hugeasscity

As a test of how sensitively Google Analytics tracks declining site visits, I offer you a post that’s all about me.

That sweet ride in the picture above is mine. If you look closely you’ll see that the tire is studded. Those studs got me safely back and forth from my house in the Central District to my job downtown for the past three work days. Any of you readers among those who saw me out there and were no doubt thinking “what a fucking idiot!”?

I handmade a pair of studded mountain bike tires about 20 years ago when I lived in Massachusetts and liked to race around on frozen ponds. They work marvelously on roads that are “snow packed by design,” though it’s still plenty dicey in loose snow and slush. When my bus route was suspended last week, I decided to dig those gnarly beasts out of storage — never mind that they hadn’t been on a bike in 20 years.

Thanks to my deranged unwillingness to throw the tires away over those two decades, which included a cross-country move, two cities, and five different residences, I have been able to keep my unbroken stretch of bike commuting going since the snowstorm last winter. No more excuses not to ride, EVER!

For the bike geeks: I got that bike for $25 a couple of years ago at the Lake City Value Village. It’s a 1993 Alpinestars Al-Mega E900. New, the frame alone retailed for $750. Like most outdoor recreational gear, mountain bikes have evolved such a rapid pace that it might as well be planned obsolescence. But that also makes for some sick bargains if you happen to have a hankering for the old stuff.

Want to know more? Google “Daniel C. Bertolet” and “GaAs”.

When it snows in Seattle, people rediscover their legs. Out of necessity or just for fun, the walkers emerge. However wearily they may trudge, most appear to be enchanted.

And lo, the right-of-way no longer belongs to the cars. People saunter carelessly right down the middle of the street. Kids on sleds zip down hills past parked cars blanketed in snow.

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Last spring when gasoline prices rose to $4/gallon, no one was surprised to see a jump in transit use. Less expected, however, are recent data showing further increases in ridership, even as gasoline dropped back to the $2/gallon range.

Some of the sustained demand for transit is probably related to people seeking new ways to save money as the economy has worsened. But another factor is almost certainly at play: habit. People needed a compelling reason to break their car commute habit, and once they tried transit, they were likely pleased in ways they hadn’t expected.

When snow breaks people’s routines and gets them walking, might we expect a similar persistent effect? It seems plausible that some would learn that it really doesn’t take that long, or that it’s nice to pass slowly through their neighborhood, or that they’re less stressed when they arrive, or that the exercise feels good, or that it’s satisfying to know that their travel mode has zero environmental impact.

And it can’t hurt when people get a taste of how nice it is to not live under the tyranny of cars.

UPDATE 12-23-08:  The Seattle Times reports on how the snow is helping neighborhood businesses.  Though mobility is generally viewed as a positive contribution to quality of life, ironically, we’ve gotten to the point where in some cases reducing mobility can be good medicine for strengthening local communities.  That idea as it pertains to peak oil was previously discussed in this post.

“We suggest an initial objective of reducing atmospheric CO2 to 350 ppm…

“Present policies, with continued construction of coal-fired power plants without CO2 capture, suggest that decision-makers do not appreciate the gravity of the situation. We must begin to move now toward the era beyond fossil fuels. Continued growth of greenhouse gas emissions, for just another decade, practically eliminates the possibility of near-term return of atmospheric composition beneath the tipping level for catastrophic effects.

“The most difficult task, phase-out over the next 20-25 years of coal use that does not capture CO2, is Herculean, yet feasible when compared with the efforts that went into World War II. The stakes, for all life on the planet, surpass those of any previous crisis. The greatest danger is continued ignorance and denial, which could make tragic consequences unavoidable.”

That’s according to James Hansen et.al., in a 2008 paper published in The Open Atmospheric Science Journal. (The 350 ppm target has spawned a new advocacy group called 350, graphic shown above.) It’s hard not to retreat into denial when presented with brutal truth such as this.

Note that to be defensibly accurate, the authors were careful to qualify their denunciation of coal use with “does not capture CO2.” The coal industry has been wildly successful at popularizing a term for coal-fired power plants that capture CO2: Clean Coal. There’s only one pesky little problem with that, as Eric De Place at Sightline is fond of reminding us:

“Clean coal is like a Unicorn. It may be a groovy fantasy, but it just doesn’t exist.”

Or more succinctly, as the title of this informative summary puts it, “clean coal is a lie.” And it has been such an ingeniously propagated lie that the coal industry has been presented with a special award by the Center for Media and Democracy: a Bronze Falsie. The fact that politicians from Obama to Palin have given lip service to the lie is a stark indication of the tenacious grip still held by the status quo.

Meanwhile, Hansen speaks the truth about those who continue to use their substantial power and influence to promote coal:

“In my opinion, these CEOs should be tried for high crimes against humanity and nature.”

[ The Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird at the Boeing Flight Museum ]

In 1976, a Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird hit 2,194 m.p.h. and reached an altitude 85,067feet — no airplane has flown faster or higher since.

In 1976, Viking 1 landed on Mars.

In 1976, this car was built — the first catalytic converters started to appear on American cars about two years prior, marking the end of the muscle-car era.

In 1976, the chimpanzee, our closest genetic relative, was officially declared an endangered species.

In 1976, the Apple Computer Company was formed.

In 1976, Watergate and the loss the Vietnam War were still painfully fresh.

In 1976, Dick Cheney replaced Donald Rumsfeld as President Gerald Ford’s Chief of Staff, and later managed Ford’s failed re-election campaign.

In 1976, Jimmy Carter was elected president — he had progressive ideas about energy conservation and renewable energy sources, but his successor, Ronald “government is the problem” Reagan, put the kabosh on all that.

In 1976 or thereabouts, the limits of the country and the limits of the planet were being revealed like never before. But during the following three decades, too many of us decided to pretend that no such limits exist, clinging to past successes. Natural, social, and economic capital was squandered; delusions of empire prevailed; little to no real progress was made on energy, transportation, or land use. And so we have become poorly situated to deal with the future that is upon us.

But now the children of the 1970s are getting their turn to run the show: My generation: Obama.

Perhaps it is naive to hope that the status-quo pairing of short-term gain and long-term pain can be overcome by the sea change that we so badly need; that our culture’s deeply ingrained focus on the individual and faith in growth without limits can be recast into a world view that nurtures the full potential of humanity. But then again, three decades of stalled progress punctuated by a George W. Bush finale ought to be a singularly potent catalyst.

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BONUS: In 1976, Elvis Costello, Talking Heads, The Clash, Sex Pistols, The Ramones, and XTC were busy conceiving their seminal 1977 releases that ushered in the punk/new-wave era — a reaction to the overwrought prog-rock and bloated jam bands that were revealing the limits of the form.

[ Clarence Perry’s conceptual plan for a “neighborhood unit,” published in 1929 ]

As currently exemplified by the Seattle School District’s latest closure plans, pretty much nothing enrages parents more than a threat to their neighborhood school. And though some part of that sentiment may be raw parental instinct, the powerful unifying role that schools can play in city neighborhoods has long been recognized.

In the 1920s, urban planner Clarence Perry developed a influential prototypical plan for the “neighborhood unit,” organized around the elementary school, shown above. The design put the school at the neighborhood center, such that most children would have less than a 5-minute, quarter-mile walk to the school and wouldn’t have to cross a major street.

Though much has changed in 80 years, today the Perry neighborhood unit is still a relevant model, particularly in light of our current need to wean ourselves from car-dependence. For one thing, the target population for Perry’s 160-acre neighborhood was about 6000 people, equivalent to a density of 38 per acre. That’s more than three times Seattle’s average population density of 11 people per acre, and well into the levels of density for which transit becomes efficient.

One key demographic change that has occurred over the past several decades is that the fraction of children in the general population has declined significanltly. In addition, about 30% of Seattle’s children attend private school. Consequently, enrollment in public schools has dropped to about 45,000 today, from its peak of 99,000 in 1962.

The combination of fewer kids and lower population density presents a challenge to the realization of the Perry neighborhood ideal, because it means that a central school has to draw from a larger area, which increases the average walking distance. Fortunately, density in Seattle is trending up, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. And furthermore, walking distances longer than a quarter-mile are not unreasonable, as our own history shows. During the first half of the last century, Seattle built elementary schools throughout its predominantly low-density, single-family neighborhoods, kids attended their neighborhood school, and most walked.

In the 1970s, all that changed when race-based busing scattered school kids across the city. After busing ended in the mid-nineties the schools adopted a choice system, which in some cases has encouraged neighborhoods to rally around their schools, but there is still a large percentage of children attending schools far from home — in 2003, about 45 percent rode a bus to school.

The primary reason for this game of scholastic musical chairs is lack of equity across Seattle. Schools in wealthier parts of the City tend to be more desirable, and the net result is a migration of students from south to north (with a few exceptions here and there). So here we see yet another example of how income inequality negatively impacts sustainability in multiple, interrelated ways: kids are less healthy because they don’t walk to school; we waste time and burn more fossil fuels carting them all over town; and a source of social cohesion is compromised.

Since the cultural roots of social inequity are so deep, the City’s best shot at compensating for imbalances in the schools is targeted funding, such that schools in low-income neighborhoods are allocated augmented budgets. So then these schools would start to look more attractive to neighborhood families when the schools have the means to, say, hire more teachers and reduce class size, or provide better after school programs.

Reviving the neighborhood school in Seattle also demands that the District to be very careful about school closure plans driven by short-sighted budget-cutting goals. The TT Minor School, ideally located between Capitol Hill and the Central District, is a perfect example of a school on the current closure list that has great potential to become a quintessential neighborhood school.

The powers that be in Seattle like to talk the talk about creating a city that works for families with children, and it’s no secret that good public schools are the critical ingredient. Those same folks also hope to lead Seattle and the region towards a more sustainable future, and the neighborhood school has much to contribute to that end.

Yes, it will cost more money. But what could possibly be a better investment?

This is pretty much a done deal: On Monday Seattle City Council is expected to approve a new plan for workforce housing incentive-zoning. But as much as I support the idea of incentivizing affordable housing in Seattle, my weak little brain is wracked with ambivalence over this approach. In short, my niggling angst is over whether the overall effect may be to impede development at the higher densities that are needed to move the City towards a more sustainable future .

For example, would the proposed six-story project at 23rd and Union be feasible for the developer if there was an additional condition attached to the upzone from 40 to 65 feet? This is a project that, given its location, would make a major contribution to the public good by its mere existence.

In the case of upzones from 65 to 85 feet, construction type plays a role that does not appear to be widely appreciated. Seattle building code allows a maximum of five stories of wood construction on top of a concrete base, a.k.a. the “five-over-one.” This construction type is relatively economical, and that’s why they’ve been sprouting up all over the City over the past decade or so.

But to go higher than five stories above a concrete base, code requires either steel or concrete frame construction, which tends to be more expensive. So it typically requires many more stories of building to offset the additional cost of construction, and the two extra stories you get by raising the height limit from 65 to 85 feet usually aren’t enough.

In the entire City of Seattle, I know of only two eight-story residential buildings that came out of the ground in the last development cycle (I trust y’all will correct me if I’ve missed any). The photo above shows those two buildings, which happen to be almost directly across the street from each other on Market Street in Ballard, just west of 15th Ave. One is steel frame and the other is concrete frame (the one clad in yellow is a five-over-one).

Would the developers of these two projects have gone for the two extra stories — which already required more expensive construction — if they had to cover the additional financial burden of affordable housing? It’s impossible to know for sure, but in neighborhoods where rents are lower than those in Ballard, the likelihood of developers opting for the 65 to 85-foot bonus is likely to be fairly low.

So then, how much financial burden would the incentive-zoning actually impose? Take for example a building with five floors of residential and 20 units per floor. Two more floors would add 40 units, and the 17% set aside would stipulate seven workforce units out of a total of 140 in the building. Those seven units would sell or rent for a lower price than the rest, but not by a drastic amount in most cases, since eligibility is based on 80 to 100% of area median income. For a 40 to 65 foot upzone, the impact is a little bigger proportionally: the building would end up with seven workforce units out of 100 total.

The armchair analysis above suggests that the financial hit would be relatively small, though for certain locations and market conditions it still might be a show stopper.

Yet another consideration in all this is that many other cities — including Boston, New York, San Francisco, and San Diego — have implemented inclusionary zoning that is much more demanding than the incentive zoning proposed for Seattle (inclusionary zoning as typically defined is not legal in Washington State). Currently in San Francisco, for multifamily projects with ten or more units, 15 percent of the total units must be affordable. Results have been mixed but generally positive (pdf), and dense housing development didn’t grind to a halt as some had probably feared.

Ambivalent yet?

While there are those who never seem to get beyond scapegoating the developers, the reality is that the community as a whole should be footing the bill for affordable housing. And Seattle already has an affordable housing incentive known as “Homes Within Reach” that reflects that perspective. The program offers up to a 12 year property tax exemption for multifamily projects that provide housing affordable to “moderate-wage” workers.

The smart thing about the tax exemption incentive is that it’s decoupled from density. Affordable housing and density are both key components of balanced sustainability, and nobody wants an incentive that may have the unintended consequence of pitting one against the other. Will this happen with Seattle’s new incentive zoning? Maybe. Then again, maybe not…

If you lived in a society with a true free market economy, the people who make the red car would win and the people who make the gray car would lose. And if you lived in a society that was smart enough to make sure that externalized costs were included in the price tag, the people who make the red car would win even more decisively.

But you don’t:

This year, for the first time in my life, I brought home a Christmas tree without the help of an internal combustion engine. That’s right, I schlepped a six-foot Douglas fir for a block and a half, arms sore, hands sticky with pungent sap.

For years the two neglected houses behind the chain link fence on the corner of 24th and Spring in the Central District (photo above) seemed to be inhabited solely by middled-aged African American men who did nothing but play horseshoes in the front yard all day. I used to catch myself envying their laid back lifestyle as I rode by on perfect Seattle summer evenings on my way home after a long day of work.

A few months ago the site was suddenly cleaned up and transformed into the local campaign headquarters for Green Party presidential ticket Cynthia McKinney and Rosa Clemente. And then two weeks ago the Christmas trees showed up.

I asked the guy selling the trees what else was going on, and he described how they were setting up services to help keep teens off the streets, and he had a lot to say about how this was what they had wanted to be part of the Northwest African American Museum, and also how he grew up a block away on 23rd Ave and how his father was one of the first successful black businessmen in Seattle, and so on.  As we were leaving with the tree he handed me a photocopy of an October 2008 Seattle Metropolitan feature on the museum (9 MB pdf).

Turns out our tree salesman was Omari Tahir-Garrett, one of the activists who occupied Colman School from 1985 to 1993 to pressure the City to create a black culture center there. Sadly, Garrett is probably more well known for smashing Mayor Paul Schell in the face with a megaphone during a public event in 2001 at 23rd and Union, where a month earlier a black man had been shot and killed by police.

That’s life in the Big City. And the Big City has history.

All the power to Garrett and his cohorts for their resourceful commitment to helping keep neighborhood teens out of trouble. The property owner, who owns the entire post office block, is letting them use the site until the whole thing is redeveloped, presumably during the next development upturn.

And so we got our car-free Christmas tree.  And we avoided the stress of traffic and parking, chatted with neighbors along the way, supported a good local cause, and learned some things about our community, both past and present. This is how urban life should be. And walkability is the essential catalyst.

And the kids over at SLOG get to have so much fun with it that it’s almost too cruel. Almost.

Here, Erica Barnett disembowels James Vesely for his stupendously dumb plea for the taxation of bicycles. And here, Dominic Holden exposes the Seatimes’ curiously passionate fear of proposed incentive zoning, and how their main argument — that if you tax a thing you tend to get less of it — flies smack in the face of Vesely’s call for a bicycle tax. Not to mention that they offer no other ideas about how we might address the lack of affordable housing in Seattle.

Though the Seatimes editorial board appears to be oblivious to the fact that incentive zoning for heights above 85 feet will have zero impact on housing outside of downtown (or have they suddenly become hyper-density advocates?), they are correct to point out that it will be a tricky business to craft code that works as intended across all city neighborhood contexts.

The topic is worthy of another post one of these days, but perhaps some of y’all out there already have all the answers?

Disclaimer:  Mind the quotation marks in the post title — I’m just reporting what one anonymous source said. Hugeasscity has no official position one way or the other on jackasses, complete or otherwise, and their alleged resemblance, real or imagined, to the honorable public servant Frank Chopp, a.k.a. the most powerful politician in Washington State.

But this I will say: the Choppway is an urban design fiasco. Much has already been written, and since at the moment I’m feeling like my time on this earth is too valuable to throw away on typing another word about it, I’m cutting and pasting the following little riff a friend sent me:

“FORGET that Frank Chopp supersized the New York City High Line project, plugged it full of program spaces from Paris’ Viaduc des Arts, and called it a solution for the Viaduct.

• Forget that neither the High Line nor the Viaduc des Arts occupy prime waterfront real estate.
• Forget that the High Line is only 30 feet wide in parts and often no more than 18 feet off the ground and that the Viaduc des Arts is embraced by apartments and balconies that look onto its parkway (providing security) and interwoven with broad step sequences and ramps that provide easy access to the ground.
• Forget that neither the High Line nor the Viaduc des Arts block distant vistas.
• Forget that neither the High Line nor the Viaduc des Arts include third party program space AND an active, limited-access freeway. THEY ARE BOTH DEFUNCT RAIL LINES, FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!!!

BUT REMEMBER, from the renderings, it seems that Mr. Chopp’s rooftop park gives all those dressed like a footless Mary Poppins mysterious powers of levitation. Now that’s barrier free design! BUILD THE MEGADUCT FOR ALL!”

In other viaduct news:

A new study by Eco Northwest found that each of the eight viaduct replacement options would have similar economic impacts. According to the study, the surface options would result in slower travel times, but because this would only affect a small fraction of total regional trips, the economic consequences are minimal. Can you feel the legs under the expensive (i.e. non-surface) options buckling?

Meanwhile Gehl Architects of Copenhagen just released a study concluding that none of the eight options does much for the pedestrian. Their criticism of the surface options sounds familiar: “The space along the water is out-of-scale, too wide and lacking definition.” And, needless to say, the report also states that the Choppway “is the least desirable option from an urban-design and open-space standpoint.”

The Gehl study offers no design solutions, but that’s not surprising given that their fee was only $15,000. This whole viaduct replacement effort would be seriously energized by an inspiring urban design vision, and that means spending hundreds of thousands — still a relatively small portion of the overall budget.

Lastly, some still dream (last paragraph) of a tunnel, and a recent report by the Cascadia Center and Arup suggesting that the $3.5 million estimate for the bored tunnel is inflated may keep their hopes alive. The report surveyed bored tunnels worldwide and found costs ranging from $200 to $700 million per mile.

A tunnel would solve a lot of problems, though in my opinion it’s still hard to justify spending a significant amount more than the surface options to facilitate vehicle miles traveled. But oh man, you just know that the machine in the picture below would cut through all that fill on the waterfront like butter.

[ Rendering of Plymouth Housing Group’s homeless housing project at 1st and Cedar; SMR Architects ]

Listen:

“No parking, either long-term or short-term, is required for uses on lots in downtown zones.”

So dictates Seattle code. But as far as I know, only one new significantly sized project has yet to take the cue: Plymouth Housing Group’s proposed seven-story mixed-use building at 1st and Ceder (unflatteringly rendered above), scheduled for completion in 2010. Designed by SMR Architects, the building is to provide 84 studio residences for the homeless, along with 2000 square feet of street level retail. Given the clientele, the undoubtedly tight construction budget, and the excellent access to transit, no parking makes several kinds of sense for this project.

The City of San Francisco implemented a parking maximum of 0.75 spaces per unit in downtown areas, but buildings with no parking are still a rarity. One particularly impressive example is Curran House (photo below), an affordable housing project designed by David Baker+Partners:

“Curran House has no on-site automobile parking, which seems like a crazy idea in the modern USA, but made sense here because: most of the residents can’t afford a car, the site has excellent public transit connections, and we were able to provide additional units, gardens, common space for supportive services, neighborhood-serving retail, and office space for TNDC. Additionally, providing parking minimums would have added several million dollars to the construction cost, while ample monthly parking is available for lease in the immediate neighborhood at reasonable rates.”

As for no parking in market rate housing, well, let’s just say we’ve got a whole lot more CO2 to emit from our cars before that’s going to happen. In Seattle, ratios as low as about one space per unit are becoming more common. The lowest I’ve come across is Moda, in which 83 of 251 units have no on-site parking. In a Portland condo project called The Civic, 24 of 261 units were set aside to be sold without on-site parking spaces.

Cars and lenders are not about relent on their collusion to maximize parking any time soon. But given that below grade structured parking typically costs about $40,000 per stall, and given that we have a shortage of affordable housing in Seattle, and given that we all know that the sun is setting on the age of oil, the least we could do is start removing minimum parking requirements in Seattle city-wide.  Downtown was a good first step, but because land costs are so high, projects are more likely aimed at high-end markets, which demand, and can absorb the additional cost of structured parking. 

Miniumum parking requirements were recently removed in Seattle’s four urban centers and the light rail station areas–very good moves.  Why not urban villages too?  And how long before we move toward parking maximums?

[ Curran House in San Francisco, designed by David Baker+Partners;  photo by Brian Rose ]

In case you missed it: a PI report on the ongoing bloodbath in architecture. For instance, this nice building is going to feel pretty roomy for a while.

And lest you forget, architecture is leading indicator, duly noted by commenter BrianK:

“Architects and engineers are the canary in the coal mine when it comes to the 2nd largest industry in the world, which is construction. If we aren’t getting new work, you can quite be sure the thousands of people in our region who build buildings won’t have any either.”

Ah yes, it’s the cyclic nature of capitalism kicking our collective butts once again, and kicking harder, it would seem, than it has for several generations. But then again, it’s perhaps worth contemplating whether or not “cyclic” is a actually a euphemism for dumb-greedy-humans-falling-for-a-bubble-again. Apparently we are slow learners.

Human nature notwithstanding, we are told that capitalism is inherently cyclic. There’s just one pesky problem with that: Those cycles are not good for people. Obviously, the stress is severe on the down-cycle when we wonder if our jobs are going to disappear. But stress can also creep in on the up-cycle when we have to work like crazy because firms can’t find enough help.

Moreover, you’d think that even a Scroogy, bottom-line economist, to whom people’s silly feelings are of zero consequence because they can’t be represented in a mathematical formula, would acknowledge that severe cycles are to be avoided simply because they are inefficient. Investments in recruiting, training, specialized experience, team building, client relationships, etc, are all flushed down the toilet when a downturn forces layoffs. And add to that all the energy wasted when people have to search for new jobs.

Well that’s capitalism, the best of both worlds: inefficient and inhumane! Not that I’m a socialist or anything. Heavens no. No Europe-worshipping on this blog. Mustn’t upset the good Americans…

Um, sorry about that lapse, and now back to the point: How can we do better job of controlling the vicious cycles of capitalism? Is there any answer other than tighter regulation?

[ Pine Street cottages, at the corner of Pine and 22nd in the Central District. ]

Can there possibly be a building type more cuddly and unthreatening than a cottage? Aye, but the density NIMBY’s of single-family Seattle are sensitive bunch, and the thought of cottages in their neighborhoods sends them into convulsions of fear.

Galvanized by the 1991 award-winning renovation of the Pine Street Cottages (shown above), the City of Seattle crafted a cottage housing ordinance in the mid-1990s. But neighborhood groups vehemently opposed allowing any such scary scary cottages into their precious single-family zones, and as a result the ordinance was only adopted for multi-family zones.

And what makes that even more pitifully embarrassing is that just across the lake in wealthy suburban Kirkland, code (pdf) allows cottage developments in all single-family zones. Did you catch that Seattle? Prim and proper Kirkland is more progressive than you are when it comes to density in single-family zones. As are several other small cities in the region, including Redmond, Marysville, Langley, and Port Townsend. (Shoreline tried, but backlash ensued.)

[ Danielson Grove cottages in Kirkland ]

The implementation of the Kirkland cottage housing ordinance was greatly facilitated by a demonstration project known as Danielson Grove (photo above), designed by Russ Chapin Architects. This project was so well done that pretty much everybody who sees it loves it: The burden of the density advocates in action.

A decade or so ago the City of Seattle permitted two cottage housing demonstration projects in single-family zones, Ravenna Cottages and Jefferson Cottages. Other cottage projects have been built, but are located in multifamily zones — Boulders and Ashworth Cottages for example.

The photos below show a brand new cottage development that I stumbled across the other day: Mount Baker Cottages. I don’t know how this thing got permitted — it’s located in a single-family zone. There are six very tightly spaced cottages tucked into the back portion of a single-family lot.

So OK then, even though Seattle has several attractive and well-liked examples of cottage development, unfortunately it seems they are not enough like baby bunnies to ease the distress of a city gripped by the terror of the scary scary cottages.

[ Mount Baker Cottages ]

In the current economic climate, Buy Nothing Day is likely to raise more hackles than ever before in its 17-year history. I suspect that even those Americans who recognize the ultimate futility of our consumer-based culture may be experiencing — as I am — a nagging little internal voice doubting whether it’s such a good idea to encourage consumers to tighten their wallets up even further, given the state of the economy. As in, how much worse might it get if retailers have their worst Christmas ever? As in, maybe a little consumer spending might be the right medicine to get things rolling again in the near term, and never mind for the moment that it’s a house of cards long term — we’ll figure that out later.

But, as Adbusters adamantly urges, the truth is that in the end we’ll all be better off if we confront the root problem head on:

“Suddenly, we ran out of money and, to avoid collapse, we quickly pumped liquidity back into the system. But behind our financial crisis a much more ominous crisis looms: we are running out of nature… fish, forests, fresh water, minerals, soil. What are we going to do when supplies of these vital resources run low? There’s only one way to avoid the collapse of this human experiment of ours on Planet Earth: we have to consume less.”

Adbusters founder Kalle Lasn:

“If you dig a little past the surface you’ll see that this financial meltdown is not about liquidity, toxic derivatives or unregulated markets, it’s really about culture. It’s our culture of excess and meaningless consumption — the glorified spending and borrowing of the past decade that’s at the root of the crisis we now find ourselves in. A simpler, pared-down lifestyle – one in which we’re not drowning in debt – may well be the answer to this crisis we’re in. Living within our means will also make us happier and healthier than we’ve been in years.”

And Adbusters, masters of the meme, have a new name for the dawning era: The Age of Post-Materialism. Buy it?

Why is it that one of the wealthiest, most highly educated cities on the planet can’t do a better job with its public schools? For fuck’s sake, it’s so completely, despicably infuriating.

Why are the Seattle public schools a never ending saga of budget crises, overcrowded classrooms, dilapidated buildings, overworked teachers, cutbacks on the arts and sports, crappy lunch food, teaching to the test, inconsistent leadership, and in the end, mediocre educational results?

Why are so many Seattle families forced to endure massive stress over whether or not their kid will be lucky enough to get into one of the “good” public schools, some pushed to such extreme levels of worry that — like some neighbors of mine did — they’ll rent out the house they own and get an apartment in another part of the city to make sure their kid doesn’t get stuck in an inferior school?

And why are Seattle families being threatened with the trauma of school closings for the second time in two years?

Uh-huh, there are some pretty solid reasons for why nearly one third of Seattle’s children attend private schools, the highest city-only rate in the country as of the 2000 Census.

Is it simply a matter of money? If so, the school district should ask for more. This is city that believes in education, and surely most Seattlites would be willing to pay a little more in taxes to support meaningful improvements in the public schools.

Yes, it is extremely challenging to teach children who come from troubled homes. But does that mean it’s literally impossible to provide high quality public education in urban areas where there are significant numbers of less fortunate kids in the school population?

Why can’t we figure this shit out? Cause it matters. A lot. For so many reasons. We all know it.

And it matters more than ever now, in this era of climate change, peak oil, and ecological breakdown — an era in which channeling growth into our existing large cities has become a critical path to sustainability. Anyone care to guess how many Seattle families have been pushed over the edge by this latest round of closures and have decided to move out to the burbs where they know they can find quality and consistency in the public schools?

Imagine if Seattle had the best public schools in the Puget Sound region. Families with children would be attracted, but to live in Seattle would mean accepting a higher density environment. For many, this would be no sacrifice, while others who might have viewed it as a tradeoff, would discover a surprisingly high overall quality of life. As more families came, it would justify increased investment in the public realm amenities that make high-density livable. In short, exemplary public schools are perhaps the single most potent catalyst there is for promoting the diverse, vibrant, walkable, and socially coherent urban communities of a sustainable future. So get on it, Seattle. Please?

[ Garage green roof in Mount Baker designed by Harrison Architects. ]

Earlier this month the Puget Sound Partnership released a draft Action Agenda, “a roadmap for protecting, restoring and cleaning up Puget Sound.” In this astute PI opinion piece, Roger Valdez connects the dots to compact development, and calls for policy changes that would allow for increased density in Seattle’s extensive single-family zones.

A far less controversial strategy for reducing polluted stormwater runoff — identified as the biggest threat to Puget Sound — is the implementation of green roofs. The retention of rainwater on green roofs can reduce their runoff by up to 75 percent. And while rooftops are not nearly as big a source of pollutants as are roadways, reducing runoff from roofs matters because all the stormwater ends up in the same pipe. Less runoff means less load on costly detention and treatment systems, and decreased likelihood that heavy rains will cause overflow events, during which untreated sewerage pours directly into the Sound.

In addition to abating runoff, green roofs help mitigate the urban heat island effect, and provide roof insulation, both of which reduce energy use and associated greenhouse gas emissions. They can also provide wildlife habitat. And they sure do look a heckuva lot nicer than a blank roof.

The only remaining question is: why are they still so uncommon in the Puget Sound region? Sure, we’ve got a handful or two, mostly on municipal buildings, but nothing compared to what’s being done in Europe. And of course the reason for this disparity comes down to ideology: European societies are much more inclined to wield government power in the cause of the common good. In other words, they regulate and significantly subsidize green roofs. (This is also why Germany is the world’s biggest consumer of photovoltaics.)

Green building rating systems such as LEED, and the City of Seattle’s new Green Factor code were crafted to encourage green roofs. But since the upfront costs are so significant — roughly two times a conventional roof — most private developers have remained unenthusiastic. The problem is simple: the free market gets a bit wobbly when it comes to both the future and the common good. The solution is also simple: government incentives.

While the ubiquitous flat roofs of highly urbanized areas are the most facile targets for green roofs, there is also great potential in the vast square footage of impervious rooftop in Seattle’s single-family zones, as in the two accompanying photos. But so far, such projects are extremely rare. If any readers know of other small-scale green roof projects, consider it a good excuse to leave a comment.

[ Single-family green roof in South Park designed by Silo Architecture. ]

Common Current has released a study (pdf) that ranks the 50 largest U.S. cities by their post-oil preparedness. Without further adieu, the top ten:

1. San Francisco
2. New York
3. Washington, DC
4. Seattle
5. Oakland
6. Chicago
7. Portland, OR
8. Philadelphia
9. Baltimore
10. Boston

The rankings were based on existing levels of sprawl, transit use, walking, biking, carpooling, telecommuting, and use of oil to heat buildings and generate electricity. Seattle ranks a mediocre 29th in sprawl, but makes up for it in other categories.

Warning: Beware The List! But although the validity of the ranking method may be debatable, the publication of the list will help raise awareness of a post-oil future. And we best be getting deeply aware.

Just as some folks recently aimed to do at Re-imagining Cities: Urban Design After the Age of Oil, a conference on “the need to re-imagine and rethink how cities are designed and organized in a future without the plentiful and abundant oil upon which prosperous urban economies have been built.”

The organizers note the 50th Anniversary of the 1958 “Conference on Urban Design Criticism,” — an event that had a major influence on urban design throughout the remainder of the 20th Century — and hope to help give birth to an equally influential evolution of urban design for the 21st Century.

But I’m not sold on the idea that we have to totally re-invent urban design, and would suggest more of a refinement, coupled with a heightened sense of urgency. The fundamentals of good urban design still hold, and in many cases can help reduce our vulnerability to diminishing supplies of oil.

An attendee of that 1958 conference, Lewis Mumford, had an uncanny knack for early diagnoses of urban ills that still afflict us today, and stand to become even more acute in a post-oil world. To take a single example, here are a few quotes from a Mumford essay called “The Highway and the City,” published in that same year of 1958:

“We must replan the inner city for pedestrian circulation, and we must rebuild and extend our public forms of mass transportation.”

“Every urban transportation plan should, accordingly, put the pedestrian at the center of all its proposals… But to bring the pedestrian back into the picture, one must treat him with the respect and honor we now accord only to the automobile.”

“We must also scrap the monotonous uniformities of American zoning practice, which turns vast areas, too spread out for pedestrian movement, into single-district zones, for commerce, industry, or residential purposes.”

“Most of our suburban and and exurban communities must replan large areas at perhaps double their present densities in order to have the social, educational, recreational, and industrial facilities they need closer at hand.”

“What we need is a compact vehicle, powered by electricity, delivered by a powerful storage cell, yet to be invented.”

“If we could overcome the irrational drives that are now at work, promoting shortsighted decisions, the rational case for rebuilding the mass transportation system in our cities would be overwhelming.”

While there’s still an abundance of superblocks and surface parking, downtown Bellevue’s skyline is has left suburbia far behind. Shown above is the nearly completed Bellevue Towers luxury condo project, with twin towers topping out at 450 feet. That’s just five feet shy of Seattle’s tallest residential tower, Olive8, and ten feet taller than 1521 Second.

Designed by MulvannyG2 and GBD Architects, and developed by Gerding Edlen of Portland, the project consists of 539 condo units, 16,000 sf of retail, and 904 (!) parking stalls on eight (!) levels. The project is targeting a LEED Gold rating, and is expected to consume 30 percent less energy and water than the “industry standard.” (All those exposed balconies that work like heat fins aren’t going make achieving that energy efficiency goal any easier.)

Bellevue Towers was made possible by downtown upzones that were a result of city planning efforts stretching back more than two decades. Over that time, the City’s desire to encourage more dense development has become reality, particularly in the most recent cycle. Needless to say, sales at Bellevue Towers have been below expectations.

In the bottom left of the photo above is the Bellevue Transit Center. And check out all the special paving designed to emphasize pedestrian use. And yes, those are real people out there walking around.

Like countless Amercian cities, most of the built environment in downtown Bellevue is still relatively alienating to the pedestrian. Given the nature of the bones, it’s a staggeringly massive undertaking to retrofit these places for people, and for the realities of life in the 21st Century. Kudos to Bellevue for taking on the challenge.

WSDOT has posted renderings of the eight viaduct/central waterfront scenarios on flickr, here. Below are views of the open space along the waterfront for Options B and C:

Though C more so than B, both give me the impression of too much open space. What would people do out in the vastness of that plaza? Those tables look a little dubious to me. And the buildings across the street are so far away, and so many of them turn their backs on Alaskan Way, that they wouldn’t likely add much to the space’s activation.

The challenge is that the distance between the pier buildings and the existing buildings to the east is too big to create a comfortable open space in between, but too small to fit in another row of typical buildings. Creating a great place on the liberated waterfront is going to require going beyond just dropping in a street, streetcar tracks, and a wide swath of pavers: It’s going to take thoughtful and inspired urban design.

My sense is that the waterfront open space would likely be more successful in the real world if it was tightened up. An open space needs more than a lot of open space to work. Just south of the Aquarium, Waterfront Park is a big space that never seems to have many people in it, and this has everything to do with what is and isn’t around it.

One way to fashion a more human-scale open space and increase its activation would be to shift everything westward, and add a new row of narrow buildings or additions on the east edge of the boulevard.  This would also give a reason for people to walk along the east side of the street.  Perhaps the boulevard could be given some curves to accentuate gathering space focal points, such as the area at the bottom of Harbor Steps.  There are tons of possibilities.

Getting rid of the viaduct is just the first step.  Next task:  good urban design. 

Another good idea from Worldchanging. (Strange how they seem to be more well known internationally than they are here in their own home town of Seattle.)