The American alley
By: J. David Chapman/December 8, 2022
When I ran for city council in 2018, I had no experience with pandemics and had no plans of discussing masks, mandates, or vaccinations. With no medical experience and little health care knowledge, that has been my biggest challenge as a municipal official. My prayer is that those discussions are behind us, and we can focus on what brought us to service.
In my case, my strengths are in urban design, municipal infrastructure, residential and commercial development, and economic development. This has been especially helpful representing Edmond’s most dense, most urban area of the city with the oldest infrastructure in need of updating. We have made great progress and there is excitement and anticipation of things to come in our downtown area.
While my council colleague, Josh Moore (Ward 2), has done a terrific job advocating to maintain our tree canopy and planning for growth in east Edmond, I’ve been busy encouraging building sidewalks, streetscape, streateries, maintaining alleys, balancing amenities and residential rooftops to create the urban fabric for the future in Ward 1.
The American alley is a key component in the revitalization of urban communities and building urban fabric. The American service alleyway runs through the center of a traditional urban block and was home to the less-sightly aspects of daily life but needed to maintain order in the community. Later, the alley became home to small garages, parking, trash pickup, and infrastructure, such as electric wires, natural gas, water, and wastewater lines. Sadly, more recently, some cities have elected to abandon alleys, allowing them to become overgrown, de-platting them, and ultimately giving them to adjacent property owners.
I see the American alley as a minor or secondary street. The alleys in downtown Edmond are critical as a mechanism for navigating the streets as railroad crossings become blocked with stopped trains or track maintenance and servicing our growing downtown businesses. Alleys also are needed for the development of accessory dwelling units as we attempt to solve affordable housing issues. For many years I have been taking UCO students to London, where they see the origin of the service alleys that were built for horse carriages to travel. They call these service alleys “mews,” after the royal stables. They had value then and they continue to have value today!
J. David Chapman is professor of finance and real estate at the University of Central Oklahoma (jchapman7@uco.edu).
