Archive for the 'uncategorized' category

Hugeasscity Has Sold Out To THE MAN

It’s old news by now, but for those of you outside the Seattle hipster-wonk-politico bubble, let it be known: hugeasscity has found a new home on Publicola. Content will be much the same, though likely with more of a reporting flavor at times. The hugeasscity.com site will become inactive, but will stay live as an […]

The Coolest Park & Ride Ever

As a rule, I try to keep my employer out of HAC, but recent discussions of park & rides combined with a bad case of Portland envy compel me to break that rule presently. For you see, my GGLO colleagues and I just responded to a call for concepts for Memorial Coliseum in Portland’s Rose […]

Parking Policy Pickle

[ Editor’s note: HAC is pleased to publish the following post by Sara Nikolic, Co-Director at Futurewise ] The City’s no park-and-ride policy around light rail stations has long been contentious, and this past week the controversy  heated  up when several SE Seattle businesses were ordered to stop selling spots to commuters in their underutilized surface lots […]

“When I have nothing to say….”

…my lips are sealed Say something once Why say it again?” But thankfully, with the help of the fabulous interwebs, one can have nothing to say and still pretend to have something to say by copping what other people say. Watch me now: Apparently Alex Steffen was so bored this weekend he managed to crank out two great pieces, one […]

File Under Portland Envy

This past October the Portland City Council adopted a new Climate Action Plan, coauthored by the City and Multnomah County. The Plan includes a greenhouse gas (GHG) inventory, similar to the report recently published by the City of Seattle, but that’s where the similarity ends. Because apparently unlike Seattle, Portland is taking the issue of […]

Prospects for Affordable Housing in Seattle

In the new issue of AIA Seattle Forum focussing on the “Architecture of Inclusion.”  Read the whole thing here. >>> >>> UPDATE: Here’s the pie chart that was mistakenly left out of the published article:

“That mature attitude seems to have largely vanished.”

[ Snowpocalyspe 2008, on Union near 23rd Ave ] David Brooks—who doesn’t always suck—wrote in a recent column: Now we seem to expect perfection from government and then throw temper tantrums when it is not achieved. We seem to be in the position of young adolescents — who believe mommy and daddy can take care […]

Don’t Worry, It’s Probably Nothing

[ Excavation at 505 1st Ave; photo: Scott Durham ] What fun it must have been excavating the 4-story underground parking garage for the new Starbucks building at 505 1st Ave S, as shown in the photos (thank you Scott at CD News). The spectacular mess they encountered—reportedly extending down as far as 40 to […]

Time Passages (They Grow Up So Fast)

[ 4.30.08: John and Pontius ] [ 8.29.09: John and Pontius ] >>> >>> >>> [ 4.25.08: Denny and Westlake ] [ 6.24.09: Denny and Westlake ] >>> >>> >>> [ 4.25.08: Taylor and Denny ] [ 7.20.09: Taylor and Denny ] >>> >>> >>> [ 5.5.08: 8th and Columbia ] [ 6.4.09: 8th and […]

Design Standards Ordinance FAIL

Take a minute to admire the adorable tacked-on faux balcony in the photo above. And now thank the genius code writers of Leavenworth, WA. Cause apparently, if you want to put up a commercial building more than one story tall in Leavenworth, a nordic-style balcony it must have. Not that it has to be usable. […]

Yes Virginia, Density Causes Sprawl—Lorax Edition

Among  all the wonderous myths of the density NIMBYs, surely “density causes sprawl” is king. Long ago Yogi Berra, of all people, nailed the illogic of that argument with his famous quip that “Nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded.”  (Mr. Berra also coined “it’s deja vu all over again,” a sentiment that seems all too […]

Seattle’s Transportation Carbon Footprint: Can Electric Cars Save Us?

[ Seattle’s 2008 GHG emissions from the transportation sector, which accounts for 62 percent of total emissions ] Transportation is not only the single largest source of Seattle’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions—accounting for 62 percent—but it is also the only sector from which emissions are still escalating: Seattle’s GHG inventory shows a seven percent increase […]

Winter Light

Tunnel Resurfacing

Yonah Freemark recently wrote on The Infrastructurist that Seattle’s proposed deep-bore tunnel is one of “The 4 Highway Projects that Would Be the Biggest Waste of Money.” Meanwhile Mayor-elect McGinn is still questioning the cost overrun provision,  House Speaker Frank Chopp might want to play, but head of the House Transportation Committee Judy Clibborn definitely doesn’t.  And […]

Seattle’s Greenhouse Gas Inventory: Buildings

As noted in a previous post, the most striking success revealed in Seattle’s latest greenhouse gas (GHG) inventory is in the residential building sector: between 1990 and 2008, per capita GHG emissions dropped by 28 percent. To make sense of that, it helps to take a look at the residential energy data provided in the […]

Information Is Beautiful

Click on the image to see the whole enchilada.  Via the amazing Information is Beautiful.

The Editorial Boards Of The Wall Street Journal And The Washington Post Are In Agreement: 2+2=5

[ Nick Anderson; The Houston Chronicle ] In Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal the paper’s deputy editorial page editor Bret Stephens writes, “The earth has registered no discernable warming in the past 10 years… Am I missing something here?” Could be. On Monday the World Meteorological Organization issued a press release stating: “The decade of the […]

The Battle Over Energy Code

[ How many of those new Bellevue buildings would be using less energy if we had stricter State energy code? ] The construction industry and the automobile manufacturers must be cut from the same cloth. Because when confronted with the critically important task of increasing the energy efficiency of their products, instead of providing bold […]

Climate Change Mitigation Is A Win-Win-Win-etc.

Assessments of mitigation strategies in four domains—household energy, transport, food and agriculture, and electricity generation—suggest an important message: that actions to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions often, although not always, entail net benefits for health. In some cases, the potential benefits seem to be substantial. This evidence provides an additional and immediate rationale for reductions in greenhouse-gas […]

What Just Happened?: The meaning of McGinn’s win

There is a story being told (see Grant Cogswell’s piece in The Stranger, “Late Returns”) today about what Michael McGinn’s big win means. It goes like this: McGinn raised an army of volunteers, called them into service to reverse the defeat of the Monorail, slap passive aggressive Seattle in the face and crush the Establishment. […]