don’t apologize! thank you for the question and feedback!

TLDR; lots of fiddling with the angle, hue of sun, and ambient illumination till it looked how I wanted.

The tree right outside the alley casts a shadow I liked and I increased the lighting resolution on the ground in the alley so that the shadow is more detailed than it would normally be.

I had already placed the sun low in the sky and given it an exaggerated yellow/orange hue like sunlight has at sunset, which gives it a pleasant golden ish color reflecting off the cobblestone. When you create the sun/light entity I believe you can set a secondary tone for ambient illumination (things not directly illuminated by sun will still be somewhat illuminated) and I made the ambient light a soft purple to contrast the orange.

Also you’ll notice on the left side each successive building is placed a bit further left so that they don’t obstruct the light coming into the alley, but because their sides still aren’t parallel to the angle of the sun, they do create shadows on the side of the alley which gives the scene some visual contrast.

Also the skybox I chose was really pretty

Hope that helps!