hugeasscity

…for beating this deceased-and-decaying-horse cycling issue a little longer with the following three riffs:

1.) Field Report: Today on my two-mile ride to work downtown, I encountered three cars not using turn signals. Then on my way home, I saw three bikes run a red light at 4th and Pike. Which behavior is more cause for concern?

2.) My “bicycles don’t matter” rant has received more comments than any other hugeasscity post, which is a telling demonstration of the the post’s main premise. But oblivious was I to the rich flamefest that ensued over at SLOG when Erica Barnett posted an excerpt. Oh my, such language! Comment number two is my all time favorite. Thank you esteemed SLOG commenters for doing such a smashing job of proving my original point about how people get absurdly riled up over something so innocuous as bicycles.

3.) Did anyone see the August PI opinion piece on why cyclists should never ever break any traffic law? I may be suffering from delusions of grandeur, but I couldn’t help wondering if the author was responding to something he read on hugeasscity. So I fired off a letter to the editor at the PI, but alack, it didn’t make the cut. At the risk of becoming even more of a pariah among the cycling community, here is the text of the letter:

The most revealing aspect of John Bealaurier’s contention that “running that red light on your bike is not a victimless crime” is his rationalization for it. It’s not that the action itself is directly responsible for any harm. Rather, it is because the action could annoy drivers, provoking them to drive unlawfully and harm cyclists. Got that? It’s sort of like claiming that marching in a pro-choice rally is not victimless because it might provoke some nutcase to go off and assasinate a doctor. And drivers that intentionally endanger the lives of others with their cars are exactly that: nutcases. There is absolutely no excuse for playing irresponsibly with a lethal weapon.

When people preach that cyclists must obey every traffic law or else expect to face the wrath of homicidal drivers, I would argue that in the long run, they are actually doing cyclists a disservice. Because through this aquiescence, they are in effect accepting sociopathic drivers as a fact of life, and are thereby perpetuating the norm in which too many drivers are allowed to get away with being lawless in their handling of a deadly machine.

And this isn’t just about cars and bikes. This is about a society in which there is a massive disconnect between the risk imposed by cars, and the lack of seriousness with which we take their operation. I respect the work and goals of the Seattle Bicycle Advisory Board, but I would encourage them to worry less about cyclists bending traffic laws, and more about how to repair that disconnect. And in the mean time, I’ll follow Bealaurier’s logic and only run red lights while no mentally unstable drivers are looking.

[ False Creek North, Vancouver, BC ]

A new citizens group has formed to oppose proposed upzones for the South Lake Union neighborhood. The group’s desire to see South Lake Union grow into a diverse and complete neighborhood is spot on. But alas, going on what the PI reported, it appears that their main beef is a misguided fear of tall buildings. Because as DPD urban designer Lyle Bicknell put it so well:

“There are many different ways to build a community; Paris has buildings 65 to 85 feet high, but Vancouver (B.C.) is also a successful urban environment, with schools, great open space, grocery stores and all the elements that make successful neighborhoods.”

We’ve seen what the current 65 to 85-foot zones will deliver: see for example Alcyone, Alley 24, AMLI 535, or Rollins St (not to mention countless “5 over 1” buildings all over the city). Restricted building height does not necessarily lead to affordable units, or any other desired neighborhood quality. And since these projects tend to max out the building height across block-long parcels, they have a bigger impact on most people’s views than would a pin tower on a two-story pedestal. (Alcyone’s designers left a gap in the building to allow a Space Needle view from Cascade playground.)

While the Vancouver model isn’t perfect, it is a dramatic success story by most standards. A recent survey of residents of Vancouver’s first planned complete downtown neighborhood, False Creek North, revealed a high level of satisfaction:

Residents said they liked the mix of people, which includes everyone from toddlers to grandparents and is split about evenly between people who speak English as a first language and people who don’t. And no one had a negative thing to say about the neighbourhood’s mix of social and market housing, which some experts in the past predicted would create tensions between low- and high-income people.

Paris reaches high population density with relatively modest building heights because so much of the city is blanketed in mid-rise buildings. Seattle would have to upzone massive tracts of single-family zones to become like Paris. And while I haven’t seen data, I suspect that the open space per resident in Paris is lower than what we expect here in Seattle (can anyone enlighten us on this?).

All in all, it is hard for me to imagine how we would be able to achieve the goals we have for sustainable growth in South Lake Union without allowing tall residential towers. And of course this is exactly why DPD planners are proposing the upzones. Getting beyond our tall building phobia will free our energies to concentrate on the details that really matter for growing a healthy neighborhood. Fortunately we don’t have to look very far north for proven solutions.

My urbanist geek friend Don Vehige got all excited about some pedestrian behavior he observed downtown at 1st and University and snapped the photos below. Apparently people lose their ability to read during sunny Saturday afternoons, because the construction area at the front of the new Four Seasons hotel has the biggest and most explicit “sidewalk closed” signage I’ve ever seen. During work week days, there’s almost always a cop at 1st and Union who is constantly yelling at people to go back, and they obey. But on weekends, no cop, and so nothing to stop those wacky pedestrians from stepping out and taking back the street. And the cars put up with it, funneling into a single lane. A beautiful thing.

This section of 1st Ave, connecting Pike Market to Harbor Steps and S.A.M., carries pedestrian volumes that rank among the highest anywhere in the State of Washington (which, by the way, makes it all the more astounding that the Four Seasons was allowed to build such a lame impervious street wall). But still, even in this context, officially closing a vehicular travel lane and using it for a temporary pedestrian route is apparently an option that’s not even on the table. Because in car culture it goes without saying that the pedestrians, not the car drivers, should be the ones to suffer the inconvenience.

Leave it up to a starchitect like Rem Koolhaas to create engaging, lively, useful public spaces like the pivotol corner of 4th Avenue and Spring Street.  Someone tell me how this promotes an active street face? I don’t know whether to blame the City of Seattle for being so ga-ga over the Dutchman and allowing this to happen or the vanity of such a blow-hard (I’ve listened to his lectures) who doesn’t understand the context to which his buildings sit.  Form over Function?  You got it.  Too bad such a master couldn’t bridge the gap between both – or simply didn’t care to.  And don’t get me started about the interior.

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The scoldiest urban scold that ever scolded, Lewis Mumford, had a bone to pick with Marshall “the medium is the message” McLuhan back in 1970:

But it remained for McLuhan to picture as technology’s ultimate gift a more absolute mode of control: one that will achieve total illiteracy, with no permanent record except that officially committed to the computer, and open only to those permitted access to this facility. This repudiation of an independent written and printed record means nothing less than the erasure of man’s diffused, multi-brained collective memory: it reduces all human experience into that of the present generation and the passing moment. The instant record is self-effacing. In effect, if not in intention, this would carry mankind back to a far more primitive state than a tribal one: for pre-literate peoples conserved a large part of their past by cultivating extraordinary memories, and maintaining by constant repetition–even at the cost of creativity and invention–the essential links to their own past.

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The mass media, he demonstrates, are “put out before they are thought out. In fact, their being put outside us tends to cancel the possibility of their being thought at all.” Precisely. Here McLuhan gives the whole show away. Because all the technical apparatus is an extension of man’s bodily organs, including his brain, the peripheral structure, by McLuhan’s analysis, must, by its very mass and ubiquity, replace all autonomous needs or desires: since now for us “technology is part of our bodies,” no detachment or divorce is possible. “Once we have surrendered our senses and nervous systems to the private manipulation of those who would try to benefit from taking a lease of our eyes, ears, and nerves, we don’t really have any rights [read ‘autonomy’] left.”

This latter point might well be taken as a warning to disengage ourselves, as soon as possible, from the power system so menacingly described: for McLuhan it leads, rather, to a demand for unconditional surrender. “Under technology,” he observes, “the entire business of man becomes learning and knowing.” Apart from the fact that this is a pathetically academic picture of the potentialities of man, the kind of learning and knowing that McLuhan becomes enraptured over is precisely that which can be programmed on a computer: “We are now in a position…,” he observes, “to transfer the entire show to the memory of a computer.” No better formula could be found for arresting and ultimately suppressing human development.

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As with the transportation system, which cannot dispense with the free-moving and autonomous pedestrian without producing clotted urban congestion or equally baffling suburban dispersion, so with an efficient communications system. What is needed is a technology so varied, so many-sided, so flexible, so responsive to human need, that it can serve every valid human purpose. The only true multi-medium remains the human organism itself.

By the way, who are all you people out there? Most of us know very little about each other. Is that community? Can it make a difference?

As one commenter put it, “I am strongly of the opinion that blogs and such are great at raising issues but lousy at making progress towards workable solutions. For those of us who care about these issues on Beacon Hill, we need to be meeting face to face.”

is Two Union Square — at least that’s the word on the street. Designed by NBBJ, completed in 1989; 56 floors, 740 feet tall (third tallest in Seattle), with ~1,100,000 square feet of rentable space.

But there’s a pretty low bar for modern skyscrapers in Seattle, and to me, ranking them is sort of like ranking refrigerators. Modern skyscrapers are mostly about utility, with some nice sculptural elements or facade design thrown in on the best ones.

When we can put up a building like Two Union Square that’s naturally ventilated, perhaps using a curved facade that functions like a airfoil to draw air through the building, then we’ll have something worth raving about.

If you’re looking for indicators of the chances we can turn our self-destructing culture around before the entire planet is devoured, witness the howls of “nanny state” in response to Seattle’s 20-cent bag tax. Might I suggest that this reaction is not the most promising indicator?

In the context of the ecological limits of the planet, disposable bags are pure stupidity — can anyone possibly disagree with that? The bag tax will be effective at reducing this stupidity, as we’ve seen happen in other cities. We’ve known for decades that we could stop being stupid by simply buying reusable bags and bringing them to the store, but we haven’t been able to break the habit on our own.

Yet even in the face of the many logical arguments supporting a bag tax, there are apparently more than just a few people out there whose paranoid delusions about government taking away their freedom compel them to scorn it. Thankfully I don’t have to elaborate, because Daniel Burnstein’s recent PI opinion piece nails it (the whole thing is worth a read):

“Rather than curtailing freedom, this kind of environmental regulation is based on longstanding precedent allowing government to prevent nuisances in order to protect public health and safety.”

Enacting laws against certain kinds of sex between consenting adults is the nanny state. Eliminating the choice to dump PCBs into the ground is not the nanny state. The latter involves actions that harm others; the former doesn’t (and yes, there’s lots of gray area between these two examples). But while it’s true that the environmental impact of disposable bags is relatively small in comparison to that of the entire city, we are at a point in history where the tired phrase “every little bit helps” has never been more true. And in any case, the bag tax does not dictate behavior; rather, it is an attempt to account for externalities so that prices reflect true costs.

Still, there are those who work hard to conjure rationalizations for shooting themselves in the foot. As in, ignoring the scientifically established negative environmental impacts that disposable bags have, and whining that the city “wants to tax our politically incorrect garbage.” Or trying to claim that it’s a non-issue because bags are recyclable (scroll down), when recycling is more accurately “downcycling,” and only delays the final act of wasteful disposal.

The disdain for the bag tax is an expression of our cultural roots: We love our independence and we hate being to be told what to do. Meanwhile, the evidence that this ideology is failing in the case of a human population that is surpassing the carrying capacity of the planet is increasingly in our faces every day. We’ve created a way of life in which it is exceedingly difficult to even understand, let alone behave in accordance with the multilayered effects of our actions. And we can’t seem to manage even the easiest changes, such as keeping our car tires properly inflated*. If anything, an objective observer could only conclude that a nanny state is precisely what’s needed to save our collective ass.

Nobody wants an overly intrusive government. But we’ve got to stop being delusional about what it’s going to take to keep us from driving planet earth over the cliff: Overall, it’s going to mean letting go of our demented obsession with the individual, and recognizing that healthy communities thrive on mutual trust and cooperation.

And as best as I can tell, the bag tax is just the beginning.

*Case in point: Ten years after buying my house, I finally got around to putting up a clothesline today. Chances are it would have happened a lot sooner if I had to pay the full cost of electricity (including the part that hydroelectric dams have played in decimating salmon, which is perhaps the most perfect source of protein on the planet).

Cost, you say? Accessibility? Lack of imagination? Oh Europe and your ancient progressive ways…

HAC on 8/4/08

HAC on 8/7/08

NYT on 8/8/08

It only took the PI four days to catch up with the news, first reported on the Seattle Condo Blog, that Moda (shown above) is converting from condos to apartments. How far can the pendulum swing in this direction?  From the PI:

“The market and the financing conditions for condominiums have really taken a drastic turn,” said developer G. David Hoy, head of HMI Real Estate Inc. “The vast majority of (Moda’s) buyers decided not to proceed with the purchase of their unit.”

The 251-unit Moda made a splash back in 2006 when it announced the offering of condos starting at the unheard of low price of $150k. Of course the catch was the these cheapest units were only 300 sf, but still, the building sold out quickly.

It’s unfortunate that this conversion will price out many people who can’t afford a more typically priced condo in Belltown. Montreux Condominiums, built in 1999, is one other existing condo building in the neighborhood with a similar product. And Marselle Condominiums, a little further north at Aurora and John, is scheduled to open in Summer 2009 with units as small as 347 sf.

There is likely to be healthy demand for small, inexpensive apartments in Belltown, but there’s a growing pile of new apartment competition nearby, and also out in the neighborhoods.

[ Source: Oregon Department of Environmental Quality and EPA ]

Via Sightline, the 2005 U.S. greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions chart above illustrates an alternative way cut the pie, emphasizing the importance of goods and materials, and suggesting we ought to look at ways to use less stuff. But to intelligently assign priorities, it’s also helpful to know how challenging and costly it would be to make a given GHG source reduction. Behold the most excellent diagram below, via Worldchanging:

[ Source: The McKinsey Quarterly ]

The bars going negative indicate that the GHG emissions abatement measure actually saves money overall — free lunches, so to speak, i.e. no-brainers, one would think.

Note that four of the five most cost-effective measures address energy use in buildings. And now take another look at the chart at the top of the post and mark the second biggest slice of pie. And while your at it, ponder this analysis that attributes an even higher portion of GHG emissions to buildings. Translation: buildings are low-hanging fruit and there’s a lot of that fruit, and thus should be a focus for cutting GHG emissions.

(Also note: Increased fuel efficiency in commercial vehicles could potentially help put a dent in the emissions related to the provision of goods and services.)

Apparently my friend WB (who named this blog) has some “ideas” he wants to express.  So I beseech you, esteemed readership, please pay attention to the “posted by” credit at the top of the posts.  

I walk to work everyday and have, for a long time, been perplexed by why so many people don’t know how to use sidewalks.   The generally accepted method is much akin to how cars and bikes use roadways.  Your path of travel should always be to your right (Anyone wager on how many folks are going to comment about path of travel in, oh say, Britain?).  And as much as I adhere to this principle, I constantly encounter people “hugging” the building line of a sidewalk to their left.  Does anyone know why people are drawn to doing this? Especially downtown at peak hours.  For the most part I’ve begun to hold my ground and just plow into people who are refusing to move.  Hell, folks do it to me all the time.  So in case there are some people out there who are unsure of proper sidewalk travel etiquette, decorum, propriety (all imply observance of the formal requirements governing behavior in polite society), I’ve included the below diagram for everyone to understand how to properly use a sidewalk.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So writes Roger Valdez in a balanced little riff on affordable housing in the DJC.

“First, we know growth is good. Accommodating people in the city is more sustainable than sprawl, but sometimes neighborhoods resist growth. That resistance works to limit supply by making permits more expensive and time-consuming. Welcoming growth can help increase supply, which can reduce prices.”

This is the 1958 Logan Building at the corner of 5th and Union, and I like it. It was built with a complete air-conditioning system, which was an ultra-modern feature at the time. And no, your eyes do not deceive you: it has windows that open. Perhaps in 1958 people still had enough self-respect and/or common sense to not be willing to put up with a sealed building.

Today we need encouragement: green building rating programs such as LEED give points toward certification for operable windows.