On May 2 and 3, Reginans will take to the streets for the third annual Jane’s Walk, a series of free neighbourhood walking tours across the city exploring our collective history, architecture, planning, and personalities. 

Celebrating the legacy of Jane Jacobs, the foremost urban thinker of our times, the Centre for City Ecology created Jane’s Walk to inspire citizens to see how people live, work, and play in their built environment to help shape their communities.

Jane’s Walk is a thriving Toronto export. The CCE administers the Jane’s Walk program globally, partnering locally with cities and groups across Canada and around the world. Jane’s Walk is happening in more than 20 cities across Canada this year, with as many taking place internationally, including Chicago, New Orleans, Salt Lake City, and Goa and Mumbai, India.

“For Jacobs, the best way to get to know parks, sidewalks and streets was on foot,” says Jane Farrow, executive director of Jane’s Walk. “Her eye was always at ground level, and she felt strongly that no grand planning scheme could substitute for an understanding of people's everyday experience of the city.”

Regina’s passionate residents will share stories and observations about their neighbourhoods, the urban history, and local lore on this walking, talking exchange. Volunteer tour guides, from local artists and historians to active community citizens, customize their tours with personal stories and local perspectives to help bridge social and geographic gaps and create a space for Regina to discover itself. 

This year’s walks cover nine Regina neighbourhoods including Downtown, the Core, Whitmore Park, and North Central. Explore the rich cultural history in Germantown, go for an early morning walk through the Crescents and along Wascana Creek, discuss renewal through community gardens in North Central, and indulge in anecdotes of landlords and roommates past in Cathedral and the Centre Block. 

Jane Jacobs' belief that walkable, diverse and mixed used neighborhoods are the hallmark of a health city and citizenry is still alive and well. This year, Regina joins other cities across the world in celebrating this vision.

Regina’s Jane’s Walk is made possible with the support of our community partners: Regina Ecoliving, Inner Circle Creative City Development Corp, and The Great Excursions Company. Our exclusive radio sponsor is CBC Saskatchewan.

For a full listing of the tours or to find out how to lead a walk, visit http://www.janeswalk.net/participating_cities/regina

About Jane Jacobs

Jane Jacobs (1916-2006) was an urbanist and activist whose writings championed a fresh, community-based approach to city building. She had no formal training as a planner, and yet her 1961 best-seller, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, introduced ground-breaking ideas about how cities function, evolve and fail that are now common sense to today’s architects, planners, politicians and activists. Foremost is her simple yet revolutionary idea that dense, mixed use neighborhoods are the key to the health and survival of a city.

About the Centre for City Ecology

The Centre for City Ecology (CCE) is a Toronto-based think tank largely influenced by the writings and activism of Jane Jacobs. Its mission is to cultivate a broad understanding of how cities – their economies, neighbourhoods, communities, and institutions – organically develop and thrive. CCE seeks to increase urban literacy and promote civic engagement and leadership.

PHOTOs of last year’s Jane’s Walk are available upon request or at http://www.janeswalk.net/what_is_cce/press_room/press_photos

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