Visual Journal: Downtown Denver Photowalk

More alleys like this, please

I flew to Colorado earlier this month for a quick work trip. Strong Towns is a fully remote organization. It’s expensive to get people together, so when we do gather, we make the most of it. This time, four of us converged in Denver for two productive days of meetings.

Taking the train between Denver International Airport and Union Station was the way to go.

Work concluded, I was the last to leave Denver. With a little over an hour before I headed to the airport, I explored downtown Denver—or at least a tiny portion of it—around Union Station and the Dairy Block.

The sun was doing interesting things here:

I’d heard about a micro-district in downtown Denver called the Dairy Block. In particular, there was an alley I wanted to see.

The Dairy Block alley is what’s known as an activated alley. An activated alley is a formerly overlooked or underused alleyway that has been intentionally redesigned to invite people in and encourage them to stay. Instead of serving just as a back entrance or service corridor, it becomes a vibrant public space—with things like seating, lighting, art, greenery, food vendors, and pedestrian access. The goal is to transform it from a space people avoid into a place they’re drawn to: a small-scale destination that adds life, beauty, and economic energy to its surrounding area.

For me, even with my tight time schedule, the Dairy Block alley was a destination. For others—I saw this happen—it was a discovery. They were walking by, stopped in their actual tracks, and turned down the alley.

The alley is completely closed off to vehicles—protected with bollards, lined with businesses, and beautified with murals, art, and potted plants.

Even the secondary alleys felt welcoming. By the way, string lights may be the cheapest and easiest way to transform a space into a place.

The Dairy Block alley is Denver’s first pedestrian alley. A creative placemaking organization called NINE dot ARTS helped activate the space with ten public art commissions featured along the length of one city block.

Not only is the art visually interesting, it encourages people to stop and take photographs. (The Dairy Block isn’t far from Coors Field, home of the Colorado Rockies.)

In the Dairy Block, even the milk-bottle lights and clean-out covers reinforce the sense of place.

At Strong Towns, we often say that people—not traffic—are the indicator species of a successful place.

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By that measure, this alley is thriving. Even in mid-afternoon on a weekday, I saw more life and activity here than I did in the surrounding neighborhoods.

This little alley shows what’s possible when you prioritize people over vehicle throughput. Places like this make downtowns more inviting and more economically resilient. More towns and cities should be creating places like it. And this is something any community can do, incrementally and affordably, starting right now.

After exploring The Dairy Block, I went back to Union Station.

I met this man outside the station and asked if I could take his photograph. He identified the guy sitting next to him as his mentor.

The interior of historic Union Station is beautiful. The main hall is full of light—

—but I liked the darker corners of the station too.

I tried taking the elevator to get a photo from above, but I got briefly stuck because I didn’t have a keycard for the upstairs hotel. At 4:00, I was allowed to take a couple quick photographs over the railing of the second-floor restaurant.

Then I had to run because my own train was leaving the station.

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I’m trying something new with this post. Inspired by Susanne Helmert, I’m calling it a visual journal.

Future installments may have fewer words…or perhaps more, I haven’t decided. I am, first and foremost, a writer. But discovering photography has helped me learn to see. I’m still working out how these two passions can come together in the things I create.

By the way, all photographs taken with my favorite pocket camera, the Ricoh GRIIIx.