For more info and to register, visit www.janeswalkottawa.ca.
Jane's Walk is offering walking tours as part of the 2025 edition of Ottawa Architecture Week. This year's theme is Mapping the Market: Spatial Anchors & Planned Histories. One of Ottawa’s oldest neighborhoods, the ByWard Market has long been a site of cultural exchange, architectural layering, and collective memory. Changes to Ottawa's downtown are upon us in light of the recent pandemic, city growth, and accelerated development; and changes are being proposed for the Market as part of that evolution: What should we be doing to honour the past while imagining a future that is inclusive, sustainable, and rooted in place?
We invite everyone—from long-time residents to first-time visitors—to join in re-imagining the ByWard Market not just as a historic site, but as a living, breathing urban landscape where memory and innovation can coexist
Jacobs 101: The ideas of Jane Jacobs---Examples from the ByWard Market
This walk will introduce the ideas of Jane Jacobs, using ByWard Market streetscapes, buildings, and landmarks to illustrate Jacobs' ideas about the features and characteristics of vibrant streets and neighbourhoods, as detailed in her book The Death and Life of Great American Cities. We'll explore the roles of short blocks, mixed use, ample sidewalks, parks, zoning regulations, and more as we make our way across the ByWard Market.
About Jane's Walk:
Our walks are led by volunteers and are free to attend. Check out Tips for Participants.
We are asking participants to sign up to give us an estimate of attendance. Sign-up instructions are provided on the walk page.
When you sign up for a walk, you will receive email confirming your reservation.
Indigenous Land Acknowledgement
While you walk, we encourage you to think about and acknowledge the land where we live, work, and walk. The Ottawa-Gatineau region is the traditional unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabe people. The Algonquin People have inhabited and cared for these lands for millennia and we express our gratitude to and respect for them.