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Jane Jacobs and the Future of New York: Urban Detectives

In the spirit of Jane Jacobs, children ages 8 to 12 can go and explore Greenwich Village — the neighborhood she called her home and fought to save. Equipped with detectives’ notebooks, junior detectives will investigate the city fabric, secretly observe people moving through town, discover the history of older buildings, learn to read building facades and ghost walls, search for an underground brook, and maybe even make sense of Village street patterns! During this fun and interactive tour, children will gain some understanding of the huge impact that urban planning has on our lives and the importance of being involved.
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In the spirit of Jane Jacobs, children ages 8 to 12 can go and explore Greenwich Village — the neighborhood she called her home and fought to save. Equipped with detectives’ notebooks, junior detectives will investigate the city fabric, secretly observe people moving through town, discover the history of older buildings, learn to read building facades and ghost walls, search for an underground brook, and maybe even make sense of Village street patterns! During this fun and interactive tour, children will gain some understanding of the huge impact that urban planning has on our lives and the importance of being involved.

Leader: Sylvia Laudien-Meo, art historian

Photo of Aaron Donovan
Before he began blogging about land use and transportation, Aaron Donovan wrote The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund's annual fundraising appeal for three years and earned a master's degree in urban planning from Columbia. Since then, he has worked for nonprofit organizations devoted to New York City economic development. He lives and works in the Financial District, and sees New York's pre-automobile built form as an asset that makes New York unique in the United States, and as a strategic advantage that should be capitalized upon.

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