Activity No.41 – Jane’s Walk

Jane Jacobs

Jane’s Walk is a series of neighborhood walking tours. Named after urban activist and writer Jane Jacobs, Jane’s Walks are held annually during the first weekend in May to coincide with her birthday. Jane’s Walks are not for tourists! They are for residents to dive deeper into the place where they live.

Walking in Second Life

In developing the Pedestrian Access project I’ve been thinking more and more about Public Space in Virtual Worlds, and more and more about the experience of walking. As an avatar, I might say that walking is too fundamental to immersed, embodied, civic and cultural life, to leave it only to fleshvatars.

Dear Nadia Halim

Hello Nadia!

We’re so excited to have Jane’s Walk SL be a part of Jane’s Walk 2015!

I’ve become an advocate and lover of walking. Partly for the health-of-the-city, and partly for the health-of-the-individual. Walking is one of the best things we have in this world.

We’re currently laying out the Medici University campus, and inviting Students and Faculty in to pick studio spaces and begin working. The campus plan has been enormously influenced by Jane Jacobs’ ideas. Much like the automobiles and expressways Jacobs critiques in The Death and Life of Great American Cities, in VR space, “flying” and “teleporting” are modes of transportation that are at once highly convenient, and destructive to the life of the virtual city. We’ve chosen to make MU a no-fly, no-teleport campus where you have to actually walk from place to place. We’re doing our best to mix neighborhoods of studio spaces with dance clubs, retail, and other activities.

Penny Patton

Although virtual planner Penny Patton has been expounding on it for years, I think very few places in Second Life are built to the scale or density of First Life cities. Medici University will be more dense, with many different students and faculty working on projects, and performance, dance, and retail venues interspersed.

Our Jane’s Walk will be open to

• Medici University Learners
• All Second Life Residents
• Anyone interested in making a free avatar and joining us in-world
• Streamed live on Twitch

There are Second Life Residents with unique and powerful perspectives on the virtual city, and I’d love to invite some of them to lead walks of their favorite areas. One friend, RMarie Beedit, has a favorite activity she calls “Map Dragging,” which is her way of randomly picking an area on the map and investigating it. We might also have a Map Dragging walk with her where the tour leader is discovering a neighborhood at the same time as the tour participants. In this instance, the tour guide is not sharing her intimate knowledge of a particular virtual neighborhood, but her intimate knowledge of virtual neighborhoodfulness.

Jane’s Walk 2015

MEDICI UNIVERSITY, MARIA-7, 1 May 2015 —

In 2014, Jane’s Walk took place across 6 continents, 25 countries, 134 cities, and in the form of over 1000 walks. In 2015 we’ve added Cyberspace, Second Life, to the list.

In a 90 minute walk, about 16 in-world avatars and another 9 viewers watching the live stream on Twitch.tv walked about half of the Medici University campus at the LEA23 region of Second Life.

Medici University‘s evolution in the past 4 months has been rapid and dramatic and we found ourselves already sharing stories of early developments on campus. Who created what and where someone moved. The vision. The redesigns. The new friends. The altered career paths. It was a wonderful day.

Because walking is so fundamental for me personally, I was eagerly anticipating Jane’s Walk. What I was less sure about was how many people would use this opportunity to reflect and share details from our brief but already rich history. Trilby taking 1st prize in Veyot’s car rally, and so many other gems.

Our 1st Cyberspace Jane’s Walk did what Jane’s Walks, and Jane Jacobs life and work, have always done: share and celebrate the diversity of our neighborhoods and build stronger, more robust communities.

We have 4 more walks at Medici University this weekend. And 1 or 2 people thinking of adding still more. What exciting times!

Vaneeesa Blaylock

Virtual Performance Artist, retired, turned Virtual Coffee Shop proprietor, now also retired. Pretty much just a pensioner these days.