Phoenicians drive by through Phoenix’s Warehouse District all the time, but on Saturday they will walk and explore inside of the warehouses during Phoenix’s second annual Jane’s Walk.
Jane’s Walk started as a tribute to the author and urban activist, Jane Jacobs. A year after her death in 2006, a few of Jacobs’ friends and colleagues in Toronto started the first Jane’s Walk, a event in over 60 cities worldwide meant to help build communities.
This year Jane’s Walk Phoenix will begin at 9 a.m. at amenZone at 106 E. Buchanan St. and continue through Phoenix’s Warehouse District. At Phoenix’s first Jane’s Walk last year, participants started at Portland Park and walked through Phoenix’s Art District and the Roosevelt Historic District.
Yuri Artibise, the Jane’s Walk Phoenix coordinator, said the event is a “walking conversation.” Artibise said he wants people to come and learn about their community, observe, ask questions and share stories of their personal experiences.
Artibise said he met Jacobs a few times when he lived in Canada and started Jane’s Walk in Phoenix last year because he wanted to give back to the city that he loves.
“What everybody complains about Phoenix is that there is no past here, that Phoenix has no history,” he said. “We do have a history but we don’t respect it.”
This year’s theme for Jane’s Walk Phoenix is an adage of Jacobs’ “New ideas require old buildings.” Artibise said there are so many underutilized buildings in Phoenix and people need to know that old buildings and empty lots can be put to better use.
“If we are going to have a true downtown urban core in Phoenix, we need to take advantage of our old buildings as well as building new,” Artibise said.
Donna Reiner, a local historian, said by walking down the street and going inside the buildings in the Warehouse District, people will become more aware that buildings have character and stories. She said people said they will see the potential for these empty warehouses to accomodate new businesses.
“People drive by (the old buildings) all the time and never really notice them,” Reiner said.
Reiner, who has lived in Phoenix for the past 28 years, said she plans to go on the walk and share stories about Phoenix’s history.
“People don’t think we have history and we do, and it’s very interesting,” Reiner said.
Artibise said he hopes the walk will get people talking about what they want in Phoenix and remind them that they can take an active role in making the community what they want it to be.
He said Jacobs did not have formal training in urban planning but made a difference in her community regardless.
Jane Jacobs “was a housewife who changed the way Americans think about cities,” Artibise said.
Nan Ellin, planning program director of the School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning at ASU, said she learned from studying Jacobs that “when it comes to building our community, everyone plays a role, even if it’s a little tiny role.”
Ellin is one of the many contributors of the book “What We See: Advancing the Observations of Jane Jacobs,” which comes out in May. She will read her chapter of the book on May 4 at an additional event called Jane’s Talk at 7 p.m. at the Hotel San Carlos, 202 N. Central Ave.
Jacobs “managed to turn what she observed into beautiful prose, so that people could not just understand it but were inspired by it,” Ellin said.
Jacobs is best known for her book published in 1961, “The Death and Life of Great American Cities.” Jacob’s book focuses on innovative ideas and criticism of urban planning and how cities function, according to the Jane’s Walk website.
Jacobs believed cities should be built encompassing the interests of the local residents. She valued the rights of pedestrians and opposed creating cities that were car-centered. Jacobs successfully lead an opposition to the building of a freeway that would cut through her neighborhood, Lower Manhattan, and later when she lived in Toronto she halted plans to build an expressway there too, Artibise said.
“She stood up for what she believed in and was successful,” Artibise said.
Contact the reporter jessica.goldberg@asu.edu
