Culture

A New Life for Urban Alleys

Once blighted and overlooked, these small streets are transforming into community and sustainability hotspots.
An art walk through Seattle's Nord Alley.mirastories

The alley is dark no longer.

In the United States, these almost-accidental spaces between buildings have existed in a sort of limbo: not quite streets, but still thoroughfares; not private, but not public enough to feel protected; backdrops to crime, or filled with trash heaps.