Our neighborhood Wonder Bread sign
Read an interesting article in the NY Times (by way of Slog and, later, also Seattlest).
I found the article interesting for a couple of reasons. First, because the Wonder Bread sign is about 3 blocks from our condo — and very visible out our window. So if-and-when it comes down it’ll be a very noticeable change for us.
But, more importantly, I found it interesting because both the article and the various commentaries on it (drilling down even into the comments posted to the blog postings, etc) so clearly show the difference of opinion that Seattle has about development.
As a very clear “for instance” of what I mean, Courtney of Seattlest has this to say:
Personally, Seattlest doesn’t worry about losing views (we don’t have one), but we do worry about what will happen over the next five years to our quiet, diverse little neighborhood which we actively chose to move into over more homogeneous options. We can hear the bulldozers rumbling in the distance, and in their wake we fear we’ll have only indistinct block after block of condos and townhomes strung together by infectious sores of StarBuQFMcSubWalgreen complexes at every third intersection.
Ok, so I guess that means I’m the enemy then? Jodi and I, live just up the street from Courtney, based on her other comments. And we live in the Welch Plaza Condos complex. At a corner across from a Starbucks. Half a block from a Walgreens. So I guess it’s pretty clear.
But to cut her some slack, I get it. Nobody sane likes block after block of uniformity. People who move into neighborhoods like ours like character. We do. And that’s a significant part of why we moved here. If we wanted boring uniformity in our neighborhood we would have moved to the east-side (shout out to all my east-side coworkers 
).
So we all agree then, right? What do I mean by the “difference of opinion”? Well, I suppose I mean that the “Seattle urbanization mindset” appears to be at direct odds with the “Seattle neighborhood mindset”.
Background: Seattle has a bunch of distinct neighborhoods. In most of these neighborhoods, historically, there have been principally single-family houses. The core part of Seattle is blocked on three sides by water, so there’s not a lot of “new land” to keep building single-family houses without ending up with sprawl (out across the bodies of water).
See where I’m going with this? In the past year I’ve been following all sorts of discussions about development and there are two conflicting views I see over and over again (I’ll oversimplify them here for brevity):
- Neighborhoods are wonderful for their character and history. Redevelopment and tall buildings (density) is the devil.
- Neighborhoods are the urban equivalent of suburb sprawl, charm or no. The only way to fit the people we need is density (and tall buildings).
I think these are two extreme viewpoints, and I find myself somewhere in the middle. I like the distinct neighborhoods here in Seattle, but I also like tall buildings. I am all for historic preservation where it makes sense (there were some references to how developers wanted to rip out all of pioneer square and pike place market, etc), but I think it’s silly to say we should preserve the handful of dilapidated houses in my neighborhood vs replacing them with density condos or townhouses!
When I look at what are the problems in Seattle, there are a handful of relevant ones here that bubble to the top in my mind (and apologies if I miss your pet problem here):
- cost of housing
- neglected transportation infrastructure
- transit permanence
Let’s break those down:
Cost of housing – this one is a no-brainer. It’s hella expensive to buy (or even rent) a place in Seattle. This means that new-to-the-area lower income people find themselves unable to settle in the city and they often end up out in the south suburbs. It also means that folks already living in the city are increasingly finding themselves pushed out as apartments convert to condos, houses are torn down, etc. This all logically follows, and it’s bad news. Some argue that the solution is to not convert to condos, or to not tear down dilapidated old houses… and I say that’s hogwash. The solution is to provide more (and more lower-income) housing in the neighborhoods and in the city core to ensure it can meet the needs, not to try to artificially hold down the value of the existing property by preventing improvements!
Neglected transportation infrastructure – we have lots of roads, bridges, sidewalks, etc that are fallen into disrepair due to short-sighted tax-reduction strategies over the past years (I’ve had a year now of reading up on Tim Eyman and the great work he’s done for the city and state). Obviously we need to fix what we have. But another perspective is that, well, the more dense the development, the less transportation infrastructure we have to support. So that’s maybe overly simplistic, but it’s also totally true. And it’s another reason I favor increased density in Seattle.
Transit permanence – It’s absolutely shameful that a city the size of Seattle, with the public transit acceptance of Seattle, has exactly zero fixed-line transit systems in operation right now. Well, unless you count the people mover at SeaTac, I suppose. Waterfront trolley – down for retrofitting. Historic monorail – being repaired from the crash last year. Green-line monorail – canceled, never built. South Lake Union trolley – construction starts soon. ST Central Link light rail – under construction until 2008/2009. Yikes, even with the fact that some of them are being upgraded or are being newly constructed, it’s just an appalling situation! Metro does a great job with the buses, but it’s transit permanence (ie – rails in the ground vs buses) that causes neighborhood growth and positive development around the stations.
But, we’re back to the same conflict then: do we want to “keep things just like they are, warts and all” or do we want to “rip up all that is good and replace it with soulless developements”. I trust there’s something in between, and that’s what we should be shooting for.
