hugeasscity

I never saw Momentum magazine before a friend dropped a copy on my desk the other day, but it was hard not to immediately like a publication that, in its latest issue, manages to strike several hugeass chords: my neighborhood bike shop, 2020 Cycles; architect David Baker, one of my personal favorites and juror at the Seattle AIA Honor Awards; and there’s even a geeky article on LEED.

I love being reminded that urban cycling is such a growing trend.

On the back cover was an ad for Trek’s new singlespeed that dumps the traditional bike chain and replaces it with a carbon composite belt. Who cares if it’s fixie counterculture commodified by one of the corporate behemoths of bike companies. Because more bikes = good.

Not to be outdone, the Biomega Copenhagen uses a drive shift in lieu of a chain.

UPDATED: see below.

…that Viaduct Option C, a.k.a. the Alaskan Way and Western Avenue one-way couplet, is going to be the horse to beat. Here’s the scheme (for more detail, look here):

At the November 13 Viaduct Stakeholder Advisory Committee meeting, the results of mobility studies on the eight viaduct options were presented. Reports by the Times and PI both focused on how the elevated option would provide shortest travel times by car, revealing the pathetically spent car-centric bias that has led to dismemberment by pavement in so many of our cities.

In contrast, the response from the People’s Waterfront Coalition (PWC) focuses on trips:

“All options serve the expected demand for trips effectively, only varying +/- 1% comparatively in how many trips they serve.”

And regarding the impact on I-5:

“Results show the number of trips diverted to I-5 is pretty low, and the viaduct decision doesn’t affect I-5 much; I-5 is pretty full now and will continue to stay full. Options B and C do not increase congestion or travel times on I-5.”

The PWC also points out that the model assumes a 20 percent increase in vehicle miles traveled by 2015. But that assumption is based on the status quo, ignoring the inevitable hit VMTs will take from rising fuel costs and climate change, as well as trip reduction that occurs when people use their brains to respond to congested traffic conditions.

My money’s still on a surface option. And I would not be surprised if option C becomes the favored surface option, since it no doubt provides more car capacity than A or B, and will be viewed as a compromise. But nope, I don’t much like it. The three-lane one-ways will encourage cars to travel too fast, and will create a more formidable pedestrian barrier on Western Ave. The intersection of Western Ave and Virginia at the north end of Pike Market would be particularly egregious. Color me down with Option B.

UPDATE: Also color me busted by commenter KeithR for not carefully reading the map, which shows an underpass for Western Ave at Virginia St. Still, from an urban design standpoint I’m still leaning towards B rather than C. I like the calm, pedestrian friendly character of Western Ave, for example at the bottom of Harbor Steps. I’m wary of an underpass, and how that will likely create a pedestrian barrier between Steinbrueck Park and Western Ave to the south, and then when it surfaces further to the north it will likely create more pedestrian barriers. And I think Alaskan Way is actually a pretty good location for a two-way multi-lane boulevard: there’s plenty of room for it, and as Matt the Engineer commented, a 3-lane one-way may leave too much open space. The energy of two-way boulevard seems appropriate for the waterfront, and overall the boulevard could contribute to the waterfront’s character and sense of place — think Champs-Élysées.

Hugeasscity is one year old today. And everything I said in the first post is still so true.

HAC STATS:

• Total posts = 330. Total comments = 1965.
• Over the six months since I started counting in May 2008: 41,597 unique site visits.

Lucky Seattle: “You were late to the party, you didn’t get as drunk and you’re less hung over.” That according to Portland economist Joe Cortright, as quoted in a recent PI piece with the headline “Area faces bleak real estate forecast.”

Even luckier still: according to both Smart Money and Forbes, Seattle is going to get over that hangover faster than any other city in the U.S.

And the word on the street was similar at the Urban Land Institute’s Fall meeting in Miami: Seattle and San Francisco are the two best real estate markets in the country, but even though they’re on top, on a scale of one to ten they still only rank about a six.

Meanwhile the mood is understandably righteous over at Seattle Bubble.

OK. Few haven’t noticed that “Seattle’s getting their butt kicked, too,” as Williams Marketing President Leslie Williams quipped. So now the question is: how low will it go? My, but isn’t it exhilarating, as you’re slipping over the edge of the precipice, to look down and wonder where the ground is?

My take is that Seattle still has some relatively strong fundamentals. But what the hell do I know? Like all of us, I’ve never been over a cliff quite like this one before. Oh, and did you hear that Citi is laying off 52,000 people? I’ve got one of their credit cards in my pocket. So it goes.

At the corner of 21st and Union in the Central District, this is the kind of small-scale commercial building that forms the heart of an urban neighborhood. They tend to be a little old and rough around the edges, yet have character in both the architecture and tenants that more than makes up for it. Most importantly, they are affordable to the independent businesses that foster meaningful connections between people and place.

The building in the photo above is home to a bike repair shop, a yoga/pilates studio, and a small movie theater that serves food and drinks. On election night the movie theater — Central Cinema — hosted a neighborhood party that perfectly illustrates the unifying role small businesses can play in their community. The video below (via CD News) shows a particularly profound moment from that night, during which a woman spontaneously went up on stage and sang the national anthem. Pretty safe to assume nothing like this happened at the multiplex.

Buzz, buzz, buzz, though nothing with quite the eloquence of my rant last June.

When people-who-get-it discuss the appropriate level of response to climate change and peak oil, the two most often cited examples are the Manhattan Project and the Space Program. And what do these two achievements have in common? (Hint: It says something about the myth of the free market.)

Yes indeed, both of these superhumanly successful projects were funded and managed by the federal government. People sweated blood to make the impossible happen without being motivated by a sweet package of stock options.

To faithful free market ideologues, such a scenario does not compute — it is impossible for the government to be efficient or innovative because there is no profit motive. And therein lies the poison of our dominant economic world view: it diminishes us all by negating our capacity for doing good work for its own sake.

The free market is a highly effective system for producing widgets. But when it comes to massive, transformative change, the human passion for transcendence is what matters most. The most revolutionary art, science, and political movements of history were not about making a quick buck.

All of which is a drawn out way of saying this: We should nationalize GM. Because we need a revolutionary change in motorized transportation, and we need it now. And because the free market is not up to the task.

The mission of the new GM would be simple: Produce the most efficient, affordable motorized transportation the world has ever seen. Every resource would be made available to support this goal, with the exception of excessive salaries — the nature of the mission itself would attract the best minds in the world.

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Disclaimer: I have no doubt that most Americans would find the notion of nationalizing GM somewhat ludicrous. Me too. Even though logic may lead me to believe it is an option worth serious consideration, there is a gut feeling deeply embedded in my psyche that causes me to recoil at the thought. But for the moment I’m allowing myself to think outside that box. Try it.

 

FYI –

Some talented web activists in Seattle have developed two new forums, one of which is focused on generating ideas for Obama’s Office of Urban Policy. The other is focused on generating ideas for Obama’s Chief Technology Officer. You can go to either forum and comment on ideas already posted or post your own. They apparently have already been contacted by Obama’s transition CTO…

In her recent book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, Naomi Klein describes how catastrophes provide cover for politicians to invoke radical change. In the examples she discusses — including the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, and the Iraq war — the beneficiaries of post-disaster restructuring have invariably been private corporate interests.

The current economic crisis has all the right shock doctrine stuff, and with the bailout we have already seen the all too rapid creation of policy measures that benefit private banks. But hold on, cause the game has hardly begun. And this time around there’s every chance we’ll see disaster capitalism turned inside out to re-emerge as disaster socialism.

Doubt it? Here’s what Obama’s new chief of staff Rahm Emanuel said in an recent interview: “You don’t ever want a crisis to go to waste. It’s an opportunity to do important things that you would otherwise avoid. In 1974 and 1978, we never dealt with it, and our dependence on foreign oil never changed.”

So just maybe, as Paul Krugman advocates, our new leaders will “figure out how much help they think the economy needs, then add 50 percent.” And just maybe, we’ll start making the massive public investment that Al Gore calls for in this poignant and inspiring essay on climate change and energy independence.

Closer to home, Governor Gregoire is seeking an “immediate” $300 million stimulus package that provides relief to those on the lower end of the income spectrum.

And right at home, here in the Seattle area, voters just approved funding for public investments in transit, parks, and the Pike Place Market, but vetoed an initiative designed to appeal to the self interest of those who spend lots of time in a single-occupant vehicle.

But check this: Could it be that the Bush presidency itself is the operative, root catastrophe that will lead to the rise of disaster socialism? And lo, it may well be that the W crew has shocked the country so thoroughly over the past eight years that we may finally be ready for the biggest socialist move since the New Deal: heath care reform.

Housing development in Seattle may be in a slump, but there projects are still moving through Design Review. A sampling of the latest:

Angel Square at 401 East Pike (Pike and Bellevue) on Capitol Hill. 51 residential units, 2 live-work, 2635 sf retail, 59 underground parking stalls, designed by Nicholson Kovalchick Architects. The facade has some of the same flavor as 2203 East Union.

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3501 Rainier Ave S, just north of the Taco Bus site. 20 live-work units designed by Pb Elemental. Will be a good testing ground for the live-work concept.

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Stone Way Village, at 3920 Stone Way N. (Safeway site) in Wallingford. 143 residential units, 7 live-work, 17,190 sf retail, 189 underground parking stalls, designed by Baylis Architects, developed by Prescott. This is one long building, and the designers have attempted to break up the facade.

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Brooklyn Court at 6515 Brooklyn Ave NE in the Roosevelt neighborhood. 54 residential units, 4 live-work, ~5000 sf retail, 69 structure parking stalls. Looks pretty generic, but dig that crazy blue sky.

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Leilani Square at 10201 Greenwood Ave N (Leilani Lanes site). 301 apartments, 3(?) live-work, 7500 sf retail, 601 underground parking stalls, 40,000 sf of below-grade mini storage.  Perhaps it’s in a generic contest with Brooklyn Court.
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Icon Interbay at 2810 15th Ave W, with 46 residential units, 4,222 sf divided into 4 “commercial units,” 46 parking stalls located on the second floor, designed by Shugart Bates. It’s got a certain “Pb” look to it.

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38th and Alaska, at 4550 38th Ave SW , with 200 residential units, 13,700 sf retail/commercial, and 171 underground parking stalls; designed by Baylis Architects and developed by Harbor Properties.

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Massing concept for Lowe Enterprise–High Point development on the SW corner of Seattle Housing Authority’s High Point Hope VI Project in West Seattle; Mithun is the architect.

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815 Pine St, just south of the Paramount theater, another tower to keep Olive8 and the Olivian company. It’s a 440 foot tall tower with 330 apartments, 5000 sf of street-level retail, and 300 parking stalls both above and below grade; designed by Bumgardner and developed by Security Properties.

The election of Obama, that is, according to noted sprawl apologist Joel Kotkin. It’s a compelling proclamation, and Kotkin has some insightful things to say about it. But alas, you can’t get very far through the piece before his trademark enmity for urbanism shines through.

First, he decides that Richard Florida’s own definition of the creative class isn’t good enough, and that it ought to exclude those who “live in suburbs, have children, and… attend conservative churches.” Cause, you know, all those urban, single, childless secularists (read: not real Americans) are the true uppity ones.

And here comes the boogy man:

“Also threatened will be anyone who builds the suburban communities–notably single-family houses and malls–that most Americans still prefer but that Gore and his acolytes dismiss as too energy-intensive, not to mention in bad taste.”

It may well be true that Americans have preferred the suburbs. But the idea of preference loses its significance when there is little choice to begin with, when the choice is subsidized up front, and when it has ongoing external costs that the buyer doesn’t pay. In any case, the times are changing:

“…a majority of future housing demand lies in smaller homes and lots, townhouses, and condominiums in neighborhoods where jobs and activities are close at hand. …demographic changes, shrinking households, rising gas prices, lengthening commutes and cultural shifts all play a role in that demand.”

Kotkin’s position boils down the this: People made sprawl: therefore is it good, and always will be good.

And sorry Joel, the energy-inefficiency of sprawl is not the invention of acolytes, but is established scientific fact. It’s unfortunate that those whom you deride as “jihadis in the war against climate change” are helping to save your planet too.

What’s more, Kotkin warns, the ascendancy of those clueless urban creative classers is literally a threat to the food on your table, because “this could prove very bad news for groups… that, like large agribusiness firms, are big consumers of carbon.” Presumably the underlying concern here is that most Americans prefer industrial, processed food.

For a more transparent taste of Kotkin’s anti-urbanism, check out No More Urban Hype. Here, Kotkin is positively giddy about the drop in housing prices in big cities like New York, which to him, signifies the puncturing of the urbanist bubble. The more rapid decline of housing prices in car-dependent suburbs has been widely discussed since last Spring.  But contrary to Kotkin’s fancy, even up until a month ago, New Urban News reported that, “the US lending crisis has cut homebuilding nearly everywhere, but walkable, transit-oriented developments are suffering least.”

And if you really have too much time on your hands, visit Kotkin’s Newgeography.com. There, currently ranked number one under “popular content,” you’ll find a piece by Wendell Cox entitled “Root Causes of the Financial Crisis: A Primer,” that extends the the blame to excessive land use regulation and smart growth. Who could have known that density is so evil?

[ Blue Duwamish, a lighting installation on the Sound Transit Light Link bridge over the Duwamish River; photo: Dan Corson ]

In the same week that the Puget Sound region votes to tax itself to fund $18 billion in transit, come reports that GM and Ford are “running on fumes.” The dots are being connected. All over the country.

Meanwhile, California recently passed SB 375, a bill designed to reduce the greenhouse emissions produced by cars by encouraging more efficient land use. In recognition of the link between vehicle miles traveled and sprawl, the bill offers local governments transit funding and provides incentives for compact, transit-oriented development.

Not the best era to be in the car business.

As clearly as the economic meltdown heralds the death of Reaganism, the election of Obama marks a turning point in the culture wars. The social conservatives have had their aberrational 8-year last gasp. The real America is moving on.

And the real America is what you see in the video below (via SLOG), taken during the spontaneous street party that erupted on election night in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood.

In the real America, cynical hipsters give irony a rest and earnestly celebrate an event that makes them proud of their country. In the real America it’s perfectly fine for a heartfelt Star Spangled Banner sing-a-long to be led by a drag queen.

For the past eight years, people in the real America have been crushed with the reality of our country’s spitefully intolerant and disastrously incompetent leadership. And on election night, these real Americans experienced a cathartic release at the prospect of change.

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AIA Seattle has posted the 2008 Honor Awards winners, though holz beat them to it with this play-by-play (scroll down to 11/04/08). So then, what about that “Perform/Transform” theme?

As noted over at the DJC Streetscape blog, out of fourteen awards, only one went to a single-family home, as compared to last year’s awards when the tally was four out of seven. Several awards went to civic buildings and urban infill multifamily. And the award to NBBJ’s Banner Gateway Medical Center was a surprise to me until I reconsidered the profound role hospitals can play in people’s lives. OK.

On the other hand, consider the honor award winner “7” shown in the photos above, the one entry that all three jurors agreed on right from the beginning. No doubt it’s a transcendently beautiful art piece. And while it has the potential to transform the consciousness of those who have the opportunity to see it, its impact on the greater community is minimal and ephemeral.

Only one of my picks made the cut — must be the urban planner in me.  It’s a given that dense urban infill is important. But the new century demands buildings that go beyond just being well-designed in the traditional sense. Multifamily infill worthy of an award should incorporate features such as modular construction, vastly reduced energy and water consumption, reduced on-site parking, green roofs, and affordability to middle-class workers.

Weinstein’s Montlake Library is an elegant building, but unfortunately the requirement for parking resulted in a blank wall at street level across a large part of the most prominent facade. The library would be a lot more transformational if it had no parking. And Weinstein’s EX3 Ron Sandwith Teen Center is also inspiring work. Yet its potential to transform would be greatly magnified if it was part of a larger whole, as in the case of the Northgate Library, Community Center & Civic Park.

Perhaps my interpretation is narrow, but the word transformational makes me think big. Projects like Foster+Partners’ More London Masterplan come to mind (photo below). Such projects are rare — two to keep an eye on in Seattle are Yesler Terrace and Civic Square.

Town centers are a new catalyst for small cities (an updated, local version of this).

[ Rendering of the Packard Building renovation that stacks three new floors on top of the existing Foley Sign Building at 12th and Pine on Capitol Hill ]

There sure isn’t a whole lot of the original Foley Sign building left on which to stack the three new floors of housing shown in the rendering above. Great that Barrientos is saving the facade, but dang, it’s hard to imagine how such complicated construction can possibly pencil.

The finished project will hold 61 apartments and 5000 sf of street-level retail. Clean, simple, and strong above, nicely complimenting the historic facade below, with a rhythm reminiscent of Trace Lofts on the next block south. The building will make a nice anchor for the corner. Too bad there’s a police station right across the street that creates such a dead zone in the streetscape.

Barrientos is amassing a hefty apartment inventory in the neighborhood — Foley Sign, Pearl, and Chloe are all within about a four block radius of each other. It will be interesting to see if there’s enough supply coming on to push down rents noticeably.

[ The gutted Foley Sign Building at 12th and Pine ]

On Halloween I was out trick-or-treating in my neighborhood with my family when we heard the pop of five or six firecrackers in rapid succession. At least we hoped they were firecrackers. But the cruiser that tore down 24th Ave toward Garfield High School a few minutes later suggested otherwise.

Next morning the CD News had the story: at 8:30pm on 25th Ave behind Garfield, a sixteen-year-old boy shot in the head and killed, and a fifteen year-old-boy wounded with bullet to the stomach. The murdered boy’s short life had been troubled.

Four nights later at around the same time, the sound of firecrackers rings out and my 7-year old daughter asks “daddy was that gunshots?” No, I explain, people are excited about Obama, and they’re setting off fireworks.

Here’s to hope.

Long Island, a.k.a., the Island of Lost Homes:

“…efforts to build higher-density ‘smart growth’ developments have been vigorously, often rabidly, opposed by communities wedded to the single-family house behind the white picket fence.”

The money word is “rabidly,” even though rabies probably doesn’t qualify as a “societal plague.”

Awards for architecture are often dominated by trophy homes and starchitecture, but this year AIA Seattle hopes to shift that focus with a new theme for the 2008 Honor Awards: Perform/Transform. The awards ceremony takes place this Monday, November 3 at 6pm at Benaroya Hall.

“Perform” refers to the need for buildings to respond to the realities of the 21st Century and do more with less. “Transform” has a dual meaning: primarily it’s about emphasizing how architecture should positively transform the greater community, but it’s also a nod to the transformation of the practice of architecture itself.

The awards jury includes David Baker, notable for his success in creating bold design under the constraints of affordable housing. In other words, because it does more with less, and has a positive impact on the community, precisely the kind of architecture Perform/Transform seeks to recognize. Out of all the awards entries there are only two built projects–Borealis Apartments and Hiawatha Artist Lofts–that include an affordable housing component (thanks for the comment, Finishtag).

Several of the entries have been noted on this blog, including the Terry Thomas, the Agnes Lofts, Union Bay Lofts, Mosler Lofts, M-Street, 5th and Madison, Urban Canyon, Alexander Residences, and 99k House. Below are a few that caught my eye as being particularly suited to the Perform/Transform theme:

The Kolare Jeffery House is designed to efficiently use an infill lot that’s only 37 feet wide, and also preserve two significant existing trees.

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Bumper Crop proposes growing crops on elevated structures built above large surface parking lots. Over time, strip malls are likely to become more of an endangered species, but right now they litter our landscape, and so present significant transitional opportunities.

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The eco-laboratory is unbuilt so there’s no telling how close it would come to achieving the goals of a living building–goals should be guiding the design of every new building.

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Madrona Live-Work is pretty modest for an architecture award, but this form of commercial space is a key ingredient of vibrant, human-scale neighborhood centers. And live-work is a flexible use that makes several kinds of sense.

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The architecture of school buildings can have a huge impact on education. I’ve singled out the Three Cedars Waldorf School because the Waldorf philosophy is so holistic (e.g. eurythmy), and is not afraid to buck the current trend of focussing so heavily on technology in education.

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Not that it isn’t important for people from all socioeconomic classes to have access to technology, which is the mission of the Technology Access Foundation.

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So this is what it’s come to: Paint a Shell station green and enter it in an architecture competition. But this Biodiesel Refueling Station is all about transformation (even though we all know that biodiesel is no magic bullet).

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This Net-Zero Energy Community is one of the few entries with explicit, aggressive energy reduction goals. It’s discouraging that there aren’t more. (This project seems suspiciously similar in scale to the Issaquah Net-Zero Energy Homes.)

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The concept for The Transporter is way over the top, but I love it: Attach surplus shipping containers to the back of billboards to provide temporary housing for the homeless. A joke? Who knows, but we need all the outside-the-box thinking we can get.

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Now that you’ve seen the entry above, Cargotecture Studio 320 may seem a bit of a yawn. But this one was actually built–it used modular construction, is removable, and cost $24,000. (Though the entries are anonymous, it’s not hard to guess who.)

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The Method Prefab Cabin was built in a factory out interchangeable modules and is targeting LEED for Homes certification. The sustainability picture gets a lot more complete if you put this building in an urban infill site.

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The Northgate Library, Community Center & Civic Park is the new heart of the Northgate neighborhood. In a word: transformative.

On the front page of today’s Seattle Times, along with a handy map (pdf). It’s an excellent summary, even though a lot of it is old news (many of these stalled projects were noted in previous posts here and here).

The Seattle Times has set up an google map displaying project info supplied by readers, and so far very little has been contributed. But instead of going to the Seatimes, I’d like to encourage hugeassreaders to use this blog as your anonymous confessional to share what you know. Projects on hold? Layoffs? How has the downturn affected your world? What’s your prognosis?

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What may someday rise from the surface parking lot on the northeast corner of 1st and Stewart: 11 stories, 100 hotel rooms, 75 apartments, 5000 sf of street-level retail, 325 parking stalls on four underground levels; designed by OSKA, developed by Touchstone.

It’s inspiring.  But can it be financed?  I have no clue, but they’re going in for design review on October 28 (warning:  89 MB pdf).