Students in the School of Urban and Regional Planning gave four recommendations to the City of Iowa City and the Iowa City Downtown District about waste management in local alleyways in order to increase the use of the sustainability potential of these areas.

Iowa City’s alleyways are multi-purpose spaces with significant potential to contribute to Iowa City’s sustainability efforts. The city’s alleyways serve as networks of resource distribution, waste collection, recycling, and transportation for city businesses and residents, but these functions are not always fully coordinated. With innovative management and foresight, the alleyways could operate more effectively while also providing opportunities for decreasing waste, increasing the efficiency of public services, increasing recycling, and strengthening the downtown district’s unique community identity through enhanced public space. This project moved towards these goals through an assessment of current conditions in and possible solutions for the alleyways that included stakeholder meetings, a downtown business survey, and case study research.