hugeasscity

I’ve long thought that the east side of the block on 3rd Ave between Union and University deserves an award for being the most abominable pedestrian streetscape in the downtown core.   Behold its gawdawfulness:  at eye level the ~350 feet of street wall is completely blank save for a small length of sealed windows into the post office and the mammoth, gaping maw of a loading dock entrance.  The post office was recently given a face lift but it does little to improve the street-level pedestrian experience.

But listen:  there are those who believe that you have only to walk a block north to find as bad or worse.   There (photo below), only about half the block is blank facade.  But oh how radiantly barren and exposed that half-block is.  At least the post-office block has a few trees. 

Because it’s a bus corridor Third Ave gets a lot of pedestrian traffic, and these dead blocks are major missed opportunities for street-level businesses to captilize on that traffic.  Picture what it would be like with small-scale sidewalk produce stands like you find in some parts of New York City, or cafe tables spilling out onto the street.  The sidewalk news stand at 3rd and Pike—just re-vamped after 47 years in business at that site—is the right stuff, but it’s just so sad and lonely out there all by itself.

All this is not say there aren’t many other atrocious downtown Seattle streetscapes that deserve recognition.  First Ave between Columbia and Cherry, and  the west side of 4th Ave between Columbia and Cherry are two that come to mind.  Needless to say, one key ingredient is parking garages. 

So who’s your baddest Seattle streetscape?

The Seattle Planning Commission recently sent two letters to the City Council that  demonstrate its potential to provide a voice of reason in debates over planning policy.   The first letter recommends passing the cottage housing ordinance, with the important caveat that the 50 unit per year limit be removed, as was discussed in this HAC post.  The second letter recommends several constructive tweaks to the proposed multifamily code update, such as reductions in parking requirements and the banning of low-density townhouse development in mid-rise zones.

The Planning Commission is typically ahead of the curve on progressive  city planning policy, and often fills policy analysis gaps that would otherwise be neglected.   It’s a great resource, but I want to see them turn up the volume and become a stronger influence on urban issues in Seattle.

Cause we need it, bad.  The Commission is pretty much the only Seattle organization besides DPD that regularly does serious, relevant planning policy analysis.  In many other cities, organizations like San Francisco’s SPUR play a major role in all the big planning decisions of the day.  Seattle has nothing even close to SPUR.

And Universities often engage in the policy debates of their host cities, but UW, not so much.   Hey there UW Department of Urban Design and Planning, how about unleashing  your massive analytical capacity a little more often on what’s going on in your own backyard, like say, the tunnel/viaduct debate?

A conundrum, Seattle is.   Brimming with big brains, yet milquetoast when it comes to execution.

His take on the perfect city, in the WSJ of all places:

If a city doesn’t have sufficient density, as in L.A., then strange things happen. It’s human nature for us to look at one another— we’re social animals after all. But when the urban situation causes the distance between us to increase and our interactions to be less frequent we have to use novel means to attract attention: big hair, skimpy clothes and plastic surgery. We become walking billboards.

Of course we all know that in the United States, L.A. is second only to New York City in terms of population density.  And if you go by metropolitan region, L.A. actually ranks number one.  But technicalities aside, I still say Byrne gets it.

The ancient Chinese philosophy known as Wu Xing is based on cycles of five.   There are five seasons of the year, and the extra one is late summer, now playing.

Our culture is totally four-centric (Wiccans notwithstanding).  Five seasons just seems wrong.   You can have a four cylinder or a six cylinder, but not a five (unless you find an old Audi).  Can you think of a song in five other than Take Five?

Our digits come in fives.  So why is five such a misfit?

Though I suppose Joe Mallahan could still buy the election even if he doesn’t improve on the lackluster performance he exhibited at yesterday’s mayoral debate.   Despite Mallahan having a home team advantage—the debate was sponsored by the pro-business, deep-bore tunnel-loving Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce—McGinn clearly dominated.  And that’s not just my pro-McGinn bias speaking.  Go see for yourself here.   PostGlobe has the gory details here.

I interpret McGinn’s success in the race so far as another manifestation of deepening cracks in the aging edifice of Seattle’s status-quo political power structure.  Seattle is evolving rapidly and inevitably some are going to get left behind.  Think Seattle Times compared to Publicola.  The Chamber has long been a dominating force in business-as-usual Seattle politics and in this election Joe Mallahan is their man.  In contrast, McGinn derives his power from the grass roots, and his all-volunteer campaign is fueled by those with a new vision for Seattle. 

If elected, McGinn will not be beholden to the Chamber or their ilk.   It’s hard to imagine how that sort of power structure shake up would not be good medicine for democracy in Seattle.

The Bill is huge.  It is 1,428 pages of pure economic bliss for financial behemoths like Goldman Sachs and a moral victory for folks who have been pummeled enough to understand that for the federal government even a small step in the right direction is a big thing.  Greenpeace and others oppose the bill because it simply does not go far enough for the environment (which is true), decrying the “this is the best we can do” mentality as an indictment of the whole legislative system.   But, they neglect to acknowledge that at least this is a start with promise.  It’s not going to solve our gargantuan problems, but, as one optimist notes, it “gives us a framework to build on, and puts us on the path to what science says we need.” 

So, what is so promising, aside from greenish platitudes?  If you want the scoop by someone who really knows, stop reading and go here.  Or here.  Or just read the thing yourself.  Notice the obnoxiously large line spacing and the glacially scaled margins.  You’d think that a climate preservation bill could have said to hell with legislative layout standards in the name of resource conservation – just this once.  But alas… 

This Bill is not only about big picture policy – it also has real implications for our cities.  Here is my take on two of the tops:

1. Mo money? Yes.   Mo Problems?  Maybe… 

This is the obvious part.  Thinking optimistically, Waxman-Markey manufactures a brand new revenue stream that can be directed towards fixing the environment we broke.  More cynically, it is the opening salvo in the race to win the climate-industrial complex.  Regardless of your perspective, however, Waxman-Markey will open up an entirely new global market, allowing cities, regional authorities, nations, international consortiums, and anyone else with some vestige of faith in the resiliency of the US financial system to raise revenue by trading carbon debt.  There is tremendous opportunity here.  Imagine a TDR system for all new development that is based on trading embodied-energy credits related to construction and building operations – a potential boon for preservationists, proponents of adaptive reuse, and eco-conscious yimfy’s.  Possible?  Maybe.  Bel-Red set one recent local precedent earlier this year, allowing density transfers between the City of Bellevue and King County.  Others are being looked at too.  There may be little market for this today, but eventually there will be.  When W-M passes, which seems likely, we will all have to work diligently to ensure that the environment actually comes out on top.  Otherwise, we’re all done for, and density – no matter how seductive, or profit – no matter how great, won’t matter. 

2. National Energy Code

This is a little more wonky.  For cities today, the most important part of the bill is the building energy code language, otherwise known as Section 201, which mandates a new National Building Energy Code and federal enforcement of state and local compliance.  Since buildings account for about 40% of energy consumption in the US (add about 12% more if you consider the building materials industry), recalibrating the laws that govern their construction is some of the lowest hanging fruit from a policy perspective.  Edward Mazria, founder of Architecture 2030, notes:

“The codes … achieve more than six times the emissions reductions of 100 nuclear power plants… [and] …accomplish all of this at a fraction of the cost.”

Wow.  If this is even half right, nothing may do more to put our built environment on the path to energy smartitude.  Good thing Washington State has already started.

But more efficient energy codes are only the beginning, as they deal with only one slice of the US building pie – building systems.  Revamped general building codes are the next step.  The International Code Council (ICC), which creates the general building codes adopted by most US cities, is working on a project to develop a new Green Building Code, albeit initially focused only on commercial buildings.  The aim is to substantially reduce buildings’ share of energy consumption through passive measures and to contribute to a suite of coordinated codes that harness synergies between building components, construction systems, energy systems, and development types.  LEED, BuiltGreen, and a host of other private programs have attempted to get at this for years, but each has been limited by voluntary participation, a lack of standardization, and an as yet emerging understanding about how many green features will actually perform in the field.  Firms that are actually evaluating the post-occupancy performance of buildings that they design are learning how to anticipate many of these aberrations, which helps.  But there is still a long way to go.  Hopefully, as the Green Code develops, we can put the lessons learned all in one place.

Where this could be pushing us, of course, is the holy grail of plannerly wonkish enviro grass roots urbanism: the Performance-Based Code.  A flexible, climate-friendly platform for city making.  Too bad it doesn’t exist. 

But it did, once, sort of, in a relationary form that delineated building envelopes and uses by adjacencies and interface with the streetscape, rather than by “as-of-right,” or zone.  Granted, the scale, politics, market, and technologies involved were a bit different back in 550 CE than they are today, but the overall concept remains a compelling one.  Some are trying to re-establish it today – albeit in a much updated version, based how urban areas operatate.  West 8, the Netherlands’ landscape urbanism starchitects, borrowed from the idea to code the sexy little wharf block at Borneo Sporenburg, as a pilot project.  And that turned out ok – if you look at it as a petri dish sized experiment for a larger urban system.  After a series of tests about how design-side factors could impact urban and architectural performance, the firm narrowed the code mandates down to roughly three:  parcel size (which they conveniently got to choose because the development was brand new), land-side streetwall, and a 30-50% interior void (courtyard) space.  There were a few other minor conditions, but that’s about it.  The project acheived a remarkable variety while contributing to a cohesive, dense, urban streetscape.  No word on energy consumption, but with all the operable windows, internal daylighting, and party wall conditions, I bet it’s not too bad.  Metropolitan scale endeavors would have to be much more complex.

If you think of cities as the backdrop for life, then the mechanism that enables the backdrop to function is a bit like a computer’s operating system.  Zoning and codes are the programming languages which allow neighborhoods and buildings – the ‘wares in this metaphor – to develop, relate, and interact.  Unfortunately, from an environmental and use perspective, we are all running on Euclid v1.0.  And nationally speaking, we live with the results every day.  A sea of climate-sapping, auto-oriented non-chitecture and a few mediocre 5 over 1 ‘bread loafs’ bobbing about here and there.  Form-based Codes, ‘Smart Codes,’ and well thought out design guidelines have raised (or are raising) the level of average in many places, but they are still the equivalent of Microsoft giving you a prepackaged list of options for your Windows ‘theme.’  I run ‘Classic.’  Yeah.  Please don’t judge me.

Some places, like Portland, have pioneered performance-oriented urban districts, and others have suggested policy language to incentivize their creation.  But neither really gets at the core of the issue: the coding platform itself.  Instead, both serve as patches (albeit highly innovative patches) for a byzantine OS. 

So, why not just rewrite the OS?  Well, it is not that simple of course.  Politics, economics, and just about everything that physically exists today each has a vested stake in the status quo, which, as you can imagine, creates a substantial amount of inertia.  Also, there is the fact that “performance-based” implies that someone or something must be the decider regarding who has performed well and who has not.  Who’s going to volunteer for that?!  Until we develop some standard metrics for evaluation, I imagine there will be few takers.

Oh, and there’s this… last Tuesday, the National Academy of Sciences reported that no matter how progressive we get with our urban coding strategies, we are totally and irreversibly screwed when it comes to climate change.  There is simply too much sprawl for denser, better performing cities to provide a meaningful offset.  Even though the same report says that Portland’s growth policies are working.  Hmmm.

So, back to W-M and our City.

Where is Seattle in all of this?  What leadership can we offer?  Well, we have a Copenhagen fetish – that’s cool I guess, because Copenhagen is cool and very green.  We have the Seattle Climate Partnership, which we are still figuring out what to do with.  We have the Green Factor scorecard.  We have created a thorough, data-driven pedestrian master plan with performance criteria at its core – Good.  Also, we are at least considering amendments to our own zoning code.  Like Waxman-Markey, those are a start.

[ Rendering of proposed mixed-use project at 6010 Phinney Ave, courtesy Kilburn Architects ]

If you’re like me, you might look at the rendering above and think, well, it’s not a masterpiece, but it’s the kind of medium-scale mixed-use building that’s perfectly appropriate along an arterial in one of Seattle’s urban villages.  But apparently there are a whole lot of folks up in Phinney Ridge that aren’t like me.  Check out this account of the project’s Design Review Board meeting last February.  It’s as if the building was to house an anthrax lab.  This blog has prattled on about density NIMBYs too much already, so suffice it to say that pretty much every classic density NIMBY objection was raised.

Designed by Kilburn Architects, the 19-unit, 4-story project will come before the DRB again on September 14.   Sited on a parcel about 100 feet square, this is not an outrageously large building.  Just across the street on Phinney the green eyebrow-laden Fini condos is bigger, and also has a gaping garage entry that leaves an unfriendly hole in the streetscape on Phinney (image here, scroll down).

Part of the angst over four-story buildings along this length of Phinney is due to the fact that the 40-foot zones back right up against single-family zones half a block off Phinney on either side.  It’s the skinniest urban village in Seattle, and there’s no space to transition the zoning.  Apparently the City decided that the public benefits of creating an urban village outweigh the negative impact on a relatively small number of single-family home owners.  The right decision, in my view.

The proposed building will include 2700 sf of street-level commercial split into two spaces, each of which are less than the 1500 sf trigger for off-street parking requirements.  The 23 stalls of below-grade parking provide a residential parking ratio of 1.2, just above the City’s minimum requirement of 1.15 for multifamily buildings with between 11 and 30 units.  It’s a reasonable amount of parking, yet it’s inevitable that the loudest complaint about the project will be concerning the impact it might have on surrounding street parking.

The project will displace several small independent businesses in the existing one story building, another sore point with some of the neighbors, and indeed, one of the most vexing problems associated with redevelopment.  Small independent businesses are the soul of a good neighborhood, but I have yet to hear of a workable policy mechanism to prevent this kind of displacement.  Thriving cities must evolve, and perhaps this is simply an unavoidable bad that comes with the good.  And probably sooner than we think, buildings like Fini will be providing the low-rent retail spaces of future.

A good overview of transit-oriented development in the Seattle metro region by Clair Enlow.  Though in my humble opinion the subtitle “TOD finally catches on” is a tad sanguine.

Hey man, don’t you even try to sneak a quick, furtive glance into the entrance of the Lusty Lady.  Cause in case you didn’t notice, that black and white orb hanging beneath the canopy on the Four Seasons building is a surveillance camera.  Is the camera pointed your way?  Is it recording 24×7?   Who knows, but it could be, so you best not exhibit any untoward behavior.

I work next door to the Lusty Lady and walk past it several times a week.  And whenever I happen to see someone on the way out I can’t help wondering how strongly these customers may or may not be feeling the stigma, with the public eye upon them as they engage in this socially unacceptable form of commerce.  And now the eye of a camera is also a potential witness, with the bonus of indefinite storage and easy retrieval of the evidence.

Seattle is not as infested with surveillance cameras as many other cities in the world—London being the most notable example, literally with a camera on every street corner.  But sadly, Seattle also appears to be trending in that direction, though that would make it no different from pretty much every place on the planet where there are people.  New York City.  And now even Paris, the City of Love.  This is not a sign of healthy societies.

Last year the City of Seattle snuck “security” cameras into Cal Anderson Park on Capitol Hill.  When the news got there was some short-lived public outcry and the ACLU objected, but the cameras are still there.  This summer, the Parks Department installed three surveillance cameras around the Garfield Community Center in the Central District, and few seemed to mind.

Though the circumstances justifying surveillance may vary, in the end what it comes down to is that these cameras are band aid solutions that ask us to give up freedom in exchange for security.  And in this case it wouldn’t be all that smug to add that we “deserve neither,” given the limited impact the cameras appear to have on crime.

The more we regulate public spaces, the more we give up the “right to the city,” defined by Lefebvre as the right to “urban life, to renewed centrality, to places of encounter and exchange, to life rhythms and time uses, enabling the full and complete usage of… moments and places.”  Like say, when you’re walking home with your sweetie through your neighborhood park on a beautiful summer night, no one else around and a perfect moment for a passionate kiss, do you want to be wondering in the back of your mind if you might be on candid camera?

I’ve been dreaming of a new City of Seattle department:  The Office of Sustainable Urbanism. The kind of department a visionary new Mayor of Seattle might be inclined to establish.

The Office of Sustainable Urbanism (OSU) would supercede and absorb the Office of Policy and Management, the Office of Sustainability and Environment, and probably DPD’s Green Team too.   Yet it would be bigger than the sum of these parts.  Because the OSU I’m envisioning would be the central, controlling organ for all policy making at the City.

I do not mean to denegrate the good work done by the folks in the departments named above.   But I believe that a powerful and unified department with a single mission is what’s called for if we ever hope to make the kind of rapid, radical change necessary to address the future challenges we face.

The mission is simple:  ensure that all City policy promotes sustainable urbanism.  And no apologies about the use of the word ‘urbanism.’   Seattle is a city, and it’s going to become more urban over time, and that is a good thing.  And for that matter, no apologies about the use of the word ‘sustainable’ either.  We all know what it means, and we all know it’s imperative.

Yes, and give the OSU deep pockets, and give it big, sharp teeth.  If the OSU disagrees with SDOT, OSU wins.  It often seems to me that it’s gotten to the point that what we actually need is an benevolent eco-fascist dictator.  But since that’s not gonna fly, the OSU could be the next best thing. 

No doubt the OSU would require exceptionally smart and talented leadership to avoid spectacular failure.  But Seattle is loaded with smart, motivated people.  We already know how to do much of what needs doing.  We just need to do it.  Now.

Classy!

Pb Elemental cranked out a remarkable number of progressive projects like this one with the big orange wall on 23rd Ave.   Alas, their timing was just a wee bit off.  The three Central District projects in these photos were looking pretty lonely last time I checked.  It’s too bad, cause Pb pushed design innovation much further than most in Seattle, particularly with the creative use of site.  But now that the recession is over, perhaps these bad boys will start filling up.

[ 23rd and Dearborn ]

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[ MLK and Norman ]

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[ 21st and Union ]

(Editors’s note:  HAC is thoroughly stoked to publish the following contribution by Alex Steffen, co-founder of Worldchanging, and one of the nation’s most forward-thinking and inspirational voices on sustainability.)

I spend most of my waking hours exploring solutions for the planet’s most pressing problems. My teammates and I take in absurd amount of information, reading hundreds of magazines, blogs and newsletters, books and reports. Our website’s correspondents and readers live in nearly every major city. I travel frequently, speaking at conferences and doing research trips from Cape Town to Copenhagen, Tokyo to Texas. In short, I think I have a fairly good take on what our planetary priorities should be. So I hope you’ll hear me out when I say that I think Seattle’s election this fall is one of the most important events on the planet.

This fall, we’re going to face a series of choices here—in the mayor’s race, the county executive’s race, the city council races—about what kind of city and region we want to be. Those choices will have global echoes. Here’s why: Seattle looms large in the global imagination. We may be a relatively small city tucked away in the far left corner of America, but everywhere I’ve gone, people know about Seattle and have the idea that we are world leaders in building a path to sustainable urbanism. They’re looking to us for answers.

Right now, the reality falls short of the sparkle. We continue to be a sprawling, low-density, auto-dependent, energy-wasteful and pollution-spewing city, not all that much different from most places in North America. If we are serious about becoming a bright green city, we need to start making some bold decisions now; decisions that will deliver smart growth, a walkable city, public transportation, sustainable design and healthy local ecosystems. Indeed, I think we need to decide now to become a carbon-neutral region, committed to radically good design, clean technologies, sustainable urbanism, and zero waste policies.

But we’re running out of time: another eight years and we’ll be too late. We are already on the verge of making certain choices and missing other opportunities that will together make it impossible to solve our deep problems as a city before the consequences overtake us.

We can’t solve those problems unless things start changing fast. They won’t change fast unless we elect Mike McGinn, Mike O’Brien, Richard Conlin and Dow Constantine. None of these guys is perfect. But all four get what the region needs, and understand that business as usual—from the waterfront tunnel boondoggle to NIMBY opposition to infill, slow progress on transit to low standards for buildings—will ruin this region and contribute to what is quickly becoming a planetary environmental catastrophe. I know these guys will fight for a different future, and all four of them can win.

Another future is within our grasp. By committing ourselves to adopting the best ideas already working elsewhere (and blazing some new trails of our own) we can turn this region into a sustainability powerhouse. That means a thriving economy in a time of rapid change. That means jobs and economic justice. That means healthy kids and a better quality of life. Maybe best of all, that means hope for the rest of the world.

Because the rest of the world is watching. If we can’t embrace real change here in Seattle—with all our natural advantages, with our wealth, with our educated population and mild climate, with our history of innovation and strong base of people who understand what sustainability means and what it demands—with all of this, if we can’t build a bright green city here, then it can’t be done.

On the other hand, if we do it here, we prove it’s possible, and we provide a model for the billions of people in other cities who are facing change in their own lives and communities.

And this is a critical moment in global politics. With climate legislation failing in the U.S. Senate, and the Copenhagen climate summit approaching, the rest of the world is waiting for a sign—any sign!—that Americans give a damn about the planetary crisis we face.

So, friends and neighbors, this race is not just a chance to vote for this candidate or that; it’s a chance to either embrace a better future or accept a planetary catastrophe. That may sound a bit extreme, but as someone who’s traveled the world looking for that future, I can tell you, it’s not. This is the most important local election you’ll ever vote in, donate in, volunteer for, become a part of.

It’s not every day that the things we do matter, really matter, to the rest of the world. This election is different. This election is your chance to exert a powerful influence on the kind of future the planet’s children will inherit. I hope you’ll look inside and find what values most to you in our public life, and act with the passion your values demand. I hope you’ll give everything you can to see this city gets the leaders we need for the future we believe in.

The scene tonight at 2020 Cycle on Union Street in the CD.  Lynne Shelton, director of the awesome Humpday is behind it, so maybe it will actuallly be good when it’s all done.  Bikes are that cool now.

Publicola just reported that online news and opinion non-profit Crosscut.com is set to receive a $100,000 grant from the Gates Foundation.  And they’ve also hired a new deputy editor, who will hopefully pay a bit more attention to the credibility of what they publish.   Coincidentally, this past week saw two land-use-related pieces that show Crosscut’s potential for making positive contributions to the public dialogue on urban planning.

Knute Berger’s latest contains lots of useful density stats and is uncharacteristically free of tired “slow-growther” rhetoric.   Well, mostly free of it.  First, there’s the image caption that reads “Belltown’s density won’t work everywhere.”  Good point.  But then nobody said it would.

And typical of much of his writing on this subject, Berger insinuates that all those stupid planners are creating more harm than good, writing,  “As these cities grow, they seem to generate adjacent sprawl as well, despite (or perhaps because of) the Growth Management Act.”  In other words, density causes sprawl.   Never mind considering where all those people would have gone if they didn’t have the option of moving into dense neighborhoods.

Berger continues, “This trend seems to support geographer Dick Morrill’s contention that the market will continue to demand lower density housing options despite New Urbanist planners’ attempts to promote density and in-fill.”   Fine.  But then no one is denying that there is still demand for low-density housing.   And the fact is, due to evolving demographics and preferences, demand for higher-density housing is growing rapidly, and is not being met by supply.  This is why housing in Belltown costs so much more per square foot than does housing in DuPont.  As Christopher Leinberger put it:

It’s not that nobody wants Tony Soprano. About 50 percent of Americans actually do want that configuration. But if we’ve built 80 percent of our housing that way, that’s the definition of oversupply. The other 50 percent of Americans want walkable urban arrangements and yet that’s just 20 percent of the housing stock. That’s called pent-up demand.

Curiously lacking from Berger’s analysis is any acknowledgement that there’s anything wrong with sprawl, or any ideas about how we could do better to control it.

Last week Crosscut also posted an excellent report on the latest population growth data from OFM by Douglas MacDonald.   This will (hopefully) be the subject of a future post, but I can’t resist pointing out here that the latest data on Seattle totally torpedoes this sorry bit of hackery pubished by Crosscut just a few weeks ago.