n ARCHITECTURE
f you imagine a humming city as a living body, the conventional alleyway might be the large intestine. It’s a lonely grey loading zone, a collection point for garbage, and a covert space for drug use and violence. When a toilet is not an option, people use the alley. Idioms about alleyways generally evoke depravity: potential failures are called blind alleys, scruffy felines are alley cats, back-alley surgery is the kind that doesn’t bill insurance and as for the kind of guy you don’t want to meet in a dark alley — who do you want to meet there? But as U.S. cities grow denser, urban passageways that were once ignored and crumbling are enjoying a renaissance. Alleyway activation is a designer buzzword for modernizing utilitarian corridors into well-lit public spaces. Helping the trend along, city planners in Chicago published a Green Alley Handbook a few years ago. San Francisco followed with a Living Alleys Tool Kit. The capital city joins the party with plenty of available real estate. City planners say Sacramento is home to 350 alleys or 37 total miles of back-street pavement. Old Soul Co. on Liestal Row in Midtown probably earns the city’s gold standard for alleyway activation, having received a public grant in 2009 that financed a “pedestrian first” corridor with potted plants and cobblestone paving. Following the commercial success of Old Soul, the Sacramento City Council spent over a year debating what it should name its alleys, and in 2011 approved a medley of titles celebrating everything from the region’s political heritage (Matsui Alley) to its Swiss sister city (Liestal Row) and its ragtime and swing legacy (Jazz Alley). The City of Sacramento is currently designing a guidebook for alleyway activation. Shopkeepers are increasingly using murals and landscaping to draw people to their alleys, while eliciting neighbors to consolidate trash collection and freight loading, says Emily Baime Michaels, executive director of the Midtown Association, a business improvement district. “It’s about having ownership of the area and being thoughtful of how we manage the space,” she says. The City is attempting to encourage downtown development by streamlining the rules around construction, a move that would affect alleyway upgrades, Michaels says. As officials design the new guidelines, the Midtown Association has asked officials to not over-regulate alleys by designating them as historic corridors, a classification that restricts certain kinds of development. It’s not difficult to spruce up an alley. A simple use of string lights, or mounted LED lights instantly make the space feel safer and create an inviting atmosphere, giving “a visual cue to pedestrians that this space will guide me somewhere,” says Kimberly Garza, landscape architect and director of the Sacramento-based Atlas Labs. The city’s near-constant sunshine allows for free-flowing indoor/outdoor layouts. But shady seclusion can be part of the charm, too, for businesses establishing themselves with a secret or exclusive location. Alleys also offer visual threads of culture leading to distinctly different walks of Sacramento life.
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comstocksmag.com | June 2017