An alley or alleyway is a narrow lane, path, or passageway, often reserved for pedestrians, which usually runs between, behind, or within buildings in towns and cities. It is also a rear access or service road (back lane), or a path, walk, or avenue (French allée) in a park or garden.
A covered alley or passageway, often with shops, may be called an arcade. The origin of the word alley is late Middle English, from "walking or passage", from "to go", from "to walk".The Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary
Definition
The word alley is used in two main ways: It can refer to a narrow, usually paved, pedestrian path, often between the walls of buildings in towns and cities. This type is usually short and straight, and on steep ground can consist partially or entirely of steps. It also describes a very narrow, urban street, or lane, usually paved, which may be used by slow-moving local traffic, though more pedestrian-friendly than a regular street. There are two versions of this kind of alley: A rear access or service road (back lane), which can also sometimes act as part of a secondary vehicular network. Many Americans and Canadians think of an alley in these terms first. A narrow street running between houses or businesses. This type of alley is found in the older parts of many cities, including American cities like Philadelphia and Boston (see Elfreth's Alley, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania). Many are open to local traffic.
In landscaping, an allée or avenue is traditionally a straight route with a line of trees or large shrubs running along each side. In most cases, the trees planted in an avenue will be all of the same species or cultivar, so as to give uniform appearance along the full length of the avenue. The French term allée is used for avenues planted in parks and landscape gardens, as well as boulevards such as the Grand Allée in Quebec City, Canada, and Karl-Marx-Allee in Berlin.
In older cities and towns in Europe, alleys are often what is left of a medieval street network, or a right of way or ancient footpath. Similar paths also exist in some older North American towns and cities. In some older urban development in North America lanes at the rear of houses, to allow for deliveries and garbage collection, are called alleys. Alleys and ginnels were also the product of the 1875 Public Health Act in the United Kingdom, where usually alleys run along the back of streets of terraced houses, with ginnels connecting them to the street every fifth house. Alleys may be paved, or unpaved, and a blind alley is a cul-de-sac. Modern urban developments may also provide a service road to allow for waste collection, or rear access for fire engines and parking.
Steps and stairs
Because of geography, stairs are a common form of footpath in hilly cities and towns. This includes those in Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Seattle, Portland, Oregon, and San Francisco in the United States, as well as Hong Kong, Quebec City, Quebec, Canada, and Rome. Stairway trails are found in a number of hilly American cities. This includes the Stairway Trails in Bernal Heights, East San Francisco.
Covered passages
Arcades are another kind of covered passageway and the simplest kind are no more than alleys to which a glass roof was added later. Early examples of a shopping arcades include: Palais Royal in Paris (opened in 1784); Passage de Feydeau in Paris (opened in 1791).Sassatelli, R., Consumer Culture: History, Theory and Politics, Sage, 2007, p. 27. Most arcades differ from alleys in that they are architectural structures built with a commercial purpose and are a form of shopping mall. All the same alleys have for long been associated with various types of businesses, especially pubs and coffee houses. Bazaars and Souqs are an early form of arcade found in Asia and North Africa.
Some alleys are roofed because they are within buildings, such as the traboules of Lyon, or when they are a pedestrian passage through railway embankments in Britain. The latter follow the line of rights-of way that existed before the railway was built.
The Burlington Arcade (1819) was one of London's earliest covered shopping arcades.Lemoine, B., Les Passages Couverts, Paris: Délégation à l'action artistique de la ville de Paris [AAVP], 1990. . It was the successful prototype for larger glazed shopping arcades, beginning with the Saint-Hubert Gallery (1847) in Brussels and The Passage (1848) in St Petersburg, the first of Europe's grand arcades, to the Galleria Umberto I (1891) in Naples, the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in Milan (1867), and the Block Arcade, Melbourne, Australia (1893).
By country Asia
Alleyways are an understudied urban form historically shared by most Asian cities. 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.
China
Hutongs () are a type of narrow streets or alleys, commonly associated with northern Chinese cities, most prominently Beijing.
In Beijing, hutongs are alleys formed by lines of siheyuan, traditional courtyard residences. Many neighbourhoods were formed by joining one siheyuan to another to form a hutong, and then joining one hutong to another. The word hutong is also used to refer to such neighbourhoods. 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). The term "hutong" appeared first during the Yuan dynasty, and is a term of Mongolian origin meaning "town".
At the turn of the 20th century, the Qing court was disintegrating as China's dynastic era came to an end. The traditional arrangement of hutongs was also affected. Many new hutongs, built haphazardly and with no apparent plan, began to appear on the outskirts of the old city, while the old ones lost their former neat appearance.
Following the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, many of the old hutongs of Beijing disappeared, replaced by wide boulevards and high rises. Many residents left the lanes where their families lived for generations for apartment buildings with modern amenities. In Xicheng District, for example, nearly 200 hutongs out of the 820 it held in 1949 have disappeared. However, many of Beijing's ancient hutongs still stand, and a number of them have been designated protected areas. Many hutongs, some several hundred years old, in the vicinity of the Bell Tower and Drum Tower and Shichahai Lake are preserved amongst recreated contemporary two- and three-storey versions.
Hutongs represent an important cultural element of the city of Beijing and the hutongs are residential neighborhoods which still form the heart of Old Beijing. While most Beijing hutongs are straight, Jiudaowan (九道弯, literally "Nine Turns") Hutong turns nineteen times. At its narrowest section, Qianshi Hutong near Qianmen (Front Gate) is only 40 centimeters (16 inches) wide.Beijing Hutong: .
The Shanghai longtang is loosely equivalent to the hutong of Beijing. A longtang (弄堂 lòngtáng, Shanghainese: longdang) is a laneway in Shanghai and, by extension, a community centred on a laneway or several interconnected laneways. On its own long (traditional Chinese 衖 or 弄, simplified Chinese 弄) is a Chinese term for "alley" or "lane", which is often left untranslated in Chinese addresses, but may also be translated as "lane", and "tang" is a parlor or hallway.Frommer's Shanghai Day By Day – Page 162 Graham Bond – 2011 1912 "1917 China's first shopping mall, the Sincere Department Store, Lilong, or Longtang Li means "neighborhood", and long means "alley"." It is sometimes called lilong (里弄); the latter name incorporates the -li suffix often used in the name of residential developments in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As with the term hutong, the Shanghai longdang can either refers to the lanes that the houses face onto, or a group of houses connected by the lane.Walking between slums and skyscrapers: illusions of open space in ... - Page 160 Tsung-yi Michelle Huang – 2004 "Shanghainese call lilong, their characteristic residential design, as longtang. "Long" means alley or lane and "tang" parlor or hall. "All houses are facing the lanes and lanes become the public space used by all residents. Enclosed, the whole ...Postsocialism and Cultural Politics: China in the Last Decade of ... - Page 196 Xudong Zhang – 2008 "As long means a lane and tang the front room of a house, longtang either refers to a lane that connects houses or a group of houses connected by lanes. Longtang however might not be so explicit as lilong for the li in lilong means ..."Narrating Architecture: A Retrospective Anthology Page 474 James Madge, Andrew Peckham – 2006 "Four sketches by Feng Zikai of Shanghai's alley life: clockwise from top left: lowering a basket down to the alley to purchase ... these activities were certainly not considered in the original design of the lilong, but were gradually introduced in the practice of everyday life within the community. A local writer, Shen Shanzeng, has named this special way of living as 'life in the alley' (long-tang ren-sheng)."Cities Surround The Countryside: Urban Aesthetics in Postsocialist ... - Page 320 Robin Visser – 2010 "Chunlan Zhao refers to the generalization that Shanghai without its longtang is no longer Shanghai, in From ... archway; li means neighborhood; long ... means alley. ... The earliest lilong compound resembled the lifang residential ward in imperial capitals, but instead of being enclosed by ...
Japan
is a small area of Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan, famous both as an area of architectural interest and for its nightlife. It is composed of a network of six narrow alleys, connected by even narrower passageways which are just about wide enough for a single person to pass through. Over 200 tiny shanty-style bars, clubs and eateries are squeezed into this area.
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. Nowadays, most of the surrounding area has been redeveloped. Typically, the buildings are just a few feet wide and are built so close to the ones next door that they nearly touch. Most are two-storey, having a small bar at street level and either another bar or a tiny flat upstairs, reached by a steep set of stairs. None of the bars are very large; some are so small that they can only fit five or so customers at one time. The buildings are generally ramshackle, and the alleys are dimly lit, giving the area a very scruffy and run-down appearance. However, Golden Gai is not a cheap place to drink, and the clientele that it attracts is generally well off.
Golden Gai is well known yokocho and meeting place for musicians, artists, directors, writers, academics and actors, including many celebrities. 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. Golden Gai was known for prostitution before 1958, when prostitution became illegal. Since then it has developed as a drinking area, and at least some of the bars can trace their origins back to the 1960s.