Rewiring the City: A Walk Through London’s Alleyways

London's alleyways have a habit of leading to unexpected places. They act as the city’s library: echoing the routes of trade, lost rivers, burial roads, disputed boundaries, tracks of animals and people. Alleyways inject a dose of disjunction into the cityscape, triggering unfamiliar ways of moving from one familiar space to another. They have a tendency to momentarily rewire the city and throw drab views of a place into a new light, unexpectedly montaging different areas and streets together to make new experiences. Common waypoints only allow a surface interaction with a place, while hidden passages allow us to enter the inner mechanics of its perceptual constructions.  

Matthew Turner is a senior lecturer at Chelsea College of Arts. He has written about alleyways for Icon magazine, the Architectural Review and has discussed them with Robert Elms on BBC Radio London. In 2022 he published the London Alleyways Map with Blue Crow Media.