Alley
It is also a rear access or service road (back lane), or a path, walk, or avenue (French allée) in a park or garden.
[2] The word alley is used in two main ways: In landscaping, an allée or avenue is traditionally a straight route with a line of trees or large shrubs running along each side.
In some older urban development in North America lanes at the rear of houses, to allow for deliveries and garbage collection, are called alleys.
They provide a setting for much everyday urban life and place-based identity, the examination of which can shed new light on the traditional idea of a global city and contributes to a renewed conception of metropolization as a highly localized process.
During China's dynastic period, emperors planned the city of Beijing and arranged the residential areas according to the social classes of the Zhou dynasty (1027–256 BC).
[21] Its architectural importance is that it provides a view into the relatively recent past of Tokyo, when large parts of the city resembled present-day Golden Gai, particularly in terms of the extremely narrow lanes and the tiny two-storey buildings.
Many of the bars only welcome regular customers, who initially should be introduced by an existing patron, although many others welcome non-regulars, some even making efforts to attract overseas tourists by displaying signs and price lists in English.
[28] In suburban Sydney, several alleyways or laneways exist between residential lots that provide pedestrians a shortcut passage to nearby facilities on adjacent roads.
The city's oldest laneways are a result of Melbourne's original urban plan, the 1837 Hoddle Grid, and were designed as access routes to service properties fronting the CBD's major thoroughfares.
[39] The lane was built in 1727 during the reconstruction efforts after the area was completely destroyed in the massive citywide fire of 1726 and is officially listed in the Land-Registry Office as City Street Number 77.
While they are found in other French cities including Villefranche-sur-Saône, Mâcon, Chambéry, Saint-Étienne, Louhans, Chalon sur Saône and Vienne (Isère), Lyon has many more; in all there are about 500.
[43] Venice is largely a traffic free city and there is, in addition to the canals, a maze of around 3000 lanes and alleys called calli (which means narrow).
London has numerous historical alleys, especially, but not exclusively, in its centre; this includes The City, Covent Garden, Holborn, Clerkenwell, Westminster and Bloomsbury amongst others.
An alley in London can also be called a passage, court, place, lane, and less commonly path, arcade, walk, steps, yard, terrace, and close.
Lombard Street and Change Alley had been the open-air meeting place of London's mercantile community before Thomas Gresham founded the Royal Exchange in 1565.
[51] In 1698, John Castaing began publishing the prices of stocks and commodities in Jonathan's Coffeehouse, providing the first evidence of systematic exchange of securities in London.
[54] West of the City there are a number of alleys just north of Trafalgar Square, including Brydges Place which is situated right next to the Coliseum Theatre and just 15 inches wide at its narrowest point, only one person can walk down it at a time.
[59] In the same neighbourhood Cecil Court has an entirely different character than the two previous alleys, and is a spacious pedestrian street with Victorian shop-frontages that links Charing Cross Road with St Martin's Lane, and it is sometimes used as a location by film companies.
[62] The first film-related company arrived in Cecil Court in 1897, a year after the first demonstration of moving pictures in the United Kingdom and a decade before London's first purpose-built cinema opened its doors.
Unlike a tenement entry to private property, known as a close, a vennel was a public way leading from a typical high street to the open ground beyond the burgage plots.
They provide a space for utility poles, fire escapes, garage access, delivery loading zones, and garbage bin pickup.
Other heritage features are buildings more than a century old lining the alley and a rare metal carriage curb that edges the sidewalk on the southern end.
[citation needed] In the United States alleys exist in both older commercial and residential areas, for both service purposes and automobile access.
In residential areas, particularly in those that were built before 1950, alleys provide rear access to property where a garage was located, or where waste could be collected by service vehicles.
[100][101] Although initially considered seedy and uncivilized, the utilitarian nature of alleys has afforded Chicago the ability to keep main roads and thoroughfares clear of trash, unlike other large cities in the country, while also providing additional space for residential and commercial car parking, as well as maintaining accessible electrical and plumbing utilities, both above and below ground.
In 2006, the Chicago Department of Transportation began implementing the "Green Alley" program, an ongoing effort to replace hardtop alley surfaces with permeable pavers and better grading to more quickly absorb storm water runoff into the groundwater below, reducing stress on the city's infrastructure, as well as introducing lighter colored "high albedo" pavement to reflect sunlight and reduce urban heat island effect.
[106] Another early settled American city, New Castle has a number of interesting alleys, some of which are footpaths and others narrow, sometimes cobbled, lanes open to traffic.
Numerous cities in the United States and Canada, such as Chicago,[131] Seattle,[132] Los Angeles,[133] Phoenix, Washington, D.C.,[134] and Montréal, have started reclaiming their alleys from garbage and crime by greening the service lanes, or back ways, that run behind some houses.
New life has also come to other alleys within downtown commercial districts of various cities throughout the world with the opening of businesses, such as coffee houses, shops, restaurants and bars.
This form of housing already exists in Vancouver, and revised regulations now encourage new developments as part of a plan to increase urban density in pre-existing neighbourhoods while retaining a single-family feel to the area.
