Jane Jacobs Walk 2018
Join Art Assets on a Walking Tour of NYC’s
Lower Lower East Side Green Spaces.
In honor of urban planner Jane Jacobs, Art Assets is leading a “Jane’s Walk” sponsored by the Municipal Arts Society on Sunday, May 6 at 1pm in Manhattan.
Join Art Assets Director of Communications Leah Hansen-Montalbano and Creative Director Jia Jia for “Lower Lower East Side Green Spaces”—an exploration of East River Park, the largest open green space on the Lower East Side, followed by several small parks south of Delancey Street.
The event is free and Family-, Senior-, Wheelchair-, and Pet-friendly. It will take place rain or shine.
Date: Sunday, May 6
Time: 1pm to 2:30pm
Location: Meet at the southeast corner of 14th Street & Avenue C in Manhattan
Look for two women with an open black umbrella
More information at https://www.mas.org/janes-walk-nyc/
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 treatise, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, introduced ground-breaking ideas about how cities function, evolve, and fail that now seem like common sense to generations of architects, planners, politicians and activists.
Jacobs saw cities as ecosystems that had their own logic and dynamism which would change over time according to how they were used. With a keen eye for detail, she wrote eloquently about sidewalks, parks, retail design, and self-organization. She promoted higher density in cities, short blocks, local economies, and mixed uses. Jacobs helped derail the car-centered approach to urban planning in both New York and Toronto, invigorating neighborhood activism by helping stop the expansion of expressways and roads. She lived in Greenwich Village for decades, then moved to Toronto in 1968, where she continued her work and writing on urbanism, economies, and social issues until her death in April 2006.
A firm believer in the importance of local residents having input on how their neighborhoods develop, Jacobs encouraged people to familiarize themselves with the places where they live, work and play with words like these:
“Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody.”