There were four unique walks held by Golden in 2025.
- Art Walk
- Historic Walk
- Library Block Walk
- Canyon to Confluence River Walk
- Jane’s Walk is an annual festival of free, community-led walking conversations inspired by Jane Jacobs.
Jane’s Walk is a movement of free, citizen-led walking conversations inspired by Jane Jacobs.
Jane Jacobs (1916-2006) was a writer, urbanist and activist who championed a community-based approach to city-building. She had no formal training as a planner, and yet her 1961 book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, introduced ground-breaking ideas about how cities function, evolve, and fail that have become conceptual pillars for today’s architects, planners, policymakers, activists, and other city builders.
The festival encourages people to share stories about their neighbourhoods, discover unseen aspects of their communities, and use the art of walking as a way to connect with their neighbours.
Jane’s Walk was founded in Toronto in 2006 by a group of Jane Jacobs’ friends and colleagues as a way to honor her life 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. 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 and has now reached over 500 cities!
Jane’s Walk came to life in Golden through a series of free, community-led walking conversations that invited people to explore local streets, places and stories together. Inspired by Jane Jacobs’ approach to community-based city-building, the walks created an informal way for residents to observe what was working, identify opportunities, share ideas and imagine how local places could become more welcoming, connected and people-focused. Key steps include:
- Planned a series of local walks that encouraged people to explore Golden on foot and see familiar places from a new perspective.
- Hosted four unique walks in 2025: Art Walk, Historic Walk, Library Block Walk and Canyon to Confluence River Walk.
- Designed each walk as a “walkshop” — part walking tour, part workshop and part community conversation.
- Chose walkable routes with safe stopping points where participants could pause, observe and discuss the place around them.
- Used prompts to encourage discussion about streets, footpaths, shopfronts, blank walls, vacant spaces, walking connections and opportunities for activation.
- Invited participants to share local stories, concerns, ideas and quick-win improvements.
- Encouraged people to think about place-making as a shared responsibility between community, local government, businesses and local partners.
Placemaking & Projects
How to host a walkshop
Doing Checklist
How to do a Jane's Walk
