How Seattle Made Dark Alleys Safe--by Throwing Parties in Them

[eridani]

http://www.nationofchange.org/2015/08/27/how-seattle-made-dark-alleys-safer-by-throwing-parties-in-them/

Alleyways have long posed a safety threat in Seattle. But Alley Network Project has changed the course of six alleys in Seattle and has won an innovation award from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development for turning the alleys around.

Sitting in the office of Todd Vogel, director of the International Sustainability Institute in Seattle, as he walks behind his desk and pulls something out of a drawer. He comes back to where I’m sitting and lays the object on the table between us. It’s small and brass, with some scotch tape wrapped around one end. I have no idea what I’m holding in my hand until Vogel cheerily chimes in:

"It’s a crack pipe."

"Oh."

The pipe is a memento from the alley behind the office. Vogel found it not long after he moved into the space off the alley in 2008.

It soon became apparent that the alley was not a great place to be: Further down the way was a cardboard box used as a makeshift toilet. Once, he saw a pool of blood and the apparent weapon, a pointy umbrella; later he learned one of the neighbors had been keeping a log of all the police reports that were made about the space.

Vogel asked an architect friend what he should do. “She said the answer was simple: All I needed to do was put people in it [the alley],” said Vogel.

So Vogel began staging events like music performances and art shows. The alley slowly began to change from a place where crime happened to a place pedestrians walked through. In June, the ISI won an innovation award for the Alley Network Project from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

“Just the idea of using an alley for something other than garbage collection turns people’s heads” said Liz Stenning, public realm director for the Alliance of Pioneer Square, a nonprofit that has helped build the alley project. “But they’re not just utilitarian in function, they can be places for people to meet neighbors and be together.”