hugeasscity

From the 24th and Marion mailing list regarding a proposed small bar at 25th and union that Erin Nestor and Rebecca Denk of the Bottleneck Lounge want to open:

“There are a handful of neighbors that are very opposed to this project.  They do not want a bar as their neighbor…..no matter what type.”

I’m truly at a loss for words here. Bars are the types of establishments that give neighborhoods character. They become meeting places and centers of community. Perhaps those that object would prefer to move to the anti-social suburbs?

“They are concerned about drunk driving, noise from people coming and leaving the venue, and parking issues.”

Neighborhood bars like the one proposed at 25th and Union probably do more to discourage drunk driving by *gasp* encouraging people to walk to their neighborhood bar. Look at capitol hill, nearly no one who lives on the hill actually drives to the bar. People take cabs, ride bikes and walk. I don’t necessarily think Union and 23rd to 25th needs to have the same level of activity as pike/pine in capitol hill, but it would be really nice to have some sort of life on that street after dark, as oppose to drug pushing. Oh and good neighbors please get used to the fact that non of us are entitled to free street parking.

Anyway we can all help:

“Erin and Rebecca have invited us to send letters of support to the WA State Liquor Board.

Here is the address:

Washington State Liquor Control Board
Licensing and Regulation
PO Box 43098
Olympia, WA  98504-3098
Attention: Dean Lau

Liquor license #: 403447
Tryst
1137 25th Ave. Unit E”

Is that too harsh? Sorry, just being honest.

Today I met with a DPD planner who specializes in green building, and we discussed the huge challenges we face with the built environment, and eventually the conversation got to the inevitable acknowledgement that we really don’t know how we’re ever going to achieve the greenhouse gas emissions reductions that the experts are calling for — nothing less than 80% by 2050.

And on the way back to my office, I came upon the scene in the photo above, at the top of Harbor Steps on 1st Ave. And the first thing that came to my mind was this: Fuck GM! You are part of the problem. A big part. So take your fucking hybrid SUV and your stupid-ass “Green Today, Clean Tomorrow” banner complete with the Hummer logo and your free GM-inscribed cycling water bottles and get the fuck out of my city and go crawl into a hole and die.

So GM, here you are, one of the most powerful corporations that ever existed, at the apex of American free market capitalism and technology, and here we are in the year 2008 facing the biggest environmental crisis in the history of humanity, and this is the best you’ve got to offer? A hybrid Yukon SUV that gets 21 mpg? This is what you want the people out on the streets of downtown Seattle to get excited about?

GM, you have failed your society. You could have produced a 100 mpg car ten, perhaps 20 years ago. Maybe you could have produced a 200 mpg by now, who knows (check out “Who Killed the Electric Car?“). You had a colossal R&D budget at your disposal, but instead of investing in a future we all know was coming, you chose to focus your efforts on bigger and less efficient vehicles because they provided the biggest short term profits.

There are some who would argue that GM is not culpable because they were only giving the people what they wanted. Nonsense. They marketed the hell out of SUVs. They could just as easily have decided to put their advertising dollars into a campaign to sell high-efficiency cars. Don’t underestimate the effect it might have had: We are a culture that is exceedingly accomplished at influencing people through advertising.

But even more to the heart of things, that “invisible hand of the free market” defense of GM reveals a pernicious defect in our economic dogma: It lets everyone off the hook for making any moral decisions. As in, “if someone wants to buy my product, it doesn’t matter what that product is, it’s the buyer’s choice and not my responsibility to judge.” And so, for example, we end up with major corporations profiting by marketing and selling sugar water to a population that is increasingly overweight. Or a bazillion SUVs on the road as both oil prices and CO2 levels rise at alarming rates.

The responsibility to make moral decisions comes with being human. And with greater power comes greater responsibility. Instead of abdicating moral choice to the invisible hand, the executives of large corporations like GM, because they command such vast influence over others, have a correspondingly vast obligation to make careful and humane moral decisions. It’s not easy. But our system tells them not to bother, so they don’t.

Under normal circumstances GM’s poor performance would simply be unfortunate — they would adapt or they would go under. But in our current situation, the stakes are high and getting higher. And here’s what we could do about it: In consideration of GM’s historic and ongoing failure to produce the high-efficiency cars that are needed immediately to help mitigate potentially incalculable damage to human society brought on by global warming, we revoke GM’s corporate charter and nationalize the corporation. And then make the number one priority of the organization the production of ultra-high efficiency vehicles. This would unleash the creative energy of all the frustrated GM employees who have long been wishing GM would do the right thing — and I suspect there are lots of them. The organization would have a noble mission akin to the Manhattan project, and great things would happen fast.

Unrealistically radical, yes indeed — today. But if current trends continue, this sort of radical action is likely to start being all the more palatable, if not urgently necessary.

How unfortunate that we all don’t have a stash of whatever it was that Charles Mudede was smoking when he wrote this Stranger piece on the new Four Seasons building on 1st Ave between Union and University. How fun it would be to look up at a stark, rectilinear glass and concrete tower that forms a massive barrier to sun, mountains, and water, and interpret it as profound connection to the natural world, a form that casts shadows like those from pristine alpine peaks because it is painted the color of mud.

Back here on earth, on the ground, what I see is a building that fails to embrace the street. As you can see in the photo above, roughly half of what the passing pedestrian encounters at eye level while walking along the building on 1st Ave is concrete wall. There are only two relatively insignificant building entrances along the building’s entire 1st Ave street wall (though it’s hard to tell if the opening at the north end is actually going to be a door). I wouldn’t have thought City of Seattle code would allow so much blank facade.

This building is not much interested in being involved with, or contributing to what’s happening on the street. Given the average income of the Four Seasons clientele, this shouldn’t come as a big surprise. It’s an urban enclave, and as such, it’s an affront to the community.

Perhaps the facade all lit up in dappled light as in the photo above was what got Mudede all tripped out on how “the principle of the design is to incorporate the themes of nature into the colors and textures of the building itself.” But that dappled light is no design feature and there’s nothing natural about it — it’s sunlight reflected off the shiny glass and metal tower across the street. Did the NBBJ architects anticipate these reflections, and if so did that have any bearing the facade materials and colors? Not bloody likely.

But for sure, the canyon formed by the Four Seasons and SAM is an impressive space to be in. It’s pretty much 200 feet straight up on both sides of 1st Ave — nowhere else in Seattle is there such a tall pair of street walls so tightly spaced. One might assume that such a space would be oppressive, but I think the urban form works because it only extends over about half of a city block. There is this intriguing sense of compression and release you get when you move through block (…what have I been smoking?). Variation makes for good urban form.

We have spent the last half century designing our cities based on the premise that folks will live in single-use residential neighborhoods and drive their cars to go to work, school, shopping, etc. The result is that our cities, even those that were developed well before the automobile conquered the nation, are left with retail and commercial uses along arterials, abutted by residential one block to either side. In Seattle, we take this one step further with our exclusionary single-family land use code that basically relegates multifamily development to arterials as well.

In contrast, TOD asks us to rethink urban form to create nodes of development encircling high-capacity transit station areas. [Note: lower-capacity transit, like buses on a 15-30 minute headway calls for more of a “corridor” approach that I hope to explore later in this series.] Ideally we want to draw a ½ mile, or 5-minute walk, radius around the station, and then fill-in the circle with a variety of mixed-use medium to high density development. Pedestrian amenities are critical. Getting to the station on foot is paramount and should be the path of least resistance – i.e. no one wants to have to walk through massive surface parking lots to get to the station; sidewalks should be wide and safe, and streetscapes should be active. This is all easy to do when developing greenfields, but how do we do it in existing cities?

Case in point: Beacon Hill, a low density neighborhood minutes from downtown with phenomenal potential for views. They’ve got a new branch library and Jefferson Park is a stone’s throw away. And they’ve got a light rail station set to open in a year. So what is the prospect for TOD in Beacon Hill? Take a gander at this map of current land uses in the station area to get an idea:

Or visit here if you want to see the underlying zoning.

There is basically one arterial, Beacon Avenue, that is largely underdeveloped to its modest NC-40’ zoning. When you exit the future light rail station at Beacon Avenue, you see this:

The majority of the station area is zoned for single-family [denoted by the light pinkish color in the map above], which makes one wonder why a station is being sited here at all. [Long story short: Beacon Hill wasn’t supposed to get a station because the neighborhood said no upzones, but when the First Hill station got nixed and suddenly there was money leftover, decision-makers apparently forgot that Beacon Hill wasn’t supposed to get a station without agreeing to some upzones…and they gave them the station anyway.]

But here is the point…there ain’t no way to turn this neighborhood into a transit-oriented community that can properly support the multi-billion dollar investment that has been dropped in its lap without upzoning a good deal of single-family properties. And that is going to be uncomfortable for many people in Seattle. The residents in Beacon Hill have come a long way since the mid-1990’s: at a recent neighborhood charrette some local residents agreed to going up to 85’ at the Red Apple site, and upzoning all along Lander Street to create an east-west neighborhood commercial corridor. This is all a good start, but a long way from what the city, the region, and the transit system needs to happen in this station area. So…how do we get the neighborhood to support a much more significant upzone? And if the neighborhood can’t get there, how does a city infamous for lengthy process and compromise do the upzone anyway?

The Garden of Remembrance, on the SW corner of Benaroya Hall at 2nd and University, is an urban plaza done right. All the key ingredients are there: lots of places to sit, sun and shade, privacy and exposure, beautiful plantings, water, a comfortable human scale, an elevated prospect from which to watch the action on 2nd Ave, activation provided by the bus tunnel, the pedestrian way down to Harbor Steps, and a cafe, and even a thoughtful theme.

And the proof is in the people: When the weather is nice, the plaza fills up. In contrast, on the day these photos were taken, the steps next to the Seattle Art Museum across 2nd Ave were nearly empty.

The only way the Garden of Remembrance could be improved is if it had more activation after work hours, such as with a restaurant that could spill out on to the plaza on warm summer nights. Of course, night time activation is always a challenge for this part of downtown that is so dominated by day time office uses.

The Garden of Remembrance illustrates how a relatively modest amount of urban open space can go a long way. Large urban open spaces are appropriate in some cases, but are all too often underutilized, either because of alienating design, or because people have no reason to be in them. If we aspire to maximize the potential for livable density in our cities, we would do well to focus our efforts on the open space model of the Garden of Remembrance.

Not this:

[ Aerial image map from Seattle Housing Authority Design Review Board submittal for 4626 M L King Jr Way S. ]

The aerial image above looks down on the property immediately to the north of the “Columbia City” Light Rail Station at MLK Blvd. and S. Alaska St. The buildings marked 2, 3, 5, 6, and 7 on the west side of MLK are part of the Rainier Vista low-income housing redevelopment, and were all built within the last four years. None of these buildings exceeds four stories. On the east side of MLK is a new Boys & Girls club currently under construction, and a 4-story mixed-use low-income housing project currently in the design phase.

It it widely recognized that transit oriented development (TOD) is a key strategy for sustainable urban development. The Sound Transit Link Light Rail stations offer by far the best opportunities for TOD that Seattle has ever had. But the sad truth is that Seattle has done a embarrassingly dismal job of planning to ensure that our massive public investment in light rail returns the maximum benefit with respect to TOD.

The critical factor: zoning. The maximum building height in the Columbia City station area is only 40 feet (four stories). From the zoning map (pdf), I’d guesstimate that at least half of the property in the station area is zoned lowrise or single family. This low-density zoning cripples the TOD opportunity. And the situation at the other four Southeast Seattle stations is similar, though 65 feet is allowed in some cases.

From 1998 to 2001 the Seattle Department of Transportation directed a significant station area planning effort. But in the end, the planning did not succeed in securing anywhere near the appropriate level of upzoning in the light rail station areas, particularly in the south end of Seattle.

There is still great potential for proper TOD at the light rail stations (as well as at other transit hubs), but our window of opportunity closes a little more every time a new building is developed that could have been more dense and less car-oriented. The four-story Rainier Vista buildings are perfectly fine developments, and they are providing housing and access to transit for people that need it most. But given their proximity to the light rail station, they should have been taller. And they won’t be going anywhere for 50 years or more.

We also have serious planet-scale window of opportunity that is closing as we continue to spew CO2 into the atmosphere. The City of Seattle must make it a top planning priority to update station area plans and upzone for TOD. The time is NOW.

All you need to know: We’re number 6! That and — huh? — Honolulu is number 1? And hold on there, how could LA, ranked number 2, be better than us?

The Brookings Institution just released a ranking of per capita carbon footprint for 100 major U.S. cities. Sure, this list will help raise awareness, but I’m a bit surprised to see Brookings publishing something so gimmicky and easily misinterpreted.

Case in point: Is there anything particularly innovative going on in Honolulu — in terms of policy or the built environment or transportation — that is responsible for their number one status? Honlolulu ranks 2nd for highway transportation emissions and 15th for residential energy emissions. Given Honolulu’s climate, the residential ranking seems reasonable. But what is up with transportation in Honolulu?

There is no explanation offered in the full report, but it cites this academic paper. And therein, a paragraph describing “cautions” in interpreting the data notes that Honolulu has the lowest “truck share” of all the cities. But we’re left to wonder: Why does Honolulu have such low truck VMTs? Does the Brookings Institution recommend that cities ban trucks to improve their carbon footprint ranking?

According to one of the authors, “Seattle is clearly ahead of a lot of other communities on this.” But the main reason we’re ahead is because we happen to have a very large river system nearby, and also because the impact the hydro-power dams have on salmon runs is not part of the equation. For transportation Seattle ranks 27th — respectable, but hardly a national leader.

Overall, it seems to me that the effect of climate makes this list all but useless for helping to identify which cities are on the right track. Cities with seasonal temperature extremes are penalized because they require more heating and air conditioning. Indeed, most of the cities in the top ten have relatively temperate climates. New York City, ranked number 4, apparently has high enough density and transit ridership to overcome the hit it takes from climate. Boise at number 5 makes no sense at all to me.

Meanwhile many of the cities in the bottom ten are in the Midwest, a region known for hot summers and cold winters. It may well be that these cities have high VMTs as well as high residential energy use. Or perhaps they’re doing great with building efficiency, but extra lousy with transportation. You’d have to dig deeper than the headline-grabbing list to figure that out. And who, besides the rare wonk such as yours truly, is going to do that?

Feel like a sucker?

Yes, BMW Seattle is finally leaving The Hill. New digs are currently under construction just north of I-90 between Airport Way and 7th Ave S. No longer will BMW Seattle suffer the embarrassment of modest historic brick buildings in a compact urban fabric. The new HQ will have that airport concourse look and feel today’s luxury car buyers demand. It’s going to be very big and it’s going to be very shiny — something you’d expect to see on auto row in Bellevue. (That BMW can spend the dollars on such a project is a telling indication of which income brackets have been treated well by the U.S. economy in recent years.)

But if you’re gonna have giant car dealerships in the city, then this is about as sensible a location as you could find. It’s practically underneath I-90 and surrounded by industrial uses, some functioning, some defunct. Definitely not an attractive area for housing. A few years ago Urban Visions had plans in the works for a project called Stadium East, consisting of one million square feet of office on the 6.5 acres across Airport Way from the BMW site (see rendering below), but I could find no info on the current status (another one falls into the memory hole?).

[ Stadium East rendering: Ruffcorn Mott Hinthorne Stine ]

When BMW Seattle exits, Pike-Pine’s land use diversity will be further diminished, and the neighborhood will lose blue collar jobs. Not to mention that I, along with countless other red-blooded American boy-men, will miss drooling over luxury cars in the heart of Capitol Hill (though we’ll still have Ferraris and Benzes to admire).

But from the perspective of overall urban sustainability, I believe it would be best to put the BMW site to a use more in line with a high-density urban neighborhood — and that means housing and retail/commercial. Storing all those cars simply takes too much space. And besides, it makes little sense for car dealership to be located in a neighborhood where the rate of car ownership is about a low as it gets in the entire city.

Now that the Seattle housing market is cooling, it will be interesting to see what becomes of the BMW site, especially in light of the stalled status of the condo project across the street on the 500 block of East Pine. Back in 2006, Pryde Johnson was developing plans for 208-unit condo project on the BMW site. The project made it as far as an early design guidance meeting, at which many concerns were voiced regarding potential noise conflicts with the surrounding nightclubs.

Given the neighborhood context and the state of the housing market, adaptive reuse of the BMW buildings would be the way to go. Liz Dunn’s Piston & Ring building on 12th Ave between Pike and Union is the perfect model.

Those words are spraypainted across the concrete barriers in the photo above, taken at the Port Authority public waterfront access on the Duwamish just north of the cruise ship terminal.

Today, millions of trinkets from China glide across these waters. This too shall pass.

How sexy is that? (Can’t we just not talk about getting old?)

The baby boomers are a demographic bulldozer. As that big hump in the population vs. age graph slides across time it transmutes everything in its path. And at long last, it’s retirement accommodations that are getting a redo. “Life Care” and “Successful Aging” are the latest marketing buzzwords. Amenities galore. And increasingly, seniors are seeking retirement communities in big city downtowns, with the aim of staying culturally active.

Seattle currently has two projects under construction that are representative of these latest trends in retirement: Skyline at First Hill (rendered above) and Mirabella.

Skyline is 26-story, full-block project at 9th and Columbia on the steep west slope of First Hill. Developed by Greystone Communities for Presbyterian Retirement Communities Northwest, and designed by Perkins Will, the 199-unit complex will offer residents independent living, as well as access to assisted living, skilled nursing, and memory support, if needed — a.k.a., “life care.” You pay an up-front fee to get in, and that gets you a discounted rate on any expensive care you may need in the future. Everything is taken care of. Isn’t it fun to think about such scenarios?

In line with the tastes of retiring boomers, Skyline common areas will include a fitness center with indoor pool, a club room with outdoor patio, an auditorium, several dining rooms, and a library. Boomers also want the full spectrum of urban amenities within walking distance, and First Hill is a relatively walkable neighborhood, though I-5 is an imposing barrier to downtown, and the steep hill on the site is likely not doable for many seniors.

Mirabella (shown above) is a 12-story, u-shaped building that covers the entire block at the NE corner of Denny and Fairview, on the southern edge of the South Lake Union (SLU) neighborhood. Developed by Pacific Retirement Services and designed by Ankrom Moisan, it is a startlingly massive new presence. Three of the four sides go virtually straight up to 12 stories from the property line. It seems to belong in Florida.

Like Skyline, Mirabella will offer “life care.” And not to be outdone, the 400-unit project includes all the amenities Skyline has, plus a wine tasting room. Its marketability as walkable is a bit of a stretch — neither SLU, nor the Denny Triangle neighborhood across Denny Way are especially compelling to explore on foot, though both can be expected to improve over time. I wish them the best of luck crossing Denny.

The growing cultural preference for retirement communities in urban cores is an opportune evolution for creating more sustainable regions. Urban infill for seniors takes development pressure off of outlying areas, and puts density where it belongs. These projects will help raise residential densities to levels that create vibrant, walkable streets and make mass transit viable. At the same time, they provide seniors with an alternative to being put out to pasture in isolated suburban retirement homes. And one big bonus for the city: many seniors can’t, or don’t want to drive cars.

Overall, it’s a win for the people and a win for the planet. As it should be. Indeed, as it must be, since everything is connected.

As reported in this NY Times piece, vehicle miles traveled (VMTs) in the U.S. dropped 4.3 percent from March 2007 to March 2008, the largest month-on-month decline since record keeping began in 1942. The rising cost of gasoline is changing people’s behavior. And we’re only at $4/gallon.

Among the impacts the authors list: “Big box retailers are suffering as customers balk at driving to the mall.” No quantification given, but one would assume that the authors probably aren’t just making stuff up. Meanwhile, some convincing back-of-the-envelope calcs done here and here suggest that higher fuel prices shouldn’t have much of an effect on the big box retail business model.

Other interesting factoids: the average cost in cents per mile traveled is currently 15; it hit a low point at 5.6 in 1998, and peaked at 17.1 in 1980 (note that the 1980 figure also reflects a lower fleet fuel economy). Were people reacting so strongly to high gas prices in 1980 as they are now? Perhaps we have more of “perfect storm” situation now, with our sagging economy, low consumer confidence, and reduced discretionary income for all but the top earners. But perhaps it also has something to with a change of national consciousness — people becoming more aware that there are alternatives to lives that revolve around driving.

ABSENT-MINDED UPDATE: Of course, the main reason gas prices are hitting harder now than they did in 1980 is because people drive a lot more. For example, this EIA report shows household VMTs increased 53 percent from 1.5 to 2.3 trillion miles between 1988 and 2001, while over the same time period the number of households rose by only 17 percent.

Please excuse my earnestness: Farmers markets are all good. They support local farmers, they provide high-quality, real food, they get neighbors out walking and meeting their neighbors — they build community in the truest sense of the word.

Farmers markets are a wrench in the works of both the corporate food machine, and the corporate don’t-ever-leave-your-house-mindless-entertainment-in-isolation machine. Farmers markets are as wholesome as well, eating your vegetables.

Thank you City of Seattle for helping to support farmers markets by lowering permit fees.

The photo above is of the Friday farmers market at MLK and Union in the Central District. Just because I can never not find at least a little something wrong with everything, I have to point out the lack of African Americans at this farmers market. There were some, but far fewer than you would expect, given the racial mix of the neighborhood. I’m not sure what to say about this other than I wish it wasn’t so. Part of it is probably socioeconomic — farmers markets aren’t exactly cheap. The issues are complex and sensitive — suffice it to say here that it is a stark reminder of stubborn cultural divisions.

[ Image: Darick Chamberlin ]

Lewis Mumford ruined my life. I was once a highly-paid electrical engineer. But then I started reading too much, and kept seeing references to this mysterious Mumford dude. Then I happened upon a used copy of The Myth of the Machine and got my mind blown.

The Myth of the Machine is about a society sick with technology — ours. And it made it all the more clear to me that I could never be a balanced human being in a career so focussed on pure technology. So I left engineering, got a masters in urban planning, and am now eeking out a living as an urban designer.

Dirty secret: Those who design the places in which people spend most of their lives make diddly-squat compared to those who design technological widgets that people don’t really need. Thank you Lewis Mumford.

My review of The Myth of the Machine, after the break.

Read the rest of this entry »

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has a very, very big brain. I’ve long appreciated his relentless voice of sanity in political and economic matters. In his latest column he moves outside his usual realm and totally nails it on urban density and car-dependence. Choice sentence:

“Changing the geography of American metropolitan areas will be hard.”

Yup. Uh-huh. Dang.

Interesting how Krugman doesn’t even mention greenhouse gas emissions. Likely a tactic to keep the argument from being muddied by the various stigmas of global warming. He’s an economist after all, and his focus is on what happens when oil becomes unaffordable.

Krugman’s description of the Berlin neighborhood consisting mainly of four and five story apartments further congeals a thought that’s been knocking around my head lately: that ultimately the sustainable urban form of the future will be midrise. In this spicy essay on localism, James Howard Kunstler quips that “skyscrapers are an endangered species,” basically because they are too energy intensive. Midrise (4 to 6 stories) is relatively cheap to build, doesn’t necessarily need elevators, has an agreeable urban form, and can achieve high density (if there are enough of them). Maybe I should shut up about upzoning for taller buildings.  But then again, to achieve viable densities in Seattle with midrise we’d have to take out a whole lot of single family, which isn’t likely to happen any time soon.   

[ Birdseye aerial looking north at Yesler Terrace ]

It is no exaggeration to say that the redevelopment of Yesler Terrace will be one of the most significant development projects in Seattle in many decades. Yesler Terrace was built in 1939 on a 30-acre south-facing slope roughly bounded by Harborview Medical Center, I-5, Little Saigon, and Boren Ave. Seattle’s oldest low-income housing project, Yesler Terrace currently houses 1500 residents in 561 units.

The Seattle Housing Authority (SHA) plans to follow the general model of redevelopment that was applied at Rainier Vista, New Holley, and High Point. All the existing low-income housing will be replaced, and for-sale housing will be added to create a higher density, mixed-income neighborhood.

From October 2006 to October 2007 a citizen review committee created a set of guiding principles for the redevelopment, as well as a set of planning concepts. Because of its central city location, Yesler Terrace is more suitable for higher density commercial development than were the three projects mentioned above. The planning concepts recognize the potential to “leverage density” with “dense mixed-use development” on the site’s borders, as well as “taller buildings” adjacent to Harborview. In April of this year SHA selected local architecture firm Collins Woerman to lead the master planning process for redevelopment.

Yesler Terrace is literally on downtown’s doorstep. The site offers spectacular views, from Mt. Rainier in the southeast all the way around to the Olympics in the west. It has copious southwestern solar exposure. Redevelopment offers unprecedented opportunities to apply the newest and best sustainable design practices to the site, the buildings, and the infrastructure. And it presents the chance to reconnect and revitalize a neighborhood that has long deserved better.

In short, Yesler Terrace is a “hundred-year” opportunity for Seattle. For once, might we see all the Seattle players step up, be bold and visionary, work together (but not be afraid to piss a few people off), and make this thing happen to its full potential?

[ Looking southwest across community gardens in Yesler Terrace ]

Dear Liveable Seattle Movement People:

Thank you for paying attention to what’s going on in our city. I agree with you that we need to be thoughtful about development and growth. At first blush, there would seem to be much we agree on regarding urban livability and sustainability. But after taking a close look at your literature, I have actually found quite a lot with which to disagree. In particular, I believe that several of your claims regarding the negative impacts of density are both intellectually dishonest and morally irresponsible. Until now I’ve been inclined to just ignore you. But apparently there are many Seattlites who listen to what you say. So alas, I am compelled to take the time to write this (sigh… precious time I will never get back…).

Let’s start with your paper entitled “Seattle Housing Capacity Exceeds Three Times Anticipated Growth.” Is 3X capacity that unusual for cities, and is it unprecedented in Seattle? I believe the answer is no to both of those questions, so why all the excitement? Is this a brand new discovery that all the planning policy wonks have missed, or perhaps are even trying to hide? No, I think not. I suspect that you’re excited because you are opposed to pretty much any upzoning in Seattle, and you believe that this so-called “overzoned” situation is the perfect logical justification of your position. You believe you have struck gold. And you believe you can even further bolster your position by arguing that overzoning is not only unneeded, but harmful, claiming that “overzoning contributes to lack of affordable housing and sprawl.”

So then, how in the world could allowing more people to live in the city possibly contribute to more people living outside of the city (i.e. sprawl)? The primary explanation you give is that when higher density housing is built, families with children who don’t like that type of housing are forced to go find what they want out in the burbs. This can happen, but it is not nearly the whole picture. The gaping flaw in your argument is that it neglects to account for the people who do end up living in the higher density housing. If zoning were such that new high-density housing could not be built, then all those people would end up competing with families for low-density housing, because that’s all that would be available in the city. This would reduce availabilty, drive up prices, and force far more people to seek housing outside the city — in other words, it would increase sprawl, not reduce it.

Still you conclude, “Ironically, attempts to concentrate densities end up driving sprawl. This can be seen in the large population increases in suburban areas.” Yes, density causes sprawl, and ignorance is strength! Can you not see the mathematical impossibility of your theory? And sorry, but there is a large body of research demonstrating that growth management (which almost always means increasing density in centers) reduces sprawl. (The Sightline Institute would be a good place to start doing some reading.) So where is the evidence for your theory? Or are you just making stuff up?

In your Multifamily Zoning Update document, you make analogous claims about density causing sprawl, but this time townhouses are the main boogeyman. Your criticisms of townhouse design are spot on, and there is wide agreement in the community that we can do better. But as long as people are living in these townhouses, however badly designed, they are reducing sprawl, not creating it, contrary to what you claim on page 18. Your bogus arguments about sprawl do not serve you well in supporting your case for better townhouse design.

One recurring theme in your discussion of multifamily housing is a concern for accommodating families with children. For example on page 12 you write that room for kids is “in short supply these days.” I’ll ignore the the vague and dubious nature of that quote and grant you that it’s a valid concern. However, it’s a concern, I believe, that is getting more attention than it deserves, not least because siding with the nuclear family is always a political winner. The reality is, in King County as of 2006, only 28% of all households include children under 18 years old. Across the U.S., the trend toward fewer families with children can be expected to continue. So then, roughly three quarters of housing need not be designed to provide for the special needs of children.

Seattle is loaded with single family homes already. As more multifamily housing is made available, we can expect to see households without children (e.g. empty nesters) downsizing from their single-family homes to multifamily housing. This will take demand pressure off of single-family housing, which will increase the affordability and availability of single-family homes for families with children. Yes, there are cases when new multifamily buildings take out low-density housing. But again, because more housing units are created, the net effect is to reduce overall housing demand. And don’t forget — only about one fourth of households have children.

Now back to your 3X Capacity paper. You claim that another problem with overzoning is that it leads to unfocused development, citing a Michigan State University research paper. But this paper is concerned with how overzoning in rural areas causes sprawling development in rural areas. By my interpretation it says nothing about whether or not overzoning in an urban area might lead to sprawl outside that urban area. Why do you quote from this irrelevant paper?

Perhaps it is possible, as you state, that overzoning could lead to more scattered density within the city, but it’s not clear what you even mean by that, and it’s not clear how or why it would be a problem. Could you please give a Seattle example of the sort of “pockets of density” you are so concerned about?

In my reality, upzoning in an urban area doesn’t scatter growth, but is rather a strategy to focus growth in desired areas. By your logic, if and when Seattle upzones South Lake Union, because the City will then be more overzoned, growth will become more unfocused. Do you really believe that the SLU upzone will not result in focussed growth in SLU?

Regarding infrastructure, again, I don’t see how overzoning can be a very important factor. Seattle, like most cities, has been overzoned for decades. New infrastructure is required when a city grows — whether it’s overzoned or not. In a developed city like Seattle, which would cost more, infrastructure for one highrise, or infrastructure for 20 lowrises? I don’t know the answer to that, and I suspect you don’t either. Can you please provide some evidence for your claim that “there is no way City budgets… can provide the infrastructure”? In spread out rural areas, it is well established that unfocused growth leads to higher infrastructure costs. As with your unfocused development argument noted above, here again you appear to be confused about the differences between urban and rural conditions.

Compared to your treatment of sprawl, your discussion of affordability and overzoning has more merit, though not much. It is true, as you say, that overzoning can lead to speculation and artificial price increases during building booms. But I think you have to look at this in the much bigger context of how cities develop, and the system of capitalism that drives development. As cities grow, land becomes more valuable and speculation happens. This is the way it has always been, even before zoning existed.

The question is then, can zoning mitigate speculation? The short answer would seem to be yes, on a site by site, highly localized level. But when you consider the situation regionally, things become more complicated. Because, given the population increases that know are coming, if you limit growth in one place, it’s going to pop up somewhere else, especially during booms. And if you are limiting growth in an urban center like Seattle, it’s most likely going to be driven to places where it is less environmentally sustainable (i.e. sprawl in the exurbs). As I see it, land speculation is clearly the lesser of those two evils. And in any case, any artificial price increases will be temporary, as all bubbles burst eventually.

You are also correct to point out that in upzoned areas the cheaper housing is more likely to be redeveloped, and that this can result in a localized loss of affordable housing. No doubt affordable housing is a huge issue in Seattle and in pretty much all big cities — the laws of supply and demand make it so. But limiting growth to preserve affordable housing will have the opposite effect overall, because it will limit supply and drive up prices everywhere else. All said, the only effective means we have to ensure that enough affordable housing will be provided in Seattle is government subsidy.

Now, back to your multifamily paper to address one more issue: parking. You write on page 15, “when the City allows a developer to build a building without enough parking to serve its occupants, they go take parking from the next door neighbors.” Are you saying that there are outlaw renegades who park in their neighbors’ driveways? No, though you don’t state it explicitly (because it would sount too petty?), what you’re saying is that on-street parking will become tighter. First, just to state the obvious: Seattle residents do not have a God-given right to convenient street parking. Now, as with much of your writing, there are tibits of reality here and there: yes, many small businesses rely on street parking for their customers. But what it comes down to is that in any dense city, street parking is extreme rarity. It’s not going to matter how many underground garages we build. So the choice becomes: (1) dense city, or (2) convenient street parking.

Small independent retailers have no problem thriving without street parking when population density is high enough, because people walk. And their leases become cheaper when they don’t have to cover the cost of structured parking in their buildings. Housing is also less expensive (and can often be better designed) when it’s doesn’t have to include parking. Requiring parking is blatantly contradictory to your concerns over declining affordability.

Yes, yes, we all understand that people own lots of cars, they rely on them and enjoy them, that we don’t have a widely viable mass transit alternative, and that cars aren’t going away any time soon. But we simply cannot continue to build our city for cars (I don’t have to further explain, do I?). The weaning from car-dependence will be painful to some in the short term. But in the long term, it will save far greater pain for everyone.

All in all, my sense is that your general position on urban development lacks an appreciation of both the demographic and economic processes that are fundamentally responsible. In short, you are misplacing the blame on density. We know growth is coming. You seem to not want it to come to Seattle, so then, where should it go? What is your alternative that is more environmentally and socially sustainable than densifying existing urban centers?

Ultimately, it is the economic engine of job growth that is driving housing demand, which in turn provides economic opportunity for developers. But these developers aren’t operating in a vacuum. They aren’t going to drop housing down in any random place the zoning allows it. So for example, a developer would be unlikely to put a new mixed-use building in an isolated “pocket of density” because it would not be a viable retail location. Likewise, dense housing doesn’t simply appear on a given site when it is upzoned. Most developers are very careful about choosing locations that will be in demand, and these locations tend to be where there is already plenty of action (i.e. density), like on Capitol Hill.

In the end, I have to ask: It seems to me that when all is said and done, you are in favor of stopping growth in Seattle — so why don’t you just come out say it? You won’t be arrested! Perhaps there is a good argument to be made that Seattle is already too big, that we should put growth in second tier cities, or even build brand new cities from scratch. The issues are mind-bogglingly complex and there are tons of possibilities. Surely we density cheerleaders need to be challenged, but what you’ve offered so far fails miserably.

I want to finish by expanding on my initial accusation of moral irresponsibility (since I think I’ve already pretty well covered the intellectual dishonesty bit). We are facing an unprecedented global crisis in both resource consumption and global warming. There is overwhelming evidence that dense urban development is a key strategy in mitigating this crisis. So in my view, by publicizing specious and demonstrably false critiques of density, the Livable Seattle Movement is being morally irresponsible. It’s analogous to the global warming deniers, when one piece of contrary “evidence,” whether ill-founded or not, can quite effectively muddy public perception and significantly set back progress.

It also reminds me of a typical Republican political strategy, in which simple sound byte arguments are made that appeal emotionally and seem to make common sense, such as “we’ll reduce taxes — it’s your money, after all!” Livable Seattle’s charge that density is beating up on children has a similar quality. And as I’m experiencing first hand (i.e. writing this letter), once these myths are put out there, it takes enormous amounts of energy to correct public opinion. Case in point: Is anyone still reading this?

So there you have it, Livable Seattle Movement People. As I said, I appreciate that you are paying attention and contributing to the dialogue on growth and development in Seattle. And I hope you don’t take this letter personally. If you care to write a rebuttal, I will post it here.

Sincerely,

danb

Can you find six construction cranes in this view looking northwest from Pine and Boren? If you’re not an advanced cranespotter, here’s a hint: there’s one that’s not quite legible at this resolution just above the building rooftops at the far right of the photo.

Bonus: Can you name each project? Olive8 is an easy one. Others?

Not Dubai, but still, that’s a whole lotta building going up in a relatively small area.  It will be interesting to see the absorption rates when all these buildings (and many others currently under construction in Seattle) come on line during what will likely still be an economic downturn.

If a fountain gushes next to a roaring freeway and there’s no one around to hear it, does it make a sound?

You’ll find the fountain shown above in the southernmost sliver of Freeway Park, tucked between 6th Ave, I-5, and the Seneca offramp. Why would anyone want to spend time here? Why would anyone want to walk here? There is pretty much zero attraction, unless you really really like to look at fountains.

Just to the east of the fountain is another strip of Freeway Park that lines the southern edge of Seneca Street as it crosses I-5, shown above. It sure looks cool having all that green (and sometimes purple) bursting out of and hanging down from the concrete. But it’s all for show — rarely would one expect a human to set foot in this bit of park. It’s too loud and it’s too isolated.

As the City of Seattle considers a new parks levy, it would also be sensible to look carefully at the parks we already have and assess what works and what doesn’t.  Therefore, I hereby nominate the above-described SW corner of Freeway Park as a candidate for The Least Used Park In Seattle.  Hugeasscity seeks contending nominees.

King County has released a draft of its SEPA Climate Change Ordinance for public comment. The money passage:

“An action, as defined under the state environmental policy act, shall be deemed by King County to not have a significant, adverse impact on the environment with respect to greenhouse gas emissions and climate if the proponent demonstrates to satisfaction of the department of development and environmental services that the action will result in greenhouse gas emissions that are at least fifteen percent below the average emissions that category of development is estimated to generate under a business as usual scenario.”

Zowie! We’re finally going to draw a line in the sand. No doubt there’s still a lot of work to do to establish the business as usual metrics, as well as how to accurately evaluate the expected emissions of proposed development. But this is where it starts.

And even though King County has jurisdiction over relatively small portion of development in the Puget Sound region, what they are doing is still hugely important because they are the trailblazers. Other jurisdictions, including Seattle, are watching closely and are likely to model their own regulations after King County’s.

As laudable as King County’s efforts are, the unfortunate truth is that fifteen percent is actually fairly modest in light of the general consensus that 80 to 90% reductions in greenhouse gas emissions are needed by 2050. King County does expect that the business as usual benchmark will be reduced over time, which will help. But you’d have to apply a 15% reduction ten times over to get to an 80% total reduction. That would mean the benchmark would have to be reduced by 15% about every four years to achieve the goal of 80% by 2050. And that’s not even considering all the existing buildings that would still be hanging around, emitting at the former business as usual rates.

Uh-huh, it’s a staggeringly monumental task. Progress is being made, but the bottom line is we still don’t know how to get there.