Thanks for the link. I have never heard of Konstructr. Or at least that I remember.

Your last paragraph is exactly what I think is the future of social media, but the important step, I think, is shifting it in to real-world action. Maybe the move to facebook will help take away some of the anonymity of Dan’s site and push the readers closer to some sort of organization? I sure hope so.

Maybe some of the readers of HAC have heard of Konstructr (http://www.konstructr.com). It’s a facebook-esque site for the design community. They have discussion boards, podcasts, expert groups, etc. I doubt it has the reach that HAC does, but it’s a very good idea, and the creator is a very energetic and inspired individual.

Portland is a very special case that not many cities in the USA get to follow. The development of the design community goes back decades to the fertile period of the 1970s when Portland was able to write it’s own state legislation because a majority of the state’s population was living in urban areas (Portland, Salem, and Eugene). Subsequently, Portland has benefited from a lot of state and federal money that would have been directed to rural areas. Portland’s planning team was able to capitalize on that additional funding to develop the designs and planning making it the city it is today that has attracted so much decent design talent. This has also excited it’s community pride. For it’s life since the 70s Portland’s design community has focused inward and it has benefited greatly. In my opinion, Portland is humbly focused on being the best of the third tier cities in the USA.

Vancouver, as I have understood, has only recently achieved the glistening shine that has attracted Seattle’s gaze. What I know people in Seattle to talk about when discussing Vancouver is all it’s glass towers and how cool it would be to live in those buildings. Until today (see comment above) I haven’t heard much talk about the process Vancouver has gone through to get there. My guess about Vancouver is that it didn’t explode in design and planning until it began it’s special relationship with Hong Kong just before China reclaimed it. At the time I remember Vancouver was openly taking in Hong Kong immigrants with little to no obstruction. I also remember hearing accusations that Vancouver was only accepting immigration applications from the Hong Kong wealthy and taxing them heavily to enter the city. It now makes me wonder how much of Vancouver’s success today was paid for by those immigrants?

Seattle, by contrast, is focused on it’s image outwardly. Our commerce is built around major corporations (Boeing, Microsoft, Nordstroms) and the largest Western US sea-port focusing on exporting. It’s no wonder that our design talent, today, looks so similar. We have branch offices of the three largest architecture firms in the USA who, I imagine, attract and employ more than 1/2 our architectural talent. All three compete on a global level, so, and scarcely participate in designing Seattle. I think these things make us (Seattle) a little star-struck. We’re a lower rung, second tier city with strong international connections and our eyes looking up enviously at the larger first tier cities (NYC, Chicago, SF) wondering how do we get there. We have the personal, individual wealth but not the humbler, inward community focus of Portland. We, Seattle, in-fight constantly because so many people want to be in the solo driver’s seat. The evidence is in how we’ve made a bungle of our mass transit choices. Mono-rail, then light-rail, then mono-rail, then light-rail, then mono-rail again and then bus rapid transit. This spurred design lead community organizations to respond and new ones to spring up with yet another voice. We also couldn’t agree on what to do with the Viaduct only to have our governor step in like an agitated parent telling us to get our act together. Then like the spoiled teen-ager we get ticked off in return and stall more.

If I had my druthers, we, Seattle, would stop focusing on what is happening in Portland and Vancouver and direct our attention on collaborating better on our own internal affairs. There are way too many examples good urban design to follow and I think we’ve done enough studying to know what is right. We are facing a new era of how to become inclusive and need to focus on how to develop new processes to be more inclusive. It’s time to focus on developing new methods to work as a community on getting great things done. Because of our size, population and wealth our community is fracturing too much for us to have any decent individual input.

I expect this kind of “place” of invention could be the blog-o-sphere. It has the potential to be a leader in making connections and being forums of collaborations. Blogs need to make the next evolutionary step beyond the op-ed types of discussions and become the mixing board of solutions on specific topics. Because right now they are undisciplined in moderating and unfocused in intent and follow through. Just think of all the power of the minds participating on this particular blog if we just focused on parts of a single topic for several months with out getting side tracked too much by random off shoots.

Anyhow, why look to Portland? Not to beat the drum but even that infill document is terribly conservative (not that I have a problem with preserving the historical built environment, especially landmark structures) and reflective of the “big small-town” mindset of Portland proper.

Vancouver is a better model if you want to promote density, though it will involve breaking a lot more eggs, a lot of time and putting up with garish or bland buildings (of which, Vancouver had and still has plenty). But people will put up with buildings that aren’t perfect if development is tied to amenity, much like in Vancouver. They also showed how this can be done without high speed transit. In 1986, when SkyTrain opened, their density was a bit over 9,500 per sq/mile which is about 2,500 per sq/mi more than Seattle today because the municipal and provincial government had spent ~35 years cultivating density in the West End (a neighborhood in walking distance of the downtown core and the amenity of Stanley Park). Perhaps unsurprisingly, the urban village concept is rather close to this model. However, also unsurprisingly, the urban villages don’t go far enough.

Anyhow, this is just armchair quarterbacking.

And oh yeah, googie architecture and life in Ballard. The real losses were the Twin Teepees, architecturally, in that “mysterious fire” ( http://seattlehousingbuzz.com/wp-content/uploads/twin_teepees.jpg ) and Sunset Bowl (architecturally less interesting but an actual community hangout). I’m surprised to see you give a crap about googie architecture, to be honest, since it is pure car-culture.

(I posted this once before but I’m not sure you saw it…)

dan bertolet – how did the Pearl District come out with such a high level of architecture?

Firstly, it wasn’t “slapped up” like infill projects happen in many other places. Pearl District’s redevelopment plan was actually a community effort started years ago (1998?) in conjunction with the city, PDC, and other groups.

Much of the Pearl District has been developed by 2 developers: Hoyt Street Properties and Gerding/Edlen (they did the blocks near Powell’s) – whom strived for the highest level of design possible at the time. GBD and AMAA did most of the work (and no, I don’t work for them!), but other firms have brought much to the table.

Portland’s Design Review commission has limited what has happened in the district, but there are very strict design guidelines for the district – ie, x% of ground-floor retail space as compared to lot size, FAR requirements, parking is heavily discouraged from ground floor, % requirement for windows along each facade, and a requirement for brick in much of the district.

They certainly helped, but aren’t the only reason it came out so well. I believe that the pedestrian-focused plan for the district had a lot to do with it, and the fact that the local architecture firms that did the design work had completely embraced pedestrian-oriented green architecture in the development of the district. There are a couple of bad apples, however – but not nearly as bad as what I’ve seen in Seattle, with such amenities as ground-floor parking garages (which should just be flat-out banned).

If you want to compare TOD design, the Yards at Union Station might make a better PoMo design comparison – but its done much, much better.