Tag: walking

Lead a Jane’s Walk this May in your neighborhood

Lead a Jane’s Walk this May in your neighborhood

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Jane’s Walk is happening the first weekend of May (5th-6th-7th).
Last year, 1,000+ walks happened all over the globe!

Think of this as an opportunity to:

  • start a conversation with your neighbors,
  • continue highlighting safety issues that have been identified through initiatives like Boston’s Neighborhood Slow Streets application process
  • get outside and enjoy a weekend in May!

Create your walk idea on Janeswalk.org, or get in touch with us at WalkBoston (contact Brendan!). We’re happy to help you or your neighbors with suggestions, promote your walk, and answer any questions you may have.
We look forward to helping you get out walking!

Edit: We’ll add neighborhoods/cities/towns below that will be hosting walks on this post (and include links to the separate walks within the communities as we find out about them.) 

Boston – West End – “Jane’s Walk West End Tour”
Meet at the West End Museum
Saturday, May 6, 2pm
http://janeswalk.org/united-states/boston/janes-walk-west-end-tour/

Boston – West Roxbury – “West Roxbury Walk Audit”
Meet at the Hastings Street Lot
Saturday, May 6, 2pm
http://janeswalk.org/united-states/boston/west-roxbury-walk-audit/

Boston – Jamaica Plain – “Growing the City: Washington St from Forest Hills to Green St”
Meet at Brassica Kitchen & Cafe
Sunday, May 7, 11am
http://janeswalk.org/united-states/boston/growing-city-washington-st-forest-hills-green-st/

Boston – Roslindale – “Roslindale Gateway Path & proposed Blackwell Path Extension”
Meet at SE corner of the Arboretum (look for Walk UP Roslindale Banner)
Sunday, May 7, 1pm
http://www.walkuproslindale.org/weblog/2017/04/21/janes-walk-planned-sunday-may-7-at-1-pm-start-at-the-southeast-corner-of-the-arboretum/

Cambridge – “The Dense Layers of History in Old Cambridge”
Meet at Out of Town News Kiosk, Harvard Square
Saturday, May 6, 10:30am
http://www.janejacobswalk.org/upcoming-2017-walks/the-dense-layers-of-history-in-old-cambridge

Worcester – Jane Week (May 1 – 7, 2017) gives Worcester residents and visitors a chance to connect to each other, explore Worcester by foot and participate in interesting discussions on how we can enhance the design and function of our city. – 20+ events and walks throughout Worcester.
http://janeswalk.org/united-states/worcester-ma/

Lowell – “Labor Movement in Lowell”
Meet at Lowell National Park Visitor Center, 246 Market St
Saturday, May 6, 10:30am
http://richardhowe.com/event/labor-movement-in-lowell-walk/

Dedham – “Walking Tour of Proposed Dedham Heritage Rail Trail”
Meet at the parking lot by the football field/track on Whiting Ave
Sunday, May 7, 4:00pm
Saturday, May 13, 10:00am
http://mailchi.mp/f20ef35375c4/rail-trail-happenings-this-spring

Somerville – “A Metamorphosis of Industrial Buildings Along the Rails”
Kickoff to Somerville’s Preservation Month, ending at Aeronaut Brewery
Saturday, May 13, 9:30am
http://janeswalk.org/united-states/somerville-ma/meta/

Boston – Jamaica Plain – “Walking Tour of Monument Square”
July 1 & August 19, 12:45pm
http://janeswalk.org/united-states/boston/walking-tour-o/

Start planning a Jane’s Walk near you

Start planning a Jane’s Walk near you

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“No one can find what will work for our cities by looking at … suburban garden cities, manipulating scale models, or inventing dream cities. You’ve got to get out and walk.”

– JANE JACOBS

Every year on the first weekend in May, people all over the world take part in Jane’s Walk. Jane Jacobs (1916-2006) was a writer and activist best known for her writings about cities. Her first book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961), upended the ideas of modernist city planning and offered a new vision of diverse cities made for and by the people who live in them.

Jane’s Walk is a movement of free, citizen-led walking tours inspired by Jane Jacobs. The walks get people to tell stories about their communities, explore their cities, and connect with neighbors. In 2016, over 1,000 Jane’s Walks took place in 212 cities around the world. This year, WalkBoston’s Brendan Kearney is acting as Massachusetts’ Organizer, helping people like you organize and lead a Jane’s Walk in Boston or anywhere in Massachusetts. For more information visit www.JanesWalk.org.

Transit-Walkability Collaborative Established

Transit-Walkability Collaborative Established

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New coalition plans to promote walkable, transit-rich communities

America Walks announced today the formation of the Transit-Walkability Collaborative, whose purpose is to expand safe, healthy, equitable, and sustainable communities by harnessing the synergy between walkability and quality public transit service.

The nine founding members of the new coalition work at the national, state, and local level in the walkability and transit advocacy movements. They are Center for Transportation Excellence, American Public Transportation Association, National Association of Public Transportation Advocates, Victoria Transport Policy Institute, Circulate San Diego, WalkDenver, Health by Design/Indiana Citizens’ Alliance for Transit, WalkBoston, and America Walks. Each organization has signed on to a shared Statement of Purpose, which can be found on the America Walks web site here:

The Transit-Walkability Collaborative notes that integrating walkability and public transit helps to create safe, affordable, and enjoyable neighborhoods, whose residents complete their daily activities while owning fewer vehicles and driving less often.  These communities experience significant public and private-sector cost savings, lower rates of traffic fatalities, reduced air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, higher levels of physical activity, and a better quality of life – especially for low-income families.

“Walkability and transit advocacy complement each other and accomplish common goals neither can achieve on its own,” said Ian Thomas, State and Local Program Director with America Walks and coordinator of the Collaborative. “By ensuring a high level of service for both walking and public transport, we stimulate mutually-reinforcing community benefits that help address a range of social problems – from health to economics to quality of life.”

The Transit-Walkability Collaborative has identified long-term objectives in the areas of research, communications, capacity-building, and policy change, and adopted a 2017 Action Plan.  One of the first priorities will be to conduct an environmental scan of walkability and transit advocacy groups, and then expand the circle further.  “We also plan to reach out to organizations with primary interests in bicycling, disabilities/access, social equity, public health, and smart growth,“ said Thomas.

Several upcoming events are being planned to stimulate more interest and discussion about the alignment of walkability and transit campaigns.  A fact sheet will be published in March in conjunction with a special webinar, and an online survey will be launched at the same time – to collect information about the ways walkability and transit advocates are collaborating around the country and what support they need.

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About WalkBoston: WalkBoston makes walking safer and easier in Massachusetts to encourage better health, a cleaner environment and vibrant communities.

About the Transit-Walkability Collaborative:  The Transit-Walkability Collaborative exists to promote the benefits of walkable, transit-rich communities; to bring together transit and walkability advocates at the local, state, and national level; and to identify and implement programs and policies that simultaneously expand walkability and transit services in communities across the U.S.  The founding members are:

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A newcomer’s guide to a walkable lifestyle

A newcomer’s guide to a walkable lifestyle

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Tom Palmer covered transportation and real estate development for 15 of his 32 years as a reporter and editor at the Boston Globe. He now owns Tom Palmer Communication, a consulting firm.

I’m a newcomer to Boston. I’ve only been here 40 years. The city has changed a lot in that time, but one thing hasn’t changed. It’s still a walkable city. My friends from the Midwest, and even some who visit from bigger cities closer to us, are invariably pleasantly surprised at how accessible and manageable it is. “I love Boston, because you can walk across town in 45 minutes,” a visitor told me.

There’s a lot of room for improvement, of course. Our walk/don’t walk/take-your-life-in-your-hands lights could be better. Pedestrians could shape up by paying attention to lights, but the streets are often so narrow it’s often tempting to make a run for it.

Another thing that hasn’t changed in my short time living in the Boston area is the price of housing. The front pages of newspapers in the 1970s lamented the high rents and home prices of the day, just like we do now. And today it’s even less affordable.

Even some Boston folks who arrived more recently than I object to the fact that Boston is growing so much, that it’s so much more congested than it was. We are lucky we have the attractions and resources – educational, business, medical, sports, cultural, entertainment – that make people want to come here and stay. In the years since Boston shook off its post-War slump and reinvented itself for the 21st century, we gradually and collectively chose to be a contemporary world-class city – competing for business and talent globally and growing to enable us to do that. As engaging as historical Old Boston was, and while we will preserve much of it, we elected not to remain a provincial, insulated community.

With that choice came the responsibility to overcome the barriers to increasing our housing supply, to accepting density. We’ve taken some steps in that direction, adding thousands of apartments just since the recent recession. Boston was at its most dense at mid-20th century, but the automobile did not yet dominate like it does in today’s car culture. People walked more and took public transportation more. The population then declined and only began growing again in about 1990. If we are going to accommodate continually increasing numbers of fellow residents of the Boston area, we must adjust our ways so we can all efficiently get where we need to go. A young professional woman I met the other day rides a fold-up electric scooter from her home in the Seaport to her job in the Back Bay, wearing a collapsible helmet that she found from a European manufacturer. We need more entrepreneurial commuters like that.

But most people in the city are going to walk at least a portion of their daily trips. Walking is healthy and social. As a counterpart, a big part of the solution to our overcrowded highways and streets is expanding our transit capacity. That means both fixing our ill-maintained existing MBTA system and eventually adding to the network. A good transit system enables and encourages walking.

Our continued economic development and our quality of life depend on it.

This article was featured in WalkBoston’s January 2017 newsletter.
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