One of my favorite things about working at Center City District is receiving pictures from friends, stakeholders and strangers.
You might assume that I’m referring to vacation photos of pedestrianized streets in Northern European cities with attached messages asking, “Why can’t we do this here?” Instead, I am referring to the pictures sent to me of alleys lined with overflowing dumpsters, often covered with graffiti, and the quality of life issues exacerbated by this neglect. The accompanying messages vary in tone and color, but the frustration is consistent.
Glamorous? Not quite. But important — and inspiring, because it doesn’t have to be that way.
Many of Philadelphia’s skinny streets are among the loveliest places in the city, but many are the opposite. I’m also struck by the way dirty alleys undermine the work of Center City District’s 100 hardworking cleaners, who manually or mechanically sweep the sidewalks of the District’s streets three times daily. As one emailer wrote, “We can walk the cleaned streets and sidewalks and then BOOM! we cross a really disgusting back alley, with dumpsters, trash, graffiti and filth all over.”
With improved coordination and enforcement, as well as light modifications to existing regulations, Center City’s alleys don’t have to be our downtown streets’ backsides; they can be clean, safe, and serve the needs of their many commercial and residential users.
More imaginatively and ambitiously, there is also an opportunity to reclaim alleys as pedestrian walkways and gathering places that add to the novelty and delight of Philadelphia’s walkable street grid while increasing access to storefronts as well as increasing real estate values.
To better understand the challenge, this summer a CCD team surveyed all 2.5 miles of Center City’s 45 alleys, most of which are in high-use commercial areas south of Market Street.
The dumpster problem
Among the first things observed by the CCD team was the large number of dumpsters that are not in compliance with City regulations, which state that they must be clean, in good repair, free of graffiti, and “tightly secured” when not in use. Remarkably, of the 441 dumpsters our team located in Center City alleys, 68 percent were found unlocked or unchained. City regulations further state that the area surrounding each dumpster should be maintained free of litter; 36 percent of surveyed dumpsters had trash under or adjacent to them.
There is a clear opportunity to educate business owners about the importance of compliance. At the same time, we can be grateful that Mayor Cherelle Parker’s administration has added more SWEEP officers to assist with enforcement, so we expect that these statistics will improve.
If businesses are more mindful of regulations, enforcement is optimized, and consolidation is contemplated, the possibilities for Center City Philadelphia’s alleys become very interesting.
There may also be an opportunity to update the regulations from requiring dumpsters be “tightly secured” to “locked” and require them to be set back farther from intersections.
Poor maintenance of dumpsters in alleys compounds quality of life challenges. Our team observed homeless activity in more than half of the alleys they surveyed. In those alleys, 88 percent of dumpsters were not secured and 47 percent had trash scattered under and around them. The “broken windows” theory suggests that visible signs of disorder in our public environment can lead to increased crime — or perceptions thereof — by signaling a lack of care and enforcement.
For example, if an alley awash in trash and vandalism is ignored, it may suggest the presence of undesirable activity and make the area more off-putting to others. It’s not a surprise, then, that our teams have also observed an uptick in used needles in alleys this year.
As Mayor Parker says, we have company coming in 2026. We can operationalize the stewardship of our downtown alleys before the FIFA World Cup, MLB All-Star Game, and celebrations of America’s 250th birthday. Of course, Philadelphia’s residents and workers — service workers, above all — deserve cleaner and more comfortable alley conditions, but let’s use our visitors as an excuse to clean up quickly and leave them with the best possible impression of our city.
Here’s what we can do
Dumpsters typically service a single business, but multiple waste haulers will service a single alley. The CCD surveying team counted 45 dumpsters in one alley alone, which leads us to wonder how else that space could be used. Dumpster consolidation is an option. The bundling of commercial waste hauling services has been implemented in other downtowns including Austin, Texas. There, the city bids out private commercial waste collection services within a specific geography. One hauler is awarded a contract, which can mean more frequent pickups, efficient oversight, and consolidation of dumpsters among different businesses with costs allocated according to use. It’s worth considering if that could work here.
There are several examples of the thoughtful reallocation or reconsideration of alleys in Center City. On the 1300 block of Drury Street, Goldman Properties added a trash compacter which serves several adjacent businesses, including those in properties that they do not own, and freed up alley space for greening next to McGillin’s Olde Ale House. Similarly, The Harper, developed by Pearl Properties, incorporates a trash compactor used by its entire block. The 1200 block of Cuthbert Street is home to a memorable public art installation of tangled clusters of figures clinging to a bridge.
We can reject the default position that Center City’s alleys are our streets’ backsides; we don’t need to completely cede them to services and trash, loading and unloading.
If businesses are more mindful of regulations, enforcement is optimized, and consolidation is contemplated, the possibilities for Center City Philadelphia’s alleys become very interesting. Our alleys are human in scale, making them ideal for transformation into interesting and charming paths. The novelty and variety of our street grid is what we love about Philadelphia — and garnered us the distinction of the most walkable city in America — and dislike about many suburban subdivisions.
Cleaned up, alleys can be interesting midblock shortcuts for pedestrians, as National Real Estate Development has done in their East Market project, and more interesting routes that encourage tourists and locals to explore the city. Clean alleys will unlock the value of adjacent real estate, providing additional opportunities for retail or workshop spaces at lower rents for small businesses, artisans, and entrepreneurs. They are abundant opportunities for public art — murals, but also lighting and overhead installations.
In other words, we can reject the default position that Center City’s alleys are our streets’ backsides; we don’t need to entirely cede them to services and trash, loading and unloading.
As with all our work at Center City District, we are grateful for the continued partnership with Mayor Parker’s administration and her focus on making Philadelphia the cleanest and greenest big city in the United States. We share her priorities and her vision. We are thankful for dedicated and responsive operating partners in the administration, including Carlton Williams, Bridget Greenwald, and Crystal Jacobs.
And I’d be remiss if I didn’t thank the intrepid CCD staff who devised and completed the surveying of alleys — Andrew Jacobs, Jinah Kim, Samantha Rosenbaum, and John Crichton. CCD is at its best when a group of colleagues with different backgrounds go for a walk and identify solutions to a persistent urban challenge.
Melbourne, to which much of my father’s family emigrated from Bangalore, is my personal inspiration. “The laneways (alleys) were the crappiest space you could think of in Melbourne,” said Helle Søholt, the co-founder of Gehl Architects in the 2012 movie The Human Scale. “It was never ever thought about as a people space, but at the same time, they had this very nice human scale to them.”
Today, the city’s tourism website states that laneways “evokes a riotous colour of street art, the scent of freshly roasted coffee, cutting edge boutiques, chic restaurants, and bars — soooo many hidden bars.” Philadelphia already has the building fabric and geometry to make the same transition; we need the imagination and will.
Prema Katari Gupta is President/CEO of Center City District. This article appears in the Center City Digest fall edition.
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