Jane’s Walk Vienna
Jane’s Walk is an annual festival of free, citizen-led walking conversations inspired by Jane Jacobs. Jane’s Walks encourage people to share stories about their neighbourhoods, discover unseen aspects of their communities, and use walking as a way to connect with their neighbours.
Jane’s Walk was founded in Toronto in 2007 by a group of Jane Jacobs’ friends and colleagues as a way to honour and activate her ideas. That first year, there were a handful of walks in Toronto. Over the next decade, the movement saw rapid global uptake by urban activists around the world.
On the first weekend of May every year, Jane’s Walk festivals take place in hundreds of cities around the world. In 2017, 1,700 Jane’s Walks took place in 225 cities around the world, spanning 37 countries and 6 continents. The movement continues to grow every year!
In 2014, Vienna joined the global Jane’s Walk movement and has been growing every year since then. In the first five years, more than 2,000 people joined more than 80 walks in the Austrian capital. Thus, Vienna quickly became one of the most successful Jane’s Walk cities in Europe.
Walking conversations
We walk our cities to honour and activate the ideas of Jane Jacobs. Jane’s Walk is a community-based approach to city building that uses citizen-led walking tours to make space for people to observe, reflect, share, question and re-imagine the places in which they live, work and play.
Where more traditional tours are a bit like walking lectures, a Jane’s Walk is more of a walking conversation. Walk Leaders share their knowledge, but also encourage discussion and participation among the walkers. Anyone can lead a walk because everyone is an expert on the place where they live!
Thus, Jane’s Walks foster community in strong and diverse neighbourhoods by supporting belonging and fostering public participation and initiative.
Diverse people, places and topics
Jane’s Walk Vienna is about exploring the know and unknown by foot, with open eyes for local stories and faces which are typical for Vienna and its diverse neighbourhoods or “Grätzl”.
A Jane’s Walk is a walking conversation that can be about anything and holds space for the perspectives of anyone who has a story to tell. Walks can be serious or funny, informative or exploratory, they can look at the history of a place or current topics. The places and themes of the walks are as diverse as the people organising and joining the walks, thereby building community and fostering social inclusion in neighbourhoods.
Join us!
You know something? Great! Share it with other on a walk! You don’t know something? Even better! Learn something new about your neighbourhood from the people on your walk. And you love your city? We too! Let us shape it together while walking!
Join one of the many walks or lead a walk yourself. Because Jane’s Walk depends on engaged citizens who want to lead a walk themselves. Create your walk now – we are happy to support you!
Or become part of the Jane’s Walk Vienna team! We are looking forward to meeting you!
