really felt a connection to. So along with just loving Jane Jacobs, being able to work with the steering committee and getting to know Celia and Wes has been a really special part of this experience for me, so, yeah, I’m really grateful to be here today to talk about Jane’s Walk.

Mary W. Rowe That’s great. I just want to just shout out. I love your little expression. I love this girl. Jacobs was born in 1916 and I don’t know if anybody ever called her a girl. But I knew what you meant. That’s fantastic. And it’s always, as you suggest, it’s part of, you know, I don’t know whether you track the Canadian media at all, Genevieve, but the sort of general disposition in Canada towards the current US administration is rather precarious, I would say. And we are always here at CityTalk reminding everybody that we all, at the local level work on very similar issues and have very similar shared challenges. And back to the empathy discussion, we have a lot of empathy for Americans working in American communities and in American neighborhoods, and Canadians working in Canadian neighborhoods or Europeans working. We all have a kind of kinship, I think. And an empathy for one another about what we’re all trying to do, which is create great places that work for people and work for everyone. So, I’m going to now bring in Mehedi and then we’ll have everybody come back on. Just again, encouraging people on the chat that there’s a toggle that you have to, and Wes, who is indomitable, hi Wes, who is Sarah’s former colleague for Jane’s Walk, is posting lots of books, but only the panelists are seeing them, Wes. So you’ve got to repost to everyone. So if everybody could, when you’re posting in the chat, and I always encourage people, post in the chat. Lots of people are on for the ride and, and don’t always read the chat or post in it, but we want everybody to post. Come on, go crazy. So, but when you do, do it to everybody so that everybody can see them. And Mehedi, how nice to have you. Welcome to CityTalk. Tell us your particular interest in the work of Jane Jacobs and in Jane’s Walk and what perspective you bring to it.

Mehedi Khan Sure, first of all, thanks. Thank you for having me here today. I’m really excited to be talking about Jane and kind of hear what the other panelists have to say as well, too. So I think I first got involved with Jane’s Walk in 2020. I was one of the festival organizers that year. And if you folks remember, this was 2020 pandemic, and this was the first ever global Jane’s Walk that was doing fully online, right? So we shifted, I think, a month and a half into May, so I think around April or end of February, switching to a fully physical walk to an online walk, right? And kudos to the steering committee at that time. They really helped us shape the online walk because things were much, much different, right. We forget, we were at a time where six feet social distancing was a practice. Everything was closed. You couldn’t go to public parks. Different time in the world. That said, I think we were really unique in making a lot of online walks. We did this great type of podcast, virtual walks, self-guided walks, and really pivoted the conversation of walks, not necessarily having to be physical walks. And back now in 2025, I’m also the Jane’s Walk Festival organizer with my good friend and colleague, Igor Samardzik. And we’re helping lead, I think, such a great walk. I think Sarah earlier alluded to the fantastic numbers we’re getting with kind of compared to the previous years. But also, I think this year is really special because we’ve inputted a great creative dynamic and refresh. We really tried to make walks really refreshing with our different animations of Jane Jacobs. These fun little characters, if you go on our website, you’ll see Jane Jacobs riding a bicycle, being on a megaphone, taking a picture in a Raptors jersey. And I say this knowing that there’s some few folks with New York here who do have the better basketball team at the moment.

Mary W. Rowe Just sayin’.

Mehedi Khan At the moment, at the moment. That said though, I think besides my formal work with Jane Jacobs as an organizer, I think she was more important to me as a young man growing up in Regent Park and going through neighbourhood revitalization and neighbourhood change. It was actually her work that really inspired me to challenge top-down planning practice and what it meant for community to be involved in the planning practice. So that kind of led to a great, and so far excellent career in planning and working in development and kind of doing some of the fun work I do now as the co-founder of Muslims in Public Space, where we work at the intersection of public art, public space and Muslim identities. And our goal is pretty simple. How do we get folks who haven’t historically been part of the planning process to be part of the planning process by redesigning public parks, by being involved with the art that’s involved with public parks, and feeling seen, and maybe challenging stereotypes, and maybe fostering conversations of inclusivity and planning. So Jane holds a really special place in my kind of planning practice, but also just everyday civic life and engagement.

Mary W. Rowe Fantastic. You know, I want you and I to have our own CityTalk subsequently, let’s plan about this, about the Islamic city and Islamic design, because I know that’s one of your interests. And Jane herself had an interest in sort of patterns. I can see that Wes has posted Christopher Alexander’s work on the pattern language and the Islamic City is all predicated on a particular kind of elegant design that has served cities well. And whenever I go up to the Aga Khan Museum, I’m always struck by that, that those all have imagery. So we should do one on that. Let’s do one of that, shall we? Absolutely. Meet you back here again sometime soon. Okay, well, let’s have everybody’s screen come alive here. And I appreciate that all sorts of people are posting where they can, where people can sign up for Jane’s Walks. We’ve got them in Ottawa and Winnipeg, and some place in Kansas, I’ve got to find it. So, but this is the great thing, is that  a Jane’s Walk can take place pretty much anywhere. And it can be, and actually sometimes, I remember years ago, I don’t know if it’s still on the Toronto list, there was one in Grange Park that I think Max Allen led, and I don’t think you walked at all. I think you stood in Grange Park and you looked north, and there was conversation. And then I think, you pivoted and looked east. And then there, I’m just remembering, and there was conversation. So sometimes, this is the, these are the crazy wacky ideas that people come up with. And I saw someone posted, Sarah, posted that she ran one in the first year of Jane’s Walk in Leslieville, and she got a whole bunch of businesses on side and people went and got snacks and, you know, treats, and the small business vendors were happy to have people come in, and so that part’s kind of cool, that they all are quite different aren’t they? And we just sort of let imagination go crazy. We’re getting some questions in the chat, which I think are, you know, worthy for us to think about. Let’s talk about this one. I’ll try to get to them all if I can. In your experience when you have a Jane’s Walk or you’re running a festival with a whole bunch of Jane’s Walks, what do you think happens afterwards? Do you have any kind of evidence of what happens, other than people have a great time, but you know what I mean? Do you see any particular follow-up? Who wants to take that one first? What’s the potential follow-up? Go ahead, Genevieve.

Genevieve Wagner I, in a more literal sense, I’ll start out. When we are training our walk leaders, we suggest that they end their walk at, you know, a cafe, a bar, a place where they can congregate and continue the conversation. Because, I think that just in general is like a great model for like, yeah, you know, it all starts during the walk, but maybe we can talk one on one, maybe we can talk about things besides this topic or, I feel that everyone who often like goes on these walks either is really passionate about the same topic as the leader or wants to learn more. So we love when people are able to, you know, in a physical sense, like, you know, stay together after the walk. And yeah, continue the conversation as we say. And ideally when that happens, maybe people are sharing phone numbers, sharing emails, and are able network and connect with each other. Either to become friends or to do work together if they work in the same industry.

Mary W. Rowe I always, here’s an idea. You heard it here first. Somebody on the chat, please go away and do this. Or let’s do it collectively. Let’s write Jane’s Walk or Jane Jacobs for Dummies, because there are so many great concepts that Jane introduced that people don’t necessarily even realize were hers, which is fabulous because that doesn’t matter. But the idea is that she came up with something. And one of them was self-organization. She was the early identifier of self- organization. Saw it in nature, saw it in economic life. And said it’s a key to really urban vitality, is allowing self-organization. So as you just suggested, Genevieve, they end up going to a bar, and then they end sharing cell phone numbers, and then end up on Instagram together, and then who knows. So some of it we don’t know, but I’m wondering if there are follow-ups that we do know. Go ahead, Adam, your hand’s up.

Adam Schwartz Yeah, no, I was just going to say too, I think if people aren’t sticking together at the end, I think one of the things that we, you know, maybe it’s speculative, but I think I’ve seen it happen is that, you, know, these stories are shared in very informal ways afterwards, because if people are attending Jane’s Walks to kind of learn more information about their neighbourhoods, all of a sudden they’re becoming more familiar with them. They know the stories themselves. They’re sharing it to their spouse, who’s sharing it to their kid, who’s sharing it to their friend, like I think obviously that’s why it’s speculative, is you’re never really going to know that impact, but I do imagine, I’d love to map out the ways that these kind of stories informally kind of grow and change based on just that one kind of walking event.

Mary W. Rowe Yeah, what it catalyzes, Cathy Crowe, who’s a frequent CityTalker, hi Cathy, has put into the chat here that she uses them as part of her teaching and that the community is the classroom. And that’s in essence what we’re also reinforcing, aren’t we? That experiential learning is a really critical part of this process that Jane’s Walk illustrates. Sarah, any thoughts on this about what follow-up you’ve observed, or that you, or as you suggested, maybe there’s follow-up that we would all like to do that we haven’t had a to do. Go ahead.

Sarah Luca Yeah, I think it’s really important that we also sort of lean into a little bit, some of the activism roots as well. So something that was really popular here when we had that big conversation about Ontario Place and how we, you know, take care of our public spaces and what that means and what it means to have a community come together and really advocate and be passionate about protecting these public spaces. There was actually a petition that was handed out afterwards. And so I think there’s also opportunities to sort of really tap into what folks are thinking about, what they’re feeling about, what’s kind of currently in everyone’s mind and finding tools of bringing those conversations to places where they need to be heard. So how can you get into like a council meeting? How can you talk to counselors? Like, how can get those decision makers to listen to folks? I think that’s something that’s really, really great about Jane’s Walk too is like, it’s a tool for collecting these thoughts and feelings that folks have that may not have another way or another opportunity of expressing them, right? Like I think even just having folks come out in like huge numbers is also indicative of like, this is something that folks care about. Let’s figure out ways of how we can then continue this work.

Mary W. Rowe It’s like a form of community organizing, really. Hey guys, unless you have a barking dog or crying baby, just open your mics. Just everybody open them, like the old days, where we all could just talk when we want to, rather than having to unmute and all that stuff. Mehedi, in your experience, any thoughts on what the follow-up is, or do you find that Jane’s Walk is an interesting beginning of a conversation? Does it give you then a sort of opportunity to have an ongoing one?

Mehedi Khan Certainly, I think, you know, at the crux of what Jane Jacobs is about is dialog, right? Sometimes that dialog means that having, to be honest, uncomfortable conversations. Conversations about tension sometimes, right, and I think what I find really valuable in some of Jane’s Walks that I told to myself is, having a conversation about a topic that I never knew too much about and an issue that I wasn’t fully aware about, right. But the big part of it is that I think being able to say to yourself, yes, you’re going to be part of the conversation and listen to what other folks have to say and contribute to, I think, the outcome of “what do we do after this?”, right? And I think Sarah and others alluded to the fact that a lot of Jane’s work is rooted in politics. It was very political at that time, right. And some of that, I, think, when we talk about Jane’s walk, it’s really easy to gloss over that sometimes and just talk about different neighbourhood stories and storytelling, which is all important, but there are some issues that are happening on the ground that people really wanna amplify. And you do that by talking with it, but then you do it by what Sarah’s saying, you know, protesting. You do that with working with the counselors.

Mary W. Rowe A lot of the walks, I’m sure someone is asking in the chat here, can you have a theme for a walk? Angela, they almost all do. Angela has asked this, Angela Jones. Just go to a listing, you’ll see they almost do. And as Mehedi is suggesting, often these walks are organized around some historic protest. I know that in New York, Genevieve, you had one often about Stonewall and about sort of, gay rights. And Celia, I suspect in Toronto, and maybe Sarah knows better, I am pretty sure that we’ve had them in Toronto over the years around those issues as well. And then people I know do tend to, one of the things that I always want to encourage us to challenge ourselves is to make sure that our walks aren’t only in built-up areas of the city. Let’s have them in parts of the City that have struggled and haven’t had the level of investment. And I’m sure in those cases, they’re being used as community organizing opportunities to enlighten somebody about a particular injustice or something that’s not functioning well. Am I fair, am I right, Celia?

Celia Beketa Yeah. I would also say, I mean, so many stories are coming to mind that I heard through my thesis interviews and just in general, like connecting with the group of founders and people who really got Jane’s Walk started or were friends of Jane. And I think it can be from an activist lens, so to speak. But it can also be challenging certain stigmas of certain neighbourhoods, or certain  areas of the city, like I know, you know, Jane’s Walk has gone through quite the evolution in terms of its governance and it’s probably not apparent on the outside because what you see is the same, it’s you know, people in cities leading walks about whatever topic they like, but there was a time where we had paid staff whereas now we’re fully volunteer driven and volunteer run, and I think um back in the day when we did have paid staff, like I think, we do it now as best we can, but one thing we were really, really good at was going to the suburbs and going to places outside the downtown core and really trying to build connections with people there and say, you know, we want to hear your stories, people want to your stories. Your stories are worth telling. And we had, I mean, there was one, you know, there is one example of a story that one of the, one of the folks involved with Jane’s Walk on the Steering Committee in the past told where it was a student from a school, who led this walk in Scarborough. And it was a school where there had been a shooting recently, I think. So it was in the news and there was, a lot of people were like, oh, that’s a dangerous place. Don’t go there. Wow, that must be a rough area. And people attended this Jane’s Walk with this student talking about this school. And it’s again, Jane’s walks are, they’re meant to be more like walking conversations. And I think that’s what this one really was. And this individual, the student, when talking about her school, she said, this is actually the most welcoming space I’ve encountered, and I’ve met so many incredible friends, and it’s the first place where I’ve felt like, I was sitting by myself at lunch and people said, hey, why are you alone? Come eat with us kind of thing. So I think there’s a lot to be said about the potential for Jane’s Walk to also challenge the stigma, negative stigma in certain areas, and to make people think very differently about, yeah, certain parts of the city.

Mary W. Rowe I’m interested, too, about the balance when you, have you all, each of you led a walk? Have you all been leaders of walks, and you’ve been on walks obviously. Question about, do you find that the people that are on the walk are from the local neighbourhood or have they come from away, or are they a mix? Mehedi is it a mix?

Mehedi Khan I certainly do think it’s a mix. I think particularly when it comes to a lot of the more bigger urban issues, that tends to be a mix, right? Cause people want to know what’s happening. So for example, even for myself, I signed up for a walk that’s happening on Saturday, on May 3rd, going through the history of, Eglington West is Little Jamaica in Toronto, right. A neighbourhood that’s facing massive revitalization, urban change, part of the LRT that’s getting built there, right? And I’m interested because I think, for a long time what I’ve heard, as somebody who grew up in downtown, not from that part of the city, is that the displacement is mostly with the businesses, and also with the homes and the people who live there. But what people often don’t talk about is cultural displacement. I think what I’m excited to hear about is, yes, how does cultural displacement through public investment happen. And the reason why I’m attending is because the issue that’s happening in Eglington West is happening all over the city, different parts of the city. So what you take out of a Jane’s Walk is the learning of, well, what is, for example, the community land trust that’s there in Little Jamaica? What are they doing because of this? How are they working with the planning process, with the city planning team? And also what are other ways where they’re resisting this and ensuring that that culture is kept, right? Because urban change is going to happen all across the city in different pockets, right. Different learnings from different parts of the city.

Mary W. Rowe Let’s keep on the topics that are being raised in the chat. Here’s a more serious one. Listen, they’re all serious. The questions are all serious, but here is a serious one around the sanitization of public spaces and the relationship around design, I guess. And some of you are in the design field. This notion that sometimes public design and planning produces designs that don’t lend themselves to people walking, or hanging around, or having an experience. Adam, in Calgary, you’ve got a whole lot of redevelopment going on there. Is Jane’s Walk an opportunity to kind of come to terms with that? What is the role of design making things walkable or not, or hang out or not?

Adam Schwartz Yeah I think we’re going through a bit of a phase right now of, I think some demolition companies are definitely making some money right now. I think in in one week our Eau Claire mall got torn down because it had been kind of derelict for a while, our Olympic Plaza, some people saw it as not functioning entirely correctly so they fully flattened that and have now proposed a full brand new park space there, and that park specifically was a place that a lot of people that were sleeping rough were gathering during the day and, you know, chatting and hanging out. So, yeah, I know I definitely think some of these places in Calgary that are going under, you know the full start from flat building up again definitely brings up some of those conversations.

Mary W. Rowe I’m sure, and people will say, where did that building go? What about encampments? Are encampment featuring in any of your walks? Are walks actually including people that are living in encampments part of the … you have several in Calgary, Adam, is that on the radar, do you think, for the Jane’s Walk?

Adam Schwartz Uh, I wouldn’t say we have any directly on there, but definitely in those areas, like our East Village is a place that is going through a lot of revitalization right now. And, you know, that’s where our drop in exists, but it’s also matched with that. So I think, you know, there’s quite a few walks led within that space, so those discussions will come up naturally, which I think is maybe a better way for it to occur, is kind of in that natural people talking to each other, rather than a specific theme kind of being brought to this area. So yeah, I think Calgary there’s definitely themes of that in the way that we’re, you knows, taking away these public spaces and trying to make them better but in the end, are they being made better? That’s kind of the discussion that I think is really important to have.

Mary W. Rowe Genevieve, I’m sure in New York, this is surfacing, because there are so many contested issues in New York and your walks must be walking right through them, right?

Genevieve Wagner Oh my gosh, so many of them, which is exciting. And also like really is in the spirit of the Municipal Arts Society. Because a lot of this is like, a lot the walks are like policy related and citizens being like, what is happening? There’s actually, there was a rezoning that started in 2021 in this neighbourhood called Gowanus along the Gowanus Canal, which is like a post-industrial area that is currently undergoing a lot of change, and there’s this walk that has been led a few times, including this year, that’s called, like, What’s Going On in Gowanus, just a pretty simple title. But that one, yeah, is about how people are a little bit disappointed with some of the development that’s going down there. You know, it’s a canal, it’s a waterfront, it’s being cleaned actively. It, you know, is polluted. But there are opportunities to make it accessible and make it you know, a great place to be, but some citizens, myself included, are like, I don’t know if everything they’re doing here is really accomplishing what we need. And then similarly, there is an anniversary of a rezoning in Williamsburg, which is also in Brooklyn, on the East River, and it’s the 20th anniversary of this rezoning. So a few people are leading walks, kind of thinking about how the neighbourhood has changed in the case of this rezoning, you know, and what the future of the community is.

Mary W. Rowe Again, you know, part of the Jacobs sort of series of things that are going to be in that Jacobs Book for Dummies is this idea that we can find a way to broker dissent. So you don’t, on walks, you don’t always have people that agree with each other, they see things differently. And I would think it’s one of the sort of skills of the walk leader that they’ve got to be able to know that, that they’re going to have people that disagree with them. It’s kind of like walking democracy. Tell me what you’ve done to recruit. Somebody’s asked a question. What are the challenges to recruiting new walk leaders and how do you make sure that they’re not just coming from one particular community? Mehedi, have you had, you’ve been done it for a number of years now. Obviously you’re trying to make sure you’ve got a diversity of leaders. Any tips on how to get new walk leaders from communities that might not necessarily put their hands up to volunteer?

Mehedi Khan Yeah, I think it’s a great question. And I think, you know what, the best thing I’ve learned is this concept of meeting people where they’re at, right? If you really want to get folks in the suburbs, in the inner suburbs of Toronto, whether it’s Thorncliffe, Scarborough, North Etobicoke, you got to meet them where they are at. And for a lot of folks, that doesn’t necessarily mean city hall or anything equivalent of a public city building. It could be a plaza that has a lot retail businesses. It could be a racialized faith-based space that has a community center where folks attend on a weekly basis. Those are the places you’ve got to be at to ensure that you get those folks part of the conversation. And I think this year, we’ve done a pretty good job of ensuring that, where we’re spreading word of the mouth, going to those spaces and speaking with people. And I think we’ve had a pretty diverse number of walks, making sure we hit each borough of Toronto. But again, I think it goes back to this idea of meeting people where they’re at, right? And it’s just like how Jane had this idea of a sidewalk ballet, right. You don’t get to interact with somebody on a sidewalk unless you’re there. So you’ve got to be there first.

Mary W. Rowe And I suspect a lot of you have walks that you’re offering in different languages too. They’re not always English, right? And the other challenge that we have is we have many, sadly, we have may neighbourhoods where there’s no sidewalk to walk on. So I was with my sister at Easter. She lives in a small community, and I’m just astonished that there’s not sidewalk. Like, what was the city thinking? Anyway, so you have to make sure it’s safe. Go ahead, Sarah.

Sarah Luca Yeah, I was just going to add to Mehedi’s great point there that we also really lean into this idea that everybody is an expert in their own experience.

Mary W. Rowe That’s another little item for the Dummies book, everybody’s an expert.

Sarah Luca We’ve had quite a few walk shops with folks. And the question that we always get is what?

Mary W. Rowe Do you call them walk shops?

Sarah Luca Yes, we call them walk shops. 100%. So they’re workshops on how to lead walks.

Mary W. Rowe Walk shops, I love it.

Sarah Luca And one of the questions we get from folks, a lot of times, is what if I don’t know what I’m talking about, or I don t know like the history, or I don’t know what this means, or I don’t not know. And so we really lean into this idea that, you are an expert in your own life, you are expert in your own experiences in the city, you are a expert in the way that you sort of live your life and the places that you go to and your routines and your experiences. And so we really try and tell folks, you don’t need to be a planner, you don’t to be like an urban designer, you don’ need to have this really formalized education in order to lean a walk. Like your walk could be about your favourite places in the neighbourhood. Your walk could about, you know, your favorite pieces of sidewalk art. Your walk really be about like maybe a tree in your neighborhood that you really like. Yeah, so we really just try and like really, that’s one of our main principles that we really really lean into is that everybody and anybody could lead a walk. And it’s really important to surface those voices and those experiences and make sure that everyone gets a chance to participate.

Mary W. Rowe Absolutely. And also that so much about, again, Jacobs was that she was an observer. So a lot of her work was about listening. And so, I think to tell a walk leader, you don’t actually have to do a lot telling, you can just ask some good questions and then see what happens. And invariably, there’ll be somebody, I noticed in the chat, people are talking about how people come back to their neighbourhood, they may have lived there years ago, and they come back to see it, kind of cool. And then suddenly, somebody who lived there 45 years ago was saying, Well, you know, it used to be a this. So, the collective wisdom that you’ve got gathering in these walks, eh? Well, as you know, as you think now about the sort of, general sort of economic uncertainty that we’re living in now, and I think the challenges, particularly to another area of Jane’s interest, which was independent businesses, main street businesses. Thoughts on how you think the Jane’s Walk themes will look like next week? What will the tone be? I know we’re all hoping for nice weather. But what else, what do you think? Adam, Calgary is at a particular juncture, downtown’s going through stuff, you’ve got transit investments doing things, what do think the sort of overarching kind of mood’s going to be?

Adam Schwartz Yeah, I think that local economy piece is definitely going to be a big one. And I think, I always like bringing it down to, just the hyper local scale. I went to a local chat here that was all just surrounding the theme of borrowing an egg from a neighbour. And we talked for like an hour and a half about borrowing eggs from neighbours, and how that’s changed, and why we do it and why don’t do it. So I think that would be another metric I would love to collect from Jane’s Walks, is ask people before and after the walk, how likely are you to borrow an egg from a neighbour? Because I think, you know, we talk about empathy, we talk about trust, we talk about familiarity and kind of recognizable elements within neighbourhoods. And I think Jane’s walk promotes all of that. And especially when you are bringing together, you know really local regions together and people from these regions altogether. I think, when I think about local economy, it means both supporting your local corner stores, your local coffee shops, but also what does it look like to support each other on that really small local economy scale to the point where you can once again go knock on someone’s door and borrow some sugar or borrow a cup of milk.

Mary W. Rowe Yeah, yeah. Celia, what about in the UK? I know that London itself is obviously going through lots of post-COVID adjustments still, and you obviously have not escaped the dynamic between Canada and the United States, so you’re familiar with it. What do you think the sense will be of Jane’s walks in the UK next week?

Celia Beketa Well, yeah, unfortunately, I don’t know. I don’t think there will be a festival next week in London, UK. There was one last year, but the organizers aren’t leading one this year, as far as I know. So, but I will say, what I was going to say, or what came to mind with that question was, you know, both in Toronto and in last year’s London’s festival when I was able to attend it. There were walks that featured, like there was one in particular in Toronto that was called The World in Ten Blocks and it was based on a documentary. It was the filmmakers who then kind of did a walk based on their documentary, and they talked to shop owners, mostly those who had migrated to Toronto, and they talk to them about their experience. And so it was kind of a mix of like hearing their stories, but then also familiarizing the people on the walk with these businesses and with their shops. And similarly in London, last year at least, there were sort of similar themes. There was one that was focused on like Elephant and Castle, kind of like South London, where, again, it was talking a lot about like local shopkeepers who unfortunately due to gentrification and developments were being kind of forced out. And so we met some of those folks as well and heard their stories, either directly or through the walk leaders. So I’d say, yeah, those in terms of like local businesses and things like that, that’s sort of what came to mind. And, yeah. Certainly, if there were a Jane’s Walk Festival happening in London this year, I mean, there would be like the political landscape has changed so much even in the past year. We’ve got, like there have been 14 years of austerity, there’s new government in. So, yeah, I’m sure there would be very interesting blocks, but still the dialog is-

Mary W. Rowe You can still, there’s still time. You could post a London walk and just … [It’s true.] Just go out your back door and see who comes to join you. Some of the best walks, people are always, oh I want to have a lot of people in my walk. Well actually you don’t. You want to be able to have an intimate conversation, right? Sarah, as you look to the festival, so it can be three people is what I’m getting at, it could be just you. Sarah, as you’re thinking about getting excited about next week, what do you think is going to be the theme? And then I’m going to go around and then we’ll wrap up. Go ahead.

Sarah Luca That’s a great question. I think there’s this sense of coming together, I think sort of given the political landscape, the elections that are coming up, sort of, you know, the things that everyone’s thinking about, I think, there’s a real sense that folks want to be in community, and I think that’s given, like, considering we have, like, a huge number of walks this year, and folks are really wanting to get out, wanting to connect with each other, wanting to just sort of, I would say like re-affirm what it means to be in community, what cohesion means, like what it means to be neighbourly, what it means to be like hyper local, what it mean to connect with others, even if they’re different. And I think that’s going to be, it’s sort of like an everything and nothing game at the same time. But I think, yeah, I think folks are really looking towards just being together and sort of  like, this is what it means to be a Torontonian. This is what is means to someone who lives in the Beaches or someone who live in Scarborough and sort of, what identity and community, like sort of those informal social capital bonds that keep us together.

Mary W. Rowe Yeah, yeah. Mehedi.

Mehedi Khan Yeah, I think I was just going to, you know, Sarah explained it beautifully. I think the only thing I was going to add is that for this year, our theme actually is “walk with us”, like a big part of our, it’s a big part of our marketing this year, is this kind of open invitation, right. And I think Sarah talked about kind of in general, I think the different tensions and different political landscapes and Toronto is such a multicultural city. It is so different and beautiful in the same way. The idea of somebody inviting you to a walk, feels like they’re inviting you to their home, right? And when we get the invitation, what do we say? We feel already, oh wow, I’m invited to something. I can be part of something without even knowing that person. So I think our theme this year is walk with us because we want an open invitation.

Mary W. Rowe I love that, walk with us. Genevieve, what do you think the tone’s going to be in New York? You’ve got so much going on, what are you thinking?

Genevieve Wagner Yeah, we do, yeah. I feel similar to what-.

Mary W. Rowe And you know, in Canada, Canada, we will have just had a federal election, so a lot of people, a lot of have been walking out on doorsteps, they’ve been walking with a particular kind of thing in their minds, but anyway, what do think, in New York, the mood will be?

Genevieve Wagner Yeah, I feel similar to Mehedi and Sarah, and that was beautifully said. Yeah, we have the presidential election that happened, and we have a primary for our mayoral election happening in June. So I know there’s some defeat, but also some excitement and hope with the mayoral elections happening. So it’s kind of a mixture of those two emotions, I would say. But I feel like we have a lot of community members, and community nonprofits that are leading walks this year, a bit more than last year, which is a really good sign, but, I think also maybe a theme of, of reflection. We have quite a few sound walks that were submitted this year. So walks that put an emphasis on just observing and hearing the space around you. Yeah, and listening. So listening in the soundwalk sense, but also, of course, listening in general at the festival. Yeah. So I would say reflection is a good theme for us. Yeah.

Mary W. Rowe Wonderful well listen it’s just, I could just hang with you guys for another hour and a half and talk about what about this, and could we try that, and are you thinking of this so, let’s do it, let’s meet a year from now and let’s check in again on where Jane’s Walk is evolving as it grows and as people do different things and try different things. Thank you very much for joining us people are putting into the chat some last references, again, if you want that, we’ll publish this chat so all the books, you’ll see them, all the videos you can look them up. We’ll post next week. I hope everybody on this call is going to get themselves to a Jane’s Walk somewhere, or maybe they’re going to get themselves to two or three since now it’s a festival and it spans three days, you can go see a film do a panel, go on a couple of walks, and just take your eyes to the street, and what a wonderful legacy this is for Jane Jacobs. So Mehedi, Sarah, Adam, Genevieve and Celia, thank you for joining us and sharing with us how this this movement continues to grow. CUI is really as supportive, we have a session next week, just a heads up to all regular CityTalkers, it’s on Wednesday, the 30th, we’re breaking with tradition but we’re doing it with the shift and it’s about tents and encampments and how do we rethink the future of that, and then we’ve got some coming up in May, which will be about my main street and local businesses and also the future faith places on main streets, so lots of interesting programming ahead. But again, thanks. May two to four, take your eyes to the street enjoy Jane’s Walk. Thanks again for being part of this, really great. Have a great Jane’s Festival. Thank you so much.