Not only do we spend bazillions subsidizing car use, we also have to cover the expense of trying to lower the carnage rates by reminding people to do the simplest of things. Buckling a seat belt has got to be one of the world’s all time no-brainers. If we can’t trust people to “click it” based on their own sense of responsibility and judgement, why would we even think of letting them get behind the wheel of a two-ton lethal weapon?
The Option of Urbanism by Christopher B. Leinberger. (Yep, I’m late to the party, but life has its distractions…) This is the same Leinberger who made a splash last year with his Atlantic article entitled “The Next Slum?” wherein he predicted that “drivable suburbanism” will not hold it’s value over time.
Unlike some who would preach the virtues of “walkable urbanism” from the supposed moral high ground (who you lookin’ at?), Leinberger makes the case staying within acceptable utilitarian boundaries, invoking raw economics, demographics, and supply and demand. It’s a very smart and necessary tactic for a culture in which faith in the invisible hand of the free market has so largely displaced the role of morals in decision making.
Leinberger saves any moralizing for one page at the very end of the book, but even there the language is softened with copious qualifying mays and potentiallys. And that non-preachy attitude is par for the book — it’s no coincidence that the word “option” is part of the title. Like most savvy policy makers, Leinberger understands that Americans abhor being scolded about limits, and so for example reducing car use is more constructively reframed as increasing transportation choices.
The only trouble with that approach is that it tends to push us further into a state of moral relativism where it’s verboten to make moral judgements about anything. We shouldn’t sell ourselves so short.
Leinberger:
This book has focused on a variety of market, fiscal, economic, foreign policy, and social equity reasons for allowing walkable urbanism to compete and even thrive. There may come to be a moral imperative to build walkable urban places. Development of mixed-use walkable places may be a significant, if not the most important, element in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. In addition, walkable urbanism will certainly lessen dependence on foreign oil, potentially reducing dependence on foreign suppliers. Walkable urbanism will build wealth for the residents and property owners, revive or continue the economic growth by providing increased densities in existing communities, and take pressure off the fringe of metropolitan areas. Walkable urbanism can potentially provide affordable housing from the wealth created, if local governments and citizens choose to make it a priority.
And the editorial pages of last Friday’s Wall Street Journal were serving up the good stuff. First there was this cap and trade critique by Indiana governor Mitch Daniels, who, after ranting for a while about imperialism, bragged that “the world’s first commercial-scale clean coal power plant is under construction in our state.”
Apparently Mr. Daniels isn’t a fan of The Daily Score, where Eric de Place just reminded us again that clean coal doesn’t exist. To which Daniels would no doubt reply, “that depends on what the meaning of clean is.”
In the context of an article about greenhouse gases, one might assume that clean-coal means limited CO2 emissions, but no, the Indiana plant will not sequester CO2 (though a tiny portion of the construction budget was set aside to “study” that process).  What the plant will do is use a process that reduces emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, and mercury — so in that sense it is cleaner than the status-quo coal plant.
So far the closest the world has gotten to carbon-free coal-based power generation is a small-scale demonstration plant in Germany. Waste CO2 is liquified and pumped nearly two miles underground — not cheap. The 30 MW German plant would have to be scaled up about 20 times to match the capacity of the Indiana plant — not trivial.
The WSJ’s circulation is second only to USA Today.  So now presumably some large fraction of their huge readership is under the mistaken impression that carbon-free clean coal is a done deal and being built in Indiana. And the convenient thing is, this is exactly what most of them badly want to believe. Cause it implies that everything is going to be alright; the American way of life will not be disturbed by climate change or peak oil; comfortable denial is maintained. Not that there’s anything wrong with a dose harmless denial now and then — it helps keep us sane. But unfortunately denial has a habit of biting back.
But wait, there’s more:Â printed on that same randomly sampled WSJ editorial page was this fun little exercise in cognitive dissonance on energy policy that concludes with the following:
So it’s little more than socialist Malthusianism to argue that the world is running out of cheap energy. Science will always find and harness new sources.
“Always.” Mr. Utley ought to be writing for religion.com instead of reason.com.
At this morning’s announcement event for a new “Climate 2009” executive order, Washington Governor Chris Gregoire was introduced as “the best climate change governor in the nation.” It’s hard to know how to interpret that.
Just last week, on the waterfront just a few blocks south of today’s event at Pier 66, Gregoire spoke at a ceremony celebrating the signing of State legislation that funds a 2-mile long, $3 billion greenhouse gas generator, a.k.a. the deep-bore tunnel, to replace the Alaskan Way viaduct.
Climate Leadership In Action! Look closely at the board on the left and you’ll see a photo of a nice pretty roadway, right next to the language about creating “clean transporatation choices.” Total John Stewart material.
It was Chris Gregoire’s leadership that torpedoed a balanced, multi-modal, climate-responsible surface/transit solution for replacing the viaduct that had been vetted and signed off on by all parties, including WSDOT and SDOT. But at the last minute, Gregoire caved to the status-quo, car-centric, suburban mindset that astoundingly but predictably, is still being hawked by dinosaur organizations like the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce, as well as our State’s biggest corporations, i.e. Boeing and Microsoft.
The deep-bore tunnel is exactly the type of a single-purpose, status-quo infrastructure investment we SHOULD NOT be making if we hope to transform our city to face future reality and avoid big pain. At some point you have to take the heroin away from the addict. But then again, doublethink works really well for drug addicts too.
UPDATE: As commenter Ellery notes, Gregoire’s recent veto of the transit provision in SB5433 is right in line with all of the above.
Johnson said she hopes Ashworth Cottages shows other developers that such projects are feasible. “It has to make economic sense to get other developers to do it.â€
“It’s not about making the most money on every job. If it was, you probably wouldn’t do sustainability to begin with,†Pryde said.
But that was 2007. And this is now:
Bank of America moved earlier this year to foreclose on the 18 unsold units, according to county records.
What the heck happened (besides the obvious)? Over at the DJC’s Green Building Blog the general consensus seems to be that the LEED Platinum certified Ashworth Cottages are simply priced too high: the market value added by the green features does not reflect the cost of adding those features.
Each cottage is projected to save an average of 4250 kWh of electricity per year, or about half of what a typical household uses. At six cents per kWh, that’s an annual savings of $255.  The heat recovery ventilation system should save another $300 per year in energy costs.   The water savings target is 40 percent, which translates to a monthly savings of perhaps $20. Alas, a total utility savings of 70 bucks a month doesn’t put much of a dent in $4000 monthly mortgage payment.
The problem here is that we don’t pay the true cost of our utilities, because much of the cost is externalized. For example, how much is not producing a ton of CO2 worth? More with each passing day, but an Ashworth Cottage owner won’t see a dime of it. (Yet, anyway.)
One 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 single-family houses, and also provides a shared open space.  The savings on the land cost is presumably passed directly to the buyer, though in this case it doesn’t seem to have made a significant difference in the selling price, perhaps due to the cost of the underground garage.
But here again, while the project provides a public benefit by consuming less land and increasing density, the owners are not rewarded with a corresponding price break that reflects the total reduction in externalized costs. Same goes for the public benefits associated with the use of local and recycled materials.
The high caliber of indoor environmental quality in the Ashworth Cottages provides value that is not easily quantified in dollars. And so as people do the math on the potential purchase, they tend to ignore that value, even though we all agree that good health is one of the most important things in life. If we could just stop being dumb, projects like Ashworth would sell better.
One last factor in the high cost is likely the craftsman detailing, which appears to be of high-quality. (I suspect that that style was a prerequisite to keep the neighborhood from freaking out.) In comparison, it’s safe to assume that the materials and details used on the “Urban Canyon” cottage project in the Central District were significantly cheaper.
It’s discouraging that the Ashworth Cottages project has not been more successful:Â Another example of how the market does a lame job of delivering the kind of housing we need to create a sustainable future.
Right, but wouldn’t you rather look at some pictures of Greenlake? Such as this big hole:
Or the 40 percent rented since opening in January Circa:
Or some high-rise senior housing:
Or the Masonic Lodge:
Or the new Greenlake:
Or the old Greenlake:
Or — bonus — some groovy Greenlake parents:
UPDATE:Â didn’t mean to lock down the comments — they’re now back open, no need to register.
Two evenings ago I started working on a new post, hit the save button, and was redirected to the hugeasscity homepage. Went back, and found that my draft was not saved. Tried again. And again. Same deal. Busted.
The horror… Â the horror…Â
WordPress apparently just up and decided it didn’t feel like working anymore. I hadn’t changed anything, wasn’t doing anything different.  That computer systems can and often do fail inexplicably like this is, pardon my French, completely fucked.Â
So I was totally locked out of creating or editing anything on the blog. I couldn’t even post something about how the site was broken. Frozen in time on a photo of pink dogwood flowers.
The Yahoo support guy in India told me it was WordPress’s problem not theirs. WordPress is open source code, so OK fine, I’m on my own, you get what you pay for. I know just enough about this stuff to be dangerous. It’s like trying to diffuse time bomb without knowing which color wire to cut. First I tried all the obvious and benign things — turn off plugins, switch to default theme, the database “repair” button (whatever the hell that does), but nada.
So I googled. Others had experienced the same problem, but the only solution offered was to upgrade. I’ve got techie roots, but something about the process of flailing away at computer code that I barely understand turns me into a mean and ornery man. Hack hack hack, I’d rather be in the dentists chair.Â
Somehow the first unzip of the WordPress upgrade is hosed but I don’t realize it so the install fails, then I take some shots in the dark at other bits that may or may not have anything to do with anything, and then later in the day, just for the hell of it, I unzip that wordpress download again, and huh? — didn’t see those three folders in there the first time, so in they go, and then it says database update required and I recall reading that Yahoo WordPress SQL format is different from the standard, and then uh-oh, five database errors listed, but then at the bottom the message says “database update successful,” and then sweet Jesus and holy shit, there it is, HAC back in all its glory, all upgraded and looking fresh and innocent as if nothing  ever happened.
And yes, it lets me write new posts and edit again.
But not so fast. The main page shows fine, but individual post pages and comments won’t display. Google again, and of course others have had this problem too, and so I’m clicking, skimming the arcane techno-babble, hoping for a miracle, and ZAM! a link to an obscure plugin that fixes the problem, just a single line of magic code:
<?php
/*
Plugin Name: Disable Canonical URL Redirection
Description: Disables the "Canonical URL Redirect"Â
features of WordPress 2.3 and above.remove_filter(‘template_redirect’, ‘redirect_canonical’);
Version:Â 1.0
Author: Mark Jaquith
Author URI: http://markjaquith.com/
*/
?>
It could only have been God’s will. Can I get a witness? Who in the world is this guy Mark Jaquith who just totally saved my butt through his generous geekery? I’ll never know. Miraculous, this webby web. Though also, I would submit, a deadly lonely place – endless, endless data, but not a soul to help you understand which parts matter, or what any of it means .Â
The footer of the wordpress.org site has a tag line that reads “CODE IS POETRY.” Right, and war is peace. But don’t tell the coders — we best be letting them feel good about what they do.Â
Masses of lushness bursting from everywhere. How is it possible for so much plant matter to be created so fast out of nothing?
Strolling through Capitol Hill’s Cal Anderson Park on a nice day you get the feeling that you’re in a real urban neighborhood in a real city. No other park in Seattle does it better.
WHEN SOUND TRANSIT Light Link Rail makes its debut this July, outside of downtown Seattle, not a single significant new private development will be there to greet it. Transit-oriented development (TOD) is widely recognized to be an ideal land-use pattern for achieving sustainable growth. But while our “T†is finally arriving, so far the “D†is a no-show. What happened, and what might the future hold for development?
That’s the opening paragraph of my piece on TOD in SE Seattle that ran in the Daily Journal of Commerce yesterday. And sorry but that’s all you get to see unless you’re a paid subscriber. An unbearable tease, no? Though if you read this, you already know the gist of it.
UPDATE: The DJC was kind enough to unlock the piece, so you can now read the whole thing.
Apparently the DJC still clings to that so-last-century notion that if information has value then people should pay for it. How quaint.  In this century, journalists like Josh Feit — who is currently producing the most dynamic political reporting in Seattle — subsist on Ramen noodles.
It’s totally understandable that the DJC charges for content, and because they have a well established niche of readers they can get away with it. But at the same time it’s unfortunate that, with their content inaccessible to most, they are missing out on being a part of vibrant local discussions on urbanism at sites like this, this, and even this, not to mention this.
(Sad that it has come to this — posting a Dilbert. Shux, my bad.)
The trust thing:Â Capitalism requires it to operate, but it cannot create it, and in fact, when allowed to run amok, will devour trust until it chokes to death on it.
Social trust is built upon cultural institutions that lie outside the realm of money. So when a culture starts to see all life through the lens of monetary exchange, the sources of trust wither. And away with trust goes security and community cohesion — two qualities of life that are huge determinants of human well being.
Then we learn that people in most “socialist” European countries are happier than we are. In these places, so it appears, capitalism is balanced with a strong belief in the common good, and the important role that government can play in maintaining that balance is widely understood. Trust is preserved, and people thrive.
Which, of course, must be why so many wing nuts can’t utter the word “socialism” without a Cheney-eque sneer of contempt, some members of the Republican National Committee going so far as to propose that the GOP draft a resolution to rename the opposition the “Democratic Socialist Party.” You want freedom fries with that?
All wing-nuttery aside, it’s encouraging that the financial meltdown has led many to reassess our little experiment with trust-crushing, extreme free-market capitalism. Although others, apparently not so much: Last week Paul Krugman wrote: “Wall Street insiders are taking the mildness of bank policy so far as a sign that they’ll soon be able to go back to playing the same games as before.” Not that you should trust that liberal elitist Krugman…
What it is: Long on data, short on analysis. The list below is a sampling of HAC-relevant media that has come bouncing across my personal echo chamber in the last day or two. Who has time to take it all in, much less interpret what it means?
(And one bonus tangent: Every item below came to me by way of facebook updates, several of them repeated from more than one person. The predictions that social networking sites like facebook are destined to become the centralized source for all of our information are looking more and more spot on. And it’s a compelling thing for sure, this distributed system for news, prefiltered by people who share your interests. Of course that strength is also a weakness, since such a system will tend to reinforce isolated social bubbles — whither opposing viewpoints?)
“The Great Wish across America is to resume the life of comfort-and-convenience that seemed so nirvana-like just a few short years ago, when the very constellations of the heavens might have been renamed after heroic Atlanta realtors and Connecticut hedge fund warriors, and the boomer portfolios groaned with earnings, and millions of graying corporate salary mules dreamed of their approaching retirement to a satori of golf and Viagra, and the interior decorators grew so rich installing granite countertops that they could buy their own houses in the East Hampton, and every microcephalic parking valet in Las Vegas qualified for a bucket full of Ninja mortgages, and Lloyd Blankfein could dream of divorcing his wife to marry his cappuccino machine.”
[ Governor Gregoire speaking at the tunnel legislation signing ceremony today at the Seattle Aquarium ]
Mayoral candidate Michael McGinn said that yesterday, in reference to the plan to replace the Alaskan Way viaduct with a deep bore tunnel. Today Governor Gregoire is scheduled to sign the bill that authorizes the tunnel.
The conventional wisdom on this is that the tunnel is a done deal, we should all be grateful that a decision was finally made, and it’s time to move on. From this perspective, McGinn’s anti-tunnel position would seem to be a very risky, and perhaps even foolishly naive political move. But if you ask me, it demonstrates the kind of integrity and leadership we desperately need if we hope to successfully transform our society before it’s too late.
Conventional wisdom doesn’t cut it any more.
I’ve ridden my bike under this thing more than 800 times and somehow have remained lethargically ambivalent about it. Sure is big and fancy all glistening in light and shadow.
When it was completed back in 2001, some folks — most notably Peter Steinbrueck — were not so equivocal. The main gripe was that it blocked the view corridor from Capitol Hill down to Elliott Bay — true enough. And the fallout has made it far more difficult to get new street overpass structures approved in Seattle.
The other major flaw in this “galleria” is that it doesn’t do much other than look interesting. Ideally, the goal of putting up such a structure would to form a comfortable urban room below, where people would gather, out of the weather, to window shop or sit at cafe tables spilling out on to the sidewalk. But this one has an inherent defect — it’s out of human scale — too high and wide to create a cozy sense of enclosure. And besides, there aren’t enough street-oriented businesses along that block of Pike to sufficiently activate the street. The Convention Center is an internally focused use.
It does block the rain. A nice perk for conventioneers walking to a cab, but when it’s raining in Seattle it’s also usually too cold to hang out at a sidewalk table. And when it isn’t raining we crave the sun, but get robbed by overhead structures.
Huh, maybe I don’t like this thing after all.
It was pretty much just biggerer and biggerer up until the early 1970s when everything changed. Since then, the plot has thickened, as it were. A few highlights:
Total U.S. per capita energy consumption in 1950 was one third lower than it was in 2007. Same goes for greenhouse gas emissions, give or take, since the two are roughly proportional.
Over the past three decades or so, the general trend has been to do more with less, but all told there has been more more and less less, so that net energy use has risen.
Any reality-based assessment of the state of the planet indicates that we must tackle lifestyle in addition to efficiency. The combination of continued advances in efficiency with a scaled-back lifestyle more like how people lived in 1950 has the potential to get us where we need to be to avoid catastrophic climate change.
This might mean living in a smaller home in a neighborhood where you can walk to a market or a bus stop. Or perhaps it might also mean spending less time in a car and owning fewer home entertainment systems and flying less. You know, like the way they suffered so horribly back in those dismal 1950s.
When Obama chose Republican Ray LaHood to lead the U.S. Department of Transportation last December, transit advocates were nonplussed. But they must be serving up the hard stuff in the White House, cause here’s what LaHood had to say last week:
“In the past, population and economic growth have always led to large increases in highway travel. This is because most communities’ have built transportation systems that only allow people and goods to move by road. This Administration believes that people should have options to get to work, school, the grocery or the doctor that do not rely solely on driving. We want to transform our transportation system into a truly multimodal system with strong alternatives to driving in order to maximize highway capacity, combat traffic congestion, reduce our reliance on oil and decrease greenhouse gas emissions…
“Linking transportation and land-use planning to promote improved access to transit and creating walkable, bikeable communities will increase overall mobility and benefit all Americans.”
Read the rest here (pdf). It’s all so right on. What the hell is going on in America?
If not strong Kool-Aid, then perhaps someone has been channeling Lewis Mumford, who in 1958* wrote:
“The fatal mistake we have been making is to sacrifice every other form of transportation to the private motorcar… That is why we need a better transportation system, not just more highways… If we want to make the most of our national highway program, we must keep most of the proposed expressways in abeyance until we have done two other things. We must replan the inner city for pedestrian circulation, and we must rebuild and extend our public forms of mass transportation.”
Well, as they say, better half a century late than never.
*The Highway and the City, Architectural Record, April 1958.
[ Lowrise apartments on 10th Ave, just north of Broadway on Capitol Hill ]
About a year ago the good people of the City of Seattle became exceedingly alarmed about the assault of the awful townhouse. Piling on, I put forth a theory on the root causes of the suckiness, and also pointed out that the City is full of examples of good alternatives to townhouses for lowrise housing, but that we almost never build them anymore.
Tonight the City of Seattle is holding a public meeting on a proposal for a new administrative design review process that would apply to townhouse development. The idea has been gaining momentum. I’m agnostic.
No doubt there are cases when design review can enable a better design response. But I can’t help being skeptical about whether design review will have the power to put much of a dent in the fundamentals that are driving the 4-pack model — condo liability, the requirement to accommodate cars, and inexpensive cookie-cutter design and construction.
When you’re out of ideas, recycle old ones — so I’m posting pictures of some nice old lowrise apartments. We need to figure out the current barriers to this building type, and then dismantle those barriers. Because getting better housing in Seattle’s lowrise zones is about more than just raising the bar for townhouses. At some not too distant point in the future, lowrise apartments like these examples will start to seem a lot smarter than townhouses, and the City’s interests would be well served by enabling more building type diversity in its lowrise zones ASAP.
[ Narrow lowrise apartment near 13th and Spring in the Central District ]
