hugeasscity

HB 1747 and SB 5854, a.k.a. “Efficiency First” seems almost too good to be true. One of the four legislative priorities for 2009 chosen by the Environmental Priorities Coalition, the proposed bill addresses energy use in buildings, and would:

• Mandate ongoing building code updates that would require super-efficient, low-energy-use buildings
• Require energy-use performance scores and disclosure (like car M.P.G. ratings)
• Provide incentives for energy efficient building operations
• Facilitate up-front financing for energy efficiency
• Reduce high energy costs for low-income residents

On the first bullet point, the code updates would be crafted to adhere to the 2030 Challenge, which calls for all new buildings to achieve zero-carbon emissions by 2030.  The 2030 Challenge also specifies a series of intermediate targets, starting with a 50% reduction for all buildings being designed today.

But the updates to building code that would be necessary to meet those targets would not be trivial, to say the least.  In fact, methinks there will be no shortage of angst in the builder and developer communities if this legislation moves forward as proposed.  (And perhaps for good reason in some cases — e.g., the 2030 Challenge does not yet adequately address the issue of how the targets get more difficult to meet as building height goes up.)

On the second bullet point, resistance from building owners is to be expected, but the car companies didn’t like being told to put in seat belts either.  The first step towards reduction is knowledge of how much you’re using.  California recently established a similar energy use reporting requirement.

And on the three remaining points, well, what’s not to like?  This is highly encouraging legislation.

Hearings on the bill are being held this week in Olympia:

• Monday, Feb. 2, 1:30 p.m., by the House Technology, Energy & Communications Committee in the John L. O’Brien Building, House Room B
• Wednesday, Feb. 4, 3:30 p.m. by the Senate Environment, Water & Energy Committee in the Cherberg Building, Senate Room 4

Late notice for the hearings, but you can always call, write, or send email to your representatives expressing your support.

Pike Place is the one street in the entire City of Seattle where the pedestrians do not cower in fear of the automobile.  Locals and tourists alike step off the curb and meander down the middle of the street among the crawling cars.   It’s near chaos but it works.

I disagree with those who say Pike Place would be better closed to cars.  The space would feel too empty without them, and would lose much of its irresistible messy vitality.  But more than that, the rare dynamic between cars and pedestrians that happens in Pike Place is a much needed crack in the edifice of car tyranny that gives people a taste of an alternative.

And in cities across the U.S, appetite is growing for such alternatives.  New York City is on the forefront, and incremental, small-scale modifications are already adding up to a palpable change in the urban environment.

Last summer Seattle experimented with car-free days in Capitol Hill and Alki.  In September Seattleites participated in National No Park(ing) Day, commandeering on-street parking spaces, as in the photo below.

The Seattle Great Cities Initiative has been taking an increasingly active role in this movement with their “Streets for People” campaign.  The group is putting on a Kickoff Forum event on Thursday, February 12, 5-7 p.m, at the Armory at Lake Union Park.  If you think that Seattle should have more than one street for people, go check it out.

As expected, the Seattle School Board rolled over last night and approved the District’s closure plan.  (Mary Bass, who voted against the closure plan and had proposed amendments to keep central cluster schools open, is my new hero.)  As I ranted about before, it is beyond belief that our wealthy, over-educated, politically progressive city continues to be so inept at running the public schools in a way that refects how important they are for livable, sustainable urban communities. 

Completing my thought, Clark at Sightline brilliantly reveals our priorities in the graphic below, which shows the estimated cost of a deep-bore tunnel on the left, and the cost savings associated with the school closure plan on the right:  

      

[ Left bar:  estimated cost of deep-bore tunnel;  Right bar:  savings associated with Seattle school closure plan, via Sightline. ]

And you can include me among those whose deserve the punishment rendered above. Thank you sir, can I have another!

Sweet Jesus, this is what Rhapsody Partners and Freiheit and Ho Architects have in mind to mark the gateway to Ballard on the northwest corner of 15th and Market (65mb design review pdf here).  A generic monstrosity, a poster child for soulless multifamily design, but to be expected from the developer and architect — check their websites.

The design review board is not yet satisfied, but it’s highly unlikely that they’ll be able to force a significant redesign. This is what tends to happen when buildings are put up by people with little connection to the local culture.

Filling the site formally occupied by the “Googie” Denny’s building, the project will provide 287 condo units, 33k SF of retail, and 446 underground parking stalls.  Bartell’s is the anchor tenant, which is why there’s a stealth drive-thru located inside the building’s first level.  But hiding the drive-thru doesn’t make it any more appropriate for a transit hub in a densifying urban neighborhood.  And as I said before, 15th and Market is already a grim intersection for pedestrians.

Now I’m not known for being a density-phobe, but man, the more I look at that rendering the closer I get to jumping off the density bandwagon and calling Knute Berger to see if Crosscut needs another slow growther author.

The sea of asphalt, big box, and strip malls that sprawls northward from the historic downtown core of Burien is, in it’s own way, every bit as bleak as a dry lakebed in the Nevada desert, so the appearance of flame throwers synced with electronic music and 30-foot tall sculptures of scrap metal may not be as incongruous as the average Staples shopper likely believes.

This was the unlikely scene yesterday evening at the opening of the Burien/Interim Art Space (B/IAS).  The space, envisioned as a “p-patch for art,” occupies a vacant parcel upon which the next phase of Burien Town Square will be built when market conditions improve (more here).  The nearly completed 124-unit first phase is shown in the photo below — quite the sight to see, this Seattle-style 7-story condo project towering over lowrise Burien.

The B/IAS model for making good use of temporarily useless space is classic lemonade from lemons.  And given the current state of the real estate market, there is no shortage of potential sites out there.  I’m thinking duck pond in the hole at 2nd and Pine.

Well, at least we decided, right?  Hooray, we’re Deciders! We’ve been debating the viaduct so long that deciding has become a glorious end in itself.  Wretched.

What strikes me is how subdued the surface-option cartel has been about this so far.  Where’s the WTF?  Hey there Sightline, Worldchanging, Futurewise, Cascade Land Conservancy, Transportation Choices Coalition,  Seattle Great Cities Initiative, Sustainable Seattle, Allied Arts, and so on, are y’all going to make some noise?  Tell us Quality Growth Alliance, does the tunnel qualify as quality growth?  And hello UW Department of Urban Design and Planning, anybody home?  Might this be an opportunity to focus your awesome analytical resources on something a little more pressing than another publication in an obscure academic journal?

And isn’t anyone the the least bit peeved about how the painstaking work of the viaduct stakeholders committee was completely blown off?  And is it not troublingly bizarre, even if you support the tunnel, that the deep-bore solution was never seriously considered before now?

Ground control to Seattle:  The tunnel is stupid.  As some guy recently said, “the world has changed and we must change with it.”  The tunnel is a solution that is stunningly out of touch with future reality.  The tunnel will not age well at all.

Carry Moon and Mike Obrien’s recent PI op-ed goes a long way toward explaining why:

“Reorienting priorities around transit, compact growth, street connectivity, and providing people real alternatives to driving works for urban mobility, freight mobility and economic development. Spending $2 billion or more on tailpipe capacity with deep-bore tunnel — the most expensive option — is not a step toward a better future.”

Another piece of the equation is well-addressed in this Seattle Transit Blog post on how the tunnel would encourage sprawl and make transit less viable:

“Paradoxically, the Viaduct is actually bad for mobility. Because it allows people to entirely bypass downtown, it encourages spread out development…   This has always been the problem with highways – they break down the efficient hub and spoke structure of human settlement.”

And Sightline has been questioning the sanity of a high cost of a viaduct replacement since the Nisqually Quake (see this STB post for current cost analysis).  Of the $2.8 billion that the State has committed (not including the several billion more the tunnel will likely cost) Sightline noted:

“Calculate it per peak hour round trip—the only time when the street grid is currently full to capacity—and you’re talking ~$500,000 in taxpayer spending to support each round trip driver.”

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Allow me to repackage the big picture reasons:

Climate Change:  The planet’s climate is headed off a cliff.  Those who have been right about climate change from the start are now advising that the IPCC’s target of 450 ppm CO2 is insufficient, and that we will need to stabilize at 350 ppm to avert climate catastrophe.  In the Puget Sound region, transportation accounts for nearly half of all greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.  And the State of Washington recently passed a law mandating a 50% reduction in vehicle miles traveled (VMT) by 2050.  Spending billions a tunnel that will increase GHG emissions from cars is not only a violation of State law: it is suicidal.

Energy:  We are almost certainly within a few years of peak oil, if we haven’t passed it already, while at the same time, demand for oil is spiking in developing countries with huge populations.  The era of cheap fuel for cars is ending.  This means that in the future we will drive less, and we will need more efficient alternatives, namely, transit.  As noted above, a downtown bypass like the tunnel would muck up the efficient hub and spoke urban layout that makes transit most efficient.  A good example of this New York City, where per capita energy use is lowest of all U.S. cities, primarily because so many people use transit.

Some believe that electric cars will arrive just in time to enable zero change in the way we get around.  I’m not so optimistic.  The electricity has to come from somewhere, and we’re talking about a huge amount of energy.  The rising cost of fossil fuels, restrictions on GHG emissions, and population growth will all be putting the squeeze on the U.S. electrical grid.  There are alternative sources like solar and wind, but as our supply of cheap fossil fuels dwindles, we will likely find ourselves scrambling for every possible source of electricity just to maintain existing output.  And here’s another gotcha: a conversion to electric cars would significantly increase water consumption (via The Oil Drum). So yes, we will have electric cars, but we will travel far fewer miles in them.

Economics:  It would be peachy if we had the excess wealth to build the tunnel and then just write it off if it turns out we don’t need or want it.  But we don’t have that luxury.  The U.S. federal deficit is the largest ever this year, and is expected to double next year.  Washington State has a $6 billion budget hole.  The $2.8 billion that the State has set aside for viaduct replacement is often discussed as if it’s a gift from the Gods that must be used for that purpose alone or else it will go up in smoke.  How asinine.  And same goes for the any billions we may get from the feds — it’s not free money.  There is an almost endless list of ways we could spend our money that would be more wise than buying a new tunnel.

The economy will rebound.  But unless we find an energy source as cheap, storable, and plentiful as fossil fuels were during the 20th century, it is delusional to believe that we can slip right back into economic business-as-usual for any significant length of time.  Energy is the elemental economic engine that delivers a high standard of living.  We are going to have to do more with less, and part of that equation will undoubtedly be a more localized way of life.  In other words, less driving around.  As in, a world in which multi-billion-dollar tunnels for cars start to look very, very dumb.

But here’s the thing: it’s not all bad.  Wouldn’t people would be better off spending less time in cars?  Wouldn’t communities be stronger if people lived more locally?  Our oil binge of the past century created wonders, but as with any binge, the downside is not fully appreciated until the hangover.  The party has been fun, but in all our excitement we’ve forgotten much about how to best nurture our human souls.  Time to take the keys away from the guy who’s stumbling toward the tunnel boring machine.

[ Courtesy of Darick Chamberlin Design, an affiliate of Noisetank, Inc.]

In what may be destined to become known as the aborted grand finale of the oil economy’s final blow off, work has been halted on Dubai’s Nakheel Harbour & Tower, which was to be the tallest structure ever built by humans.

Meanwhile, construction continues on Dubai Metro, a 46-mile light rail line system with 47 stations, scheduled to open in September 2009, right around the same time light rail service will begin in Seattle.

Light rail in Dubai. Sure, why not? Of course!

The party in Dubai isn’t over yet, and the Nakheel Tower still may end up getting built. But the party will end eventually. And when it does, I wish them the best of luck with their city in the desert.

Advocates for affordable housing provide a much needed service in a growing city like Seattle, and I have no doubt that John Fox — one of the City’s stalwarts — has the best of intentions. But as his latest rant (co-authored by Carolee Colter) sadly illustrates, his zealotry is once again eclipsing his reason.

Futurewise and the Washington Low-Income Housing Alliance (WLIHA) have written a detailed response to set the record straight, most of which is posted below (full pdf here). Unfortunately, as the Rove-led Republicans knew so well, once misinformation is unleashed, it’s exceedingly difficult to undo.

Some background: Futurewise and WLIHA are crafting State legislation designed to help the region fully leverage its investment in transit infrastructure. The proposed bill mandates that within high-capacity transit station areas, zoning must allow an average net housing density of 50-units per acre.

It appears that much of the Fox/Colter hyperventilating stems from a limited understanding of both density metrics, and the interplay between zoning and current land use. They cite gross density data, while the proposed legislation is defined in terms of net density. And they fail to acknowledge that in most urban areas, zoning typically allows several times the capacity of existing land use.

As the Fox/Colter piece notes, Belltown’s existing gross housing unit density is 25/acre. But the net housing unit density is probably closer to 40/acre, while the existing zoning allows hundreds of units per acre. This proposed tower in Belltown has a density of 1200 units/acre. The 4-story mixed-use building at Rainier Vista shown below is about 100 units/acre — not exactly Manhattan.

[ Three stories of residential over retail typically yields about 100 units/acre. ]

The bottom line is that the proposed legislation would have but a minor effect on zoning in most of the Seattle station areas. Existing zoning at the Mount Baker station likely already exceeds the 50 unit/acre threshold. But in the visions of Fox and Colter, the bill would “lay waste to whole communities.”

They also want us to believe that the bill would steal away our trees. To those with a similarly misguided Lorax-complex, one question: Which would result in more net trees lost, (A) one new 100-unit, 6-story mixed-use building, or (B) one hundred new single family homes? 

Furthermore, their fretting over potential single-family upzones — that for the record, the proposed bill would NOT require — makes no sense at all if affordable housing is the goal.  Affordable single-family is a non-sequitur. 

Whether it’s trees or housing or transportation, most density alarmists are apparently incapable of grasping that what happens on the ground in a neighborhood can have effects well beyond the boundaries of that neighborhood. Channeling Seattle’s growth to high-capacity transit station areas is one of our most promising strategies for enhancing sustainability at the citywide, regional, and even planetary scale. People cannot honestly claim to be concerned about equity without acknowledging that the welfare of people and ecosystems spanning the city, region, and planet must be appropriately weighed against the interests of local residents.

Regrettably, when John Fox lets his messiah complex get the better of him and goes all bombastic on “wild-eyed naive enviros” and “social engineering at its worst,” he is alienating many of his best allies in the struggle to ensure the availability of affordable housing in Seattle.

Futurewise/WLIHA Response:

…In response to the Fox/Colter article, we emphasize that the TOC bill would have minimal, if any, impact on the zoning of most future light rail stations in Seattle.

The TOC bill addresses allowed net density, not current use. The Fox/Colter article references the density of current land use (what is on the ground today), but neglects to mention that the TOC bill deals with allowed net density and does not force any change to current land use. The bill requires that zoning in half-mile radius high-capacity transit station areas have an allowed net density (the maximum density allowed under zoning, not including public rights-of-way) of 50 dwelling units per acre, although the current use in most areas would continue to be substantially less than that. Most future Seattle light rail station areas already have sufficient zoning in place to meet this threshold.

For example, the current land use density of Southeast Seattle may be four units per acre. However, even in a typical single-family zone the allowed net density is actually 17 units per acre (8.5 single-family homes + 8.5 detached accessory dwelling units). Multi-family low and mid-rise zones in Southeast Seattle can accommodate 100-300 units per acre. The many L-4 zones in the Hope VI developments can accommodate 72 units per acre (109 units, if lowincome). These developments are already zoned at much higher densities than that called for in the TOC bill.

Second, the TOC bill addresses average density, and would not require changes to single-family zones. Local communities should decide what shape density should take. An entire station area zoned at L-3 (allowing 54 units per acre in three-story structures) would meet the threshold. However, if a community wanted to preserve lower-density zones at the periphery of a station area, the threshold could be met by off-setting the low density zones with higher density zones closer to the core—such as do the many NC-65 sites that can accommodate over 200 units per acre adjacent to the future Mount Baker and Othello stations.

What will the TOC bill do? Because the Seattle station areas strive to be livable and walkable, without the park-and-rides found in other cities, it is imperative that land use, housing and transportation policies allow more people the opportunity to live and work in communities in which they will not need to rely on a car to access homes, jobs, and services. We therefore chose the 50 unit threshold because it is the tipping point at which more trips are taken by walking or transit than by car. The half-mile radius was selected because it is the distance up to which most people are willing to walk to access high-capacity transit.

Therefore a 502-acre station area (approximately 376 net acres) would accommodate 18,800 units. Full build-out would take 50-100 years, at which point the Seattle region is expected to grow by several million additional residents. Because buildings built today may be on the ground for at least 50-100 years, our land use policy must think equally long-term. For example, the Capitol Hill and Northgate station areas have already been zoned for decades at densities many times higher than those called for in the TOC bill. Although it will be many more decades before those communities are built-out, it is important that the zoning considers long-term projections.

…WLIHA is in the process of adding a housing element that will address many of the suggestions laid out in the article, including ways of creating a net increase of housing affordable to low and moderate income in these areas and require that units remain affordable well into the future.

Get ready for the next chapter in the viaduct debate: City of Seattle, King County, and WA State officials will announce tomorrow that they support a deep bore tunnel.

It’s magic! We can now afford a tunnel!

…near the northeast corner of Garfield High School, a memorial to Quincy Coleman, the 15-year-old boy murdered on Halloween 2008…

…the 1901 Horace Mann School at 24th and Cherry, built in 1901 of old growth fir and cedar, back before we forgot that windows are a great source of free interior lighting, scheduled to be closed next year…

…on the Garfield playground, likely a leftover from outdoor festivities two nights prior, this magnificent can once contained a 23.5 ounces of fruit punch-flavored malt beverage (11% alcohol) spiked with caffeine, ginseng, and taurine…

…in the gentrifying CD, “intruder” is a charged word for more than one reason, though not usually associated with RVs — this home, with the high-security screen door common in the neighborhood, apparently houses a family that prefers the kind of intruding that happens out on the open road…

…and over near 22nd and Union, already retrenching, the van parked for good, while the satellite dish retains a connection to the outside world.

[ Achtung: tediously brooding and self-absorbed blog post ahead. ]

OK, so I read The Long Emergency and it’s been seriously messing with my fragile little head. It’s not like I never heard of peak oil before, but Kunstler makes the case like a sledge hammer.

For me, it’s been that rare sort of book that forces you to interpret everything a little differently. As I move around the city in my normal routine, I find myself involved in this little internal dialog about if that building, or that piece of infrastructure, or that social institution is going to survive in the post-oil age.

(e.g: This morning on NPR, right after the announcement of 15,000 layoffs at Alcoa, there was a cheerful little report on the national consumer electronics show in Las Vegas. Could there possibly be a better example of a product/location so utterly incongruous with the post-oil future?)

And then there are also the massively difficult big questions the book forces:

Should we reconsider nuclear power? What if it comes down to the choice between a dead electrical grid or dealing with nuclear waste? Assuming we would choose the later, shouldn’t we be starting new nuke plant construction immediately?

Will we have the resources and societal stability to build alternative energy infrastructure when oil becomes scarce? Wind turbines are gigantic metal structures. Photovoltaics are fabricated in a highly energy-intensive process. Nuke plants, ditto but more so.

What are the implications of peak oil on greenhouse gas emissions? Isn’t it likely that peak oil itself will cause a bigger reduction in GHG emissions than we could ever hope to achieve with cap and trade or carbon taxes?

…only if we don’t go on coal binge, that is. If energy becomes critically scarce, how will we possibly avoid resorting to coal, and how, under such strained economic conditions, can we possibly expect that we’ll be able to afford the additional expense of making it “clean”?

Will the whole sustainable urban density movement end up being a total bust when we discover that our diminished resources and infrastructure are incapable of sufficiently supporting huge concentrations of people? Is it time to start looking for a well laid out traditional town surrounded by lots of productive farmland?

Cascading failure, anyone? Perfect storm perfected? To me, one of Kunstler’s most compelling points is that the complexity and interconnectedness of our systems will render them far less reliable and resilient in the face of the big changes brought on by peak oil. Give the system enough little pokes (higher energy costs) in enough places and down it all comes crashing. Or put another way, which car would Mad Max drive: a drive-by-wire BMW controlled by multiple microprocessors, or a 1973 Plymouth Valiant with a carburated slant-six?

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At least I’m not the only one obsessing: Over at the Oil Drum, this vision of “radical retrenchment” after peak oil has received 383 comments. It’s a good read and mirrors many of Kunstler’s views, minus the cocksure, apocalyptic attitude.

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But then again… this piece over at Grist cites reports estimating that: (1) solar thermal plants covering less than 1% of the world’s deserts could supply the world’s total energy demand, and (2) wind power on available sites could supply five times the world’s total energy demand.

And Obama intends to double alternative energy production in the U.S. over the next three years.

Giddyup!

These are the photovoltaic (PV) panels on top of Portland’s Casey Condominiums, the nation’s first residential building to achieve a LEED Platinum rating. It looks like a lot of PV, but it actually only expected to provide about 2.5% of the building’s total energy use. The 23 kW of panels cover roughly 2,300 square feet, and the PV Watts calculator estimates that they would produce about 24,000 kWh per year in Portland — that’s a little more than two typical U.S. households (11,000 kWh/year).

Overall, the Casey is expected to consume half the energy of a code-compliant building, which means there’s a lot more going on to reduce energy use than just the just PV.

The negative impact of an envelope comprised of about 50% window openings was minimized with the use of high-performance, low-e coated glazing. HVAC is a water-source heat pump system that is designed to move heat from warmer to cooler units when temperature differentials exist. The HVAC system also exchanges heat with the domestic hot water system to reduce energy use in both systems. The units and the trash room are equipped with a heat recovery ventilation systems that use the heat in exhausted air to heat incoming air. And of course all the lighting and appliances are the most efficient available.

The Casey, developed by Portland-based Gerding Edlen and completed in 2007, is easily a more advanced residential high-rise than anything yet built in Seattle. Sorry Mosler Lofts, 5th and Madison, and Olive8. And it may well be that Gerding Edlen’s Bellevue Towers is destined to lead the current pack in the Puget Sound region.

Oh, and Gerding Edlin has a followup to the Casey in the works: a 22-story office/residential tower at 12th and Washington (rendering below) that will incorporate solar hot water and wind turbines. Who is Seattle’s Gerding Edlin?

 

 

 

This proposed 400-foot tower at 2116 4th Ave in Belltown just had its design review recommendation meeting meeting December 16. Developed by HAL and designed by Weber Thompson, the 444,500 sf project will house 359 apartments, 2,700 sf of street-level retail, and 324 parking stalls.

The parking ratio of 0.9 is relatively low for typical high-rise residential, though by code it could be zero. Since the building footprint is only about 12,000 sf, those 324 stalls have to be spread over 12 levels, four above, and eight below grade. The four above-grade parking decks present a serious design challenge, and will be “animated with work studios covering approximately 55% of the façade, and treated with a dynamic and artistic architectural expression,” according to the design review document (pdf).

Of course the question is, given the current development slowdown, is this project still scheduled to move ahead? Such information is typically closely held by developers, but apparently HAL may have some immunity (pdf, see p.3).

“The Company invests its own capital, not funds temporarily made available by outside investors. As a result, HAL does not operate within limited time horizons, nor is it subject to other restrictions common to institutional investors.”

With so many Seattle downtown residential projects going on hold, it could pay off to get a project in the pipeline now, such that it would be coming on line when things begin to recover (assuming they do…). Though there will likely be big chunk of competition hitting the apartment market in the area in about two years: 624 apartments in the Pine Street Group’s 240-foot twin tower on 6th Ave between Blanchard and Lenora; 344 apartments in the 440-foot “Kinects” tower at Minor and Stewart, and 325 apartments in a 440-foot tower at 815 Pine St, both being developed by Security Properties. All three projects are currently scheduled to break ground in 2009.

[ The Long Emergency back cover photo ]

James Howard Kunstler put that Carl Jung quote in the opening sentence of The Long Emergency, a copy of which I just bought on this first day of 2009. The book has gotten wide exposure since it was published in 2005, but in most “serious” intellectual circles, the post-petroleum scenarios Kunstler predicts tend to be dismissed as way over the top.

That has also been my inclination, but as the years pass, I’m getting the sinking feeling that he may be more on target than most of us would like to believe. And so I’ll read the damn book. Probably.

One corollary to “people cannot stand too much reality” is this: “people are drama queens.” Everyone loves a good doomsday scenario. The potential for imminent radical change brings passion to otherwise mundane lives.

Hence the Kunstler conundrum: is he just a talented drama queen appealing to lots of other drama queens, or are those who dismiss him simply in deep, self-destructive denial about the troublesome reality he describes?

And if you’re jonesin’ for the latest dose of reality according to Kunstler, read his relentlessly bleak Forecast for 2009. Right up front, he alludes to the source of resistance to his views:

“Since the change [The Long Emergency] proposes is so severe, it naturally generates exactly the kind of cognitive dissonance that paradoxically reinforces the Status Quo view, especially the deep wishes associated with saving all the familiar, comfortable trappings of life as we have known it.”

So on this New Year’s Day, that day of the year when we’re most inclined to stretch our minds both backward and forward in time, I ask: What next?

A painful long emergency, or a relatively smooth adaptation? Climate catastrophe or minor disruption? The worst economic crisis of the country’s history, or just a more-severe-than-average downturn in the typical business cycle? Collapse of a culture, or a door opening to a more highly evolved way of life?

It’s hard to imagine how anyone who’s paying attention couldn’t be imbued with the intuition that massive change is in the air. But we are handicapped by our temporal blinders — it’s nigh impossible to put the current situation in accurate historical perspective when you’re living in it.

And here comes 2009…

UPDATE:  Check out the eminently amiable Roger Ebert going off like he just drank a pitcher or two of Long Emergency Kool-Aid (via SLOG).

Like I said before, the one-way couplet is a lame compromise. And this Seattle Times opinion piece by Jeffrey Karl Ochsner totally nails it:

“Putting three lanes of heavy northbound traffic on Western Avenue will devastate the blocks between Western and Alaskan Way. The streets will become completely unfriendly to pedestrians. Street-level retail will wither and a block-wide dead zone between Western and Alaskan will face the waterfront…

“The solution to the future of Alaskan Way needs to be an urban solution. There are many cities worldwide with successful urban waterfront boulevards. A study of such spaces will show that a six-lane boulevard can be accommodated along Alaskan Way.”

The best solution for the viaduct is a two-way boulevard. End of story.

And there are many, many ways to design an urban boulevard:

[ Grand Boulevard, Barcelona ]

[ Champs Elysees, Paris. Five lanes in each direction, but that doesn’t keep the pedestrians away. ]

At the risk of creating the impression that I’m just another of the hand-wringing masses obsessed with second guessing the guy who isn’t even president yet and how he may or may not be already failing to live up to his own “change” hype, I couldn’t stop myself from following up my two previous posts with a mention of the latest regarding the infrastructure stimulus:

“In proposing a stimulus plan that could total as much as $1 trillion, Obama has promised a new federal infrastructure program that would dwarf President Dwight Eisenhower’s interstate highway system that began in 1956.

The concern is that because the States have control over where the money is spent, the stimulus plan could end up looking all too much like the interstate highway system.  That is, we’ll spend most of the money abetting car culture, rather than aggressively embarking on the massive retooling of transportation infrastructure that needs to start immediately, if not sooner.

What L.M. wrote in 1958:

“When the American people, through their Congress, voted last year for a twenty-six billion dollar highway program, the most charitable thing to assume about this action is that they hadn’t the faintest notion of what they were doing. Within the next fifteen years they will doubtless find out; but by that time it will be too late to correct all the damage to our cities and our countryside, to say nothing of the efficient organization of industry and transportation, that this ill-conceived and absurdly unbalanced program will have wrought.”

      

“The plunging oil price is like a dangerously addictive painkiller: short-term relief is being provided at a cost of serious long-term harm.”

That’s not the hyperbolic rhetoric of some raving enviro-fascist. It is, rather, the worldly voice of the Financial Times, the U.K.’s version of the Wall Street Journal.

The piece goes on to quote a researcher from Sandia National Labs who points out that suppliers have a vested interest in steep price drops, “because when the oil price falls like that, the economics of any of these alternatives … turn against you, and you walk away from it”.

Got that? A U.S. government official has gone on record all but accusing oil company executives of conspiring to quash the development of alternative energy sources by manipulating oil prices. (You may want to add that one to your file on “high crimes against humanity and nature.”)

A gasoline tax is a quintessential no-brainer. Time magazine, the most mainstream of U.S. media, is now on board. Even the pompous wing-nut Krauthammer called for a gas tax — in the form of a price floor — way back in 2004. (Didn’t he get the memo that conservatives are supposed to be against “social engineering?”)

But so far, not Obama. In a December 8 interview he said that “putting additional burdens on American families right now, I think, is a mistake.”  He should have finished that sentence with “strictly from the perspective of my short-term political capital.”

If the roadblock truly is the immediate financial burden, then the solution is a tax shift, whereby increased taxes on gasoline get offset by a reduction in some other tax, ideally payroll tax.  Under such a scheme, the overall tax burden remains relatively constant, gasoline consumers receive the desired cost signals, and the tax cuts help encourage a productive activity, i.e. employment.  Sounds a lot like the kind of smart change Obama promised. 

They are lending them to some good people. Three weeks ago Ed Mazria, founder of Architecture 2030, was in Washington D.C. presenting his proposal for a stimulus plan that “integrates a mortgage buy-down program for residential buildings and an accelerated-depreciation program for commercial buildings with the energy efficiency targets of the 2030 Challenge.”

And on December 19, the leaders of the Urban Land Institute met with Treasury Department transition team members to advocate for policies that “reward plans that reduce car dependency and vehicle miles traveled,” and a federal tax credit program to “encourage retrofitting buildings to make them more energy efficient.” To address the lack of affordable housing in many large cities, ULI suggested tax credits that “encourage the conversion of existing market-rate units to workforce housing units.”

All indications are that green retrofitting is going to take off over the next few years. Perhaps it will help pick up some of the slack in new construction.

The designers of the condo project at 1111 East Pike didn’t forget that people can see the back of the building too. Cool project, but is it cool enough to sell in this market?  Hang in there, cause Forbes says Seattle is the country’s number one long-term housing bet.