Comments on: Scary Scary Cottages

By: I Skim The Seattle Times And Crosscut So You Don’t Have To | hugeasscity

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 06:21:43 +0000

[...] at Crosscut today, some dude apparently has some fear to monger about scary scary backyard cottages. I would rather work on my income taxes than read it. It pains me just to [...]

By: Too Much Green For Green In Greenlake | hugeasscity

Too Much Green For Green In Greenlake | hugeasscity — Thu, 21 May 2009 07:35:37 +0000

[...] of the most innovative features of Ashworth is the “cottage housing” site plan that puts 20 homes on an site that would normally hold six typical Seattle [...]

By: Matt the Engineer

Matt the Engineer — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 22:30:37 +0000

@9, 11, 12. The issue as I see it regards accessibility of sprawl. In a city, the you are geographically restrained in a way that encourages density. The amount of land within a walkable distance to the desirable areas is small, so it makes sense to build up. This is the case to a decreasing extent as you travel further from the city center. The end result is that anything within, say, 10 miles of the center has a much higher density than a house in, say, Walla Walla.

But in a brief answer to your question //why is it better to build townhouses in Seattle compared to Walla Walla//, well, other than minor transportation efficiency reasons it isn’t. The problem is that land isn’t as scarce of a resource there, so it’s tough to convince people to actually do this.

By: dan cortland

dan cortland — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 21:47:04 +0000

@11:”The point is that by expanding opportunities within the urbanized areas, we remove structural demand for housing on farmland…”

That’s only a restatement of the conventional assertion I question in my comment @9. (And I didn’t suggest adding to commuter suburbs, so Maple Valley is irrelevant.)

Do we have the infrastructure to support more density without further harm to the Sound?

By: Japhet

Japhet — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 18:48:47 +0000

Two points:

1. Regarding “design of townhouses”: for all of you who missed the AIA Doing Density Right workshop a few months back, the arcane combination of setback distances, parking requirements, and hodgepodge of design requirements that govern this bizarre class of buildings makes it nearly impossible to make anything attractive and affordable. We need to create more flexible alternatives to code and get over the pseudo craftsman cookie cutter aesthetic.

2. @9, urban infill housing is a much better buy (even at a higher price) when one considers the cost of transportation, travel time, and access to amenities. E.G. a $500,000 condo with a 15 minute walking commute costs you about the same as a 300,000 house in Maple Valley where you spend an extra hour on the roads. Oh yeah, and you also get exercise and meet your neighbors and so on. . . The point is that by expanding opportunities within the urbanized areas, we remove structural demand for housing on farmland and in small suburban towns that don’t have the infrastructure to support it. If Walla Walla or Bellingham has the employment base and amenities that Seattle has, then by all means, we should build rowhouses there.

By: Joshua

Joshua — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 18:50:59 +0000

Ok, never mind the cottages… that Google Streetview has just blown my mind.

By: dan cortland

dan cortland — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 04:30:30 +0000

Doesn’t increased density in Seattle just make the suburbs and building in the suburbs more affordable, attracting more people to the region? Or is there a law that withdraws suburban or rural land from potential development with every unit of in-city housing that we build, or every mature tree we eliminate? Is Suncadia any smaller due to the myriad 6-packs gracing Seattle?

Why is it better, as far as future food security is concerned, to build townhouses in Seattle’s SF zones rather than in Walla Walla, Bellingham, or Clarkston?

By: dave

dave — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 00:54:31 +0000

I live around the corner from the Pine Street Cottages and there’s a brand-new cottage development across the street from me that isn’t horribly ugly, yet it lacks the shared space that the cottage housing code attempts to achieve. I looked up the code, and it doesn’t seem to require that the “shared green space” be contiguous in any particular way (say in the form of a shared courtyard that the backs of the houses face, as in the the Pine Street example). So in the case of this new development, the “shared green space” is simply a collection of tiny 4 ft-wide side and back yards, many of which have been fenced off by the homeowners. And down the middle is a driveway leading to parking in back (again, not horrible — obviously this is an improvement over the suburban house with giant garage dominating the facade). The result is 8 cute little houses, but I wouldn’t call it cottage housing — not if one of the objectives of the cottage housing code (as I understand it) is to encourage a sense of community between the homeowners. Hoping one of the links to Google Streetview works below:

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=1609+21st+Ave,+Seattle,+WA+98122&sll=47.622024,-122.301253&sspn=0,359.986954&g=1609+21st+Ave,+Seattle,+WA+98122&ie=UTF8&ll=47.615624,-122.304912&spn=0.006531,0.013046&t=h&z=17&iwloc=addr&layer=c&cbll=47.61559,-122.304892&panoid=9tMkXd-O003DaBfiCkyEGQ&cbp=12,293.1848399422234,,0,2.4061550556969133

View Larger Map

By: Suze

Suze — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 21:10:28 +0000

I checked out the Ashworth “Cottages” because I currently live in a cottage setting on Cherry Hill and I’m a huge fan of the concept. The Ashworth development is massive– those are single family homes that happened to be clustered together. My cottage is 450 sq feet, built in the early 20th century. Part of the charm is the wee size and the attendant scale of resources. For a single family, 1000 feet would be reasonable, but “2000 sq. ft.” is not a cottage.

The rest of the country is beginning to fall in love with the cottage development idea– just enough space, front porches, communal areas, petite garden spaces. It would be a shame if Seattle missed out on this very Seattle-y movement due to shortsightedness. Why are development issues so difficult for us to figure out?

By: Steve

Steve — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 19:05:20 +0000

Dan, I think the Ashworth cottages were actually in an SF 5000 zone that got a council-approved spot rezone for the cottage project. The previous use of the space had been a warehouse, so the rezone was probably politically easier than it would have been had the previous use been housing. Nonetheless, it wasn’t a multi-family zone, and there was political work to get it approved. In fact, I think Steinbrueck mentioned that he thought the design was about the best you could do with the parcel.