Alleys? We have Alleys?
Alleys today are often written off as scary places. They are the semi-private, often service-only backsides of buildings where activities often go unobserved and the unsightly by-products of those activities seem to accumulate. They are purely functional. Our eyes have been trained to fall only on the streets, the ones built for cars and mass transit and maybe an occasional shade tree and to pass over the back alleys as if they were an unplanned mistake in the grid. But as we start thinking about re-making our cities in the image of human scale needs, could these alleys become the opportunity hiding in plain sight for unique moments of community gathering?
Olsen Kundig Architects - Seattle's Pioneer Square Alley Project
What most people don't recognize about alleys is their scale - they are not designed for mass vehicle use, and therefore retain the dimensions of space between buildings that existed long before we became car-dependent. They are designed for human passage and the passage of goods. If we start to look at them as 'Shared Streets' where the primary user is a pedestrian or cyclist and the occasional user is a delivery vehicle, we will begin to see them as safer and more community-driven spaces for the more casual and purposeful movement of people. Imagine a back patio for cafe dining, or a shop spilling their merchandise out back where people choosing to walk from one destination to another are introduced to their products. How about a restaurant opening up a pick-up window service on the alley where you could order a snack or drink and casually snack or sip while meandering. Below are images from a few cities incorporating alley activation projects, including Seattle, Detroit, Phoenix and Austin.
One of the beautiful things about some of our older neighborhoods like the Garden Tract and the Magnolia neighborhood are that they also have alleys - just well hidden and seemingly very private. These days we tend to think of them as liabilities - places hidden from the eyes of the local residents. Instead, we should be thinking of them as assets. They are the semi-private access ways that are key to increasing density in a non-intrusive, very affordable, and nearly invisible manner.
How can you increase density affordably and invisibly? By adding new dwelling units on the alley side of our downtown neighborhood lots. Also, maybe by reintroducing alleys into our planning practices, but that is a much bigger battle. This brings us back to the term people are throwing around all over the place these days - 'ADU'. I'm sure there will be plenty of detailed descriptions on this blog about what they are, but in a nutshell and from this perspective, they are backyard cottages. Small units (usually 500 sf or less) that can be accessed from the alley, bringing it new life and perhaps even bringing the property owners a little income. Where we have alleys to access the ADUs, we could be catering to a whole new group of city inhabitants that are not dependent on their vehicles. Our neighborhoods with alleys are all easily in walking or cycling distance to downtown businesses, and one could theoretically live without a car quite painlessly. This saves the ADU dweller the significant expense of owning a car, saves the wear and tear on our over burdened under maintained streets and encourages vitality at the human scale. Below is a list of are quite a few examples of communities who are going above and beyond when it comes to encouraging this exact form of development. Can we encourage our city and county to adopt a similar proactive strategy? The State of California has enacted laws that parallel much of these practices, but the City of Redding has held on to some more antiquated policies that don't quite meet the standards established by these communities:
Beyond all of these concepts and proposals is a more important common denominator. Each of these can be initiated by one or two business owners, or one or two homeowners. These are the types of changes that don't have to go through City Council, most wouldn't even have to go through planning. These are the types of changes that can start growing out of one or two small projects by invested owners. We know big changes are coming in Downtown Redding, but how about some small, inwardly-focused changes too?
All images above can be found through the following source links or links listed above.
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Please note that the opinions in this article represent those of the author and not the Envision Redding group as a whole.
