It’s hard to mock Canada when they have cool stuff like this. Even the alleyways in Vancouver are cute, and considered community gathering places. About ten years ago, the city of Vancouver launched an initiative aimed at converting garbage strewn alleys into “livable laneways” and you can see the results in the picture.Streetsblog has more.
That does look inviting, much better than my sterile asphalt alley, and it does not need to drain into a dry well or the sewer like parts of my alley does.
Some of our alleys are terrible! I owned a house that had the worst alley ever. It wasn't paved so was always dusty and had giant craters. People would dump trash and stolen items into the craters. I wouldn't even go out there if I could avoid it so it was completely wasted space, unlike the ones in Vancouver.
Of course, in the City of Spokane, many of our alleys serve as the place where garbage is picked up so I don't know how feasible these 'green' alleys would be to drive a garbage truck over them once a week, plus a recycling truck.
In my area about half of the alleys are not used by garbage trucks, narrow unpaved alleys are not used by the garbage trucks. My alley is very wide as it was platted as a street (Edith Avenue) and we had to go to the city council and get Edith Avenue abandoned and then they could pave it like an alley, but I remember the dust and big holes and the garbage dumped in the holes.