Stephen Goldsmith knows this neighborhood. He knows the flower box on the east end of the Pierpont sidewalk used to be a sink in a laboratory at the University of Utah.
He helped plant the trees that now shade the porches behind Artspace. He can remember when the lawn at California Tire was the playground of a day care for homeless children. He knows the name of each artist who painted a mural on the side of a building, and he knows the history of those buildings.
Many of them were built in 1910, when businessmen with the last names of Eccles and Browning funded the construction of large warehouses on Salt Lake City's west side. Goldsmith says the city fathers wanted to encourage farmers to move their produce markets off of Main Street so the capital city would look a little less homespun.
But the farmers didn't bite. And other uses were found for the warehouses. And Goldsmith will talk about this when he leads Jane's Walk. He'll talk about how much better it works when a neighborhood grows organically, from the bottom up instead of from the top down.
Goldsmith is an activist, a sculptor, the former director of planning for Salt Lake City and currently a professor of architecture and planning at the University of Utah as well as the director of the Center for the Living City, an organization dedicated to furthering the ideas of Jane Jacobs.
On Saturday, he will lead a free walking tour of the neighborhood around Pierpont, on Salt Lake City's west side. He plans to walk and talk for 90 minutes, maybe two hours.
He knows he could talk at least that long about this community, where he has had several art studios over the years and where he once lived and raised children. Goldsmith hopes that some of those who join him on the walk will have memories of their own about the neighborhood.
Jane's Walk honors Jacobs, a respected activist and critic of traditional kinds of city planning. Goldsmith counts himself lucky to have known Jacobs for a few years before she died in 2006 at the age of 89.
Jacobs is most well-known for her 1961 book, "The Death and Life of Great American Cities." She loved walkable neighborhoods, with people of all colors and ages living and working in close proximity. One of her most famous quotes is, "New ideas need old buildings."
Jacobs lived in New York City for many years. She spearheaded a drive to save Greenwich Village from "urban renewal."
She and her husband moved to Toronto in 1968 in protest of the Vietnam War and because they did not want to see their sons drafted. In Canada, she fought the expressways because they bisected and divided neighborhoods. Toronto was the first city to declare a Jane Jacob's Day on May 4, 2007. This year the free walks will take place in eight Canadian cities.
But even before he knew who Jacobs was, Goldsmith was using her language, he says. Back in the 1980s, he and other artists came together to try to change zoning laws and secure the Pierpont warehouse that eventually became Artspace. As they talked to city officials, he notes, they started tossing out the term "mixed use."
At the same time, the Salt Lake police also were using Jacobs' words when they talked about "eyes on the street." When people live downtown and walk the streets at all hours, then the entire neighborhood is safer, Jacobs said.
When he leads the Jane's Walk Saturday, Goldsmith will talk about the transition he's witnessed. He'll talk about buildings "learning to become." As the buildings in the Pierpont neighborhood learned to become something new, entire blocks grew out of their reputation for drug deals and into a reputation for vibrancy.
Goldsmith will talk about houses and shops taking root in what used to be a purely industrial zone. He'll point out a bookbindery, a piano store, a flower shop, a narrow between-the-blocks street where vines grow and birds nest. He'll point out a long strip of land behind the Rio Grande depot — where Goldsmith and others tried and failed to facilitate the building of housing and shops.
He will mention a few of the battles they lost. But Goldsmith won't focus on what he considers to be the losses for good urban planning on Salt Lake City's west side. Not with so much going so right, he says.
If you go ...
What: Jane's Walk 2008, led by U. architecture professor Stephen Goldsmith
Where: Starts at Higher Ground Learning, 325 W. Pierpont Ave. (250 South between 300 West and 400 West)
When: Saturday, 1 p.m.
How much: free
Web: www.janeswalk.net
E-MAIL: susan@desnews.com