May 2009
4 posts
Remembering Jane Jacobs... a delightful video for... →
“The small businesses she eulogized were being replaced by an anti-city within...”
– Urban Iconoclast: Jane Jacobs Revisited; City Journal, Winter 1994.
A good article worth a read (and interesting in its age and perspective) putting Jacobs in context and highlighting core principles. See you tomorrow!
April 2009
13 posts
good reads to feed your inner urbanist
From our counterpart JanesWalk host in Phoenix, AZ, Yuri Artibise:
Jane Jacob’s The Death and Life of Great American Cities tops the list (fitting as it was itself wrtitten by an amateur urbanist)
1. The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs (1961). At about 450 pages, “concise” is probably not the most apt description of this book. But, as this is the single best written, most...
gearing up for the 'dry walk'
Megan, Wes and I decided we’d put a bunch of effort into the planning for the May 2 Jane’s Walk, and to do it only once? seemed a bit.. meh. So we’re doing it twice! Our ‘dry walk’ is tomorrow morning, and we’ve invited a plethora of other urban appreciateurs along for the stroll, to give us a taste of what a reacting, positing, discussionistic (is that a word?...
...capturing the Then and Now
Writer and film director Ralph Arlyck first met Sean while living as a graduate student in San Francisco’s Haight Ashbury neighborhood at the height of the 1960s. The precocious 4-year-old would occasionally wander downstairs to visit and talk-and one day Arlyck turned on his camera. The result was a controversial 15-minute documentary that gained national attention.
Thirty years, three...
tips for Jane's Walkers
1. Wear comfortable shoes! There are 2 walk options: 9-10:30am starting in the Panhandle, Masonic @ Fell, and an additional walk 10:30-12-ish starting at Carl/Cole. The early walk is approximately 8 blocks, relatively level. The later walk is considerably longer, and involves HILLS! (not for the faint of heart!) Please plan for your foot comfort accordingly!
2. Bring your A Game! We want this to...
“Home of The Grateful Ped(estrian) —
The Summer of Love is the Haight-Ashbury’s...”
– http://www.janeswalkusa.org/janes-walk-san-francisco
NOTE: there are 2 SF walks scheduled - 9-10:30 am Panhandle to Carl/Cole, then a separate walk 10:30-12-ish from Carl/Cole to Grand View Park. Walk one, walk the other, or WALK BOTH!!
Who was this Jane Jacobs? What's she all about? →
1 tag
Business Ecology in the Haight: a Time Capsule. →
From the wayback blog of the awesome Rick Prelinger, a 1966 telephone/address directory of the upper Haight.
It’s interesting to note that the businesses still proudly in operation (Roberts Hardware, Neda’s Flowers, Persian Aub Zam Zam, the Gold Cane (since moved from its original location, now Club Deluxe), New Lite Supermarket, among others) are neighborhood-serving uses rather than...
taking (parts of) the country by storm!
SF Jane’s Walk is taking place in many US cities (as well as further up north, where much of JJ’s writing was focused).
To see who’s got it goin’ on:
Jane’s Walk - Canada (thanks for starting the whole thing off!)
Jane’s Walk - USA (check out the San Francisco location for Nikki’s walk, which starts immediately following ours, for all you ‘take...
“Home of The Grateful Ped(estrian) —
The Summer of Love is the...”
– http://www.janeswalkusa.org/janes-walk-san-francisco
1 tag
LOTS of great points to discuss...
… now we have to figure out what to focus on! Our preliminary walk of the route identified a fantastic cross-section of examples of so many of JJ’s focus topics: life on the sidewalks, how diversity enriches, what happens at public/private transitions zones, whether open space performs its intended functions, and so much more!
A big goal we have is to make sure this walk is a...
walking the proposed route
Meeting up with Wes and Megan this evening to walk our proposed Jane’s Walk route - will be taking notes on specific sights and landmarks along the way in prep for building up the discussion points for the May 2 event. Best part? There will be eats as a reward somewhere at the end of the route! I’m looking forward to what the local (Megan) recommends!
1 tag
Who Is 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,...