Jane's Walk 2023 Invites West Village To Connect With Neighborhood

WEST VILLAGE, NY — Jane Jacobs may have died years ago, but urban-minded New Yorkers can still walk in her footsteps at this year's annual Jane's Walk.

This year, the Municipal Art Society is hosting over 160 walks in New York City between May 5-7 as part of the annual international celebration of urban life and history called Jane's Walk NYC, inspired by the concept of mindful urbanism advocated by Jacobs.

All of the walks are free and open to the public, and most are in-person, guided tours.

“We all know that New York City is the greatest city in the world and our fabulous neighborhoods are what make it so amazing. The Jane’s Walk festival celebrates our neighborhoods with walks led by the best guides you could ask for: actual New Yorkers volunteering their time and passion for the city we all love,” said Elizabeth Goldstein, President of the Municipal Art Society of New York.

In addition to tours of Tin Pan Alley, Greenwood Cemetery, the Garment District and Andy Warhol's Union Square, the West Village — where Jacobs lived for many years and started her career as an urban advocate — unsurprisingly has a number of walks.

The touchstone walk — Jane Jacobs vs. Robert Moses, hosted by Bowery Boys tour guide Aaron Schielke — is already full. But there's still lots of other options below, and some have multiple tour times to choose from:

• Memorializing the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire
• Ghosts of Greenwich Village
• West Greenwich Village: Oddities, Characters, Sights and History
• Gay Greenwich Village (On demand Instagram Live tour)
• Radical Village
• Twenty Minutes In Manhattan - A Tribute to Michael Sorkin
• The New School and the Literary and Publishing worlds of Union Square
• Eleanor Roosevelt's Queer Village

Jane's Walk actually began in Toronto, where Jacobs lived the end of her life after decades in the West Village, in 2007.

The New York City version began as a loose collection of walks in 2011, but has since expanded to become the biggest iteration of Jane's Walks in the world.

"I think it speaks to what Jane Jacobs was advocating for, is that you don't have to be an urban planner or an architect to understand what makes you feel good about walking around a city," said Tom Devaney, senior director of Land Use and Planning at Municipal Art Society, in a recent WNYC interview.

"When Jane Jacobs lived on Hudson Street, that's what she recognized and observed," Devaney said in his radio interview. "It's that ballet of urban life that happens on the streets in the public realm."