I was surprised and delighted to see the interest in “Concept for South Market Street”. The blog post was off-the-cuff inspired by a photo of a transformed alley in Auckland that reminded me of our South Market Street.  The idea really took off when Mayor Mel Norton shared it with his followers on Google+ and on Facebook.

There were some naysayers but, I think, in general the comments were enthusiastically in favour of making South Market Street for pedestrians only.

Since the story generated so much interest, I did a little more on-line research on the subject and found an interesting article entitled “Urban alleys become pathways to revitalization”. The article described how 7 U.S. cities successfully transformed alleys in their urban cores. You can read that article here.

Brewer’s Alley at the Rialto Cafe in Denver.