Residential back-alleys (laneways)
(2010 - ongoing)

Residential back-alleys (also known as laneways, ginnels, snickets) are common urban features in the UK, Australia, and North American cities. Their intended purpose was to provide rear access for necessary but unsightly domestic services. Although residential alleys are spaces in the public domain and occupy a large amount of prime inner-city land, they are often overlooked as valuable public spaces. Despite their utilitarian domestic designation, alleys are also used for active travel, dog walking, gardening, domestic tinkering, impromptu socialising, parties, artistic and political expressions, leisure, play, and much more. The wide range of activities is enabled by the unique morphological properties of residential alleys. They are simultaneously small fragments of large networks and socially and territorially self-contained spaces. The social and morphological configurations of alleys are not created through professional planning and design. Instead, they emerge through a tension between formal and informal spatial practices, benign neglect by local governments and purposeful reappropriations by citizens, and the privacy of residential homes and disorder of public urban life.

This project has included residential alleys in Melbourne (Australia), Montréal (Canada), Manchester (UK), Glasgow (UK), and San Francisco (USA).

Australian Postgraduate Award 2013-2018
Carnegie Trust Research Incentive Grant 2020-2022

Determining underdetermined space: reappropriation of residential laneways in Melbourne / From underdetermined to overdetermined space: public/private interfaces and activities in residential alleys

In/formal reappropriations: spatialised needs and desires in residential alleys in Melbourne, Australia

Reclaim Kingsville Laneways

Melbourne

Manchester

Montréal

Glasgow

WRITING

Moreau, M. (2025). Residential Back Alleys. In: Marinic, G., Meninato, P. (eds) About Streets. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-84231-3_17. (Open access https://eprints.gla.ac.uk/363486/).

Moreau, M. (2024). In/formal reappropriations: Spatialised needs and desires in residential alleys in Melbourne, Australia. Urban Studies, 61(6), 1031-1048. https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980231195617. (Open access)

Moreau, M. (2020). From Underdetermined to Overdetermined Space: Public/Private Interfaces and Activities in Residential Alleys. Journal of Urbanism: International Research on Placemaking and Urban Sustainability, 15(1), 39-60. https://doi.org/10.1080/17549175.2020.1858445. (Open access https://eprints.gla.ac.uk/226557/)

Moreau, M. (2019). Determining underdetermined space: reappropriation of residential laneways in Melbourne. Ph.D Thesis, The University of Melbourne.

Moreau, M. (2015). A methodology for exploring relationships among physical features of residential back-laneways and their uses. State of Australian Cities Conference, Gold Coast. (Open access https://apo.org.au/node/63347).