Growing up, urban style
This essay explores the growing pains of the
Northwest's largest city - Seattle. I examine a number of events which have
happened here lately and relate them to the relative youth of the city and the
angst with which its citizens and residents are experiencing while trying to
continue to grow their city the way they would like. Not always possible, but
Seattle has a long history of deferred decisions and tempered acceptance of
solutions. As one who lived here in a previous era and who now has a vested
interest in how things go, I offer some "insider" and "outsider" views on
Seattle's urbanization and densification efforts, activities, and discomforts.
[5059 words, 6 embedded URLs]
Seattle has had a few episodic periods in its
short - roughly 150-year - history. There were the boom times of the early
days, the turn of the 19th into the 20th Century, which coincided with
railroad, shipping, timber, and fishing economies which were taking off and the
Klondike
Goldrush fever, which put Seattle between the rest of the country and
the gold fields of the Yukon. That led to the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition which produced
most of the core of the University of Washington's campus and ensconced the Olmsted Brothers into the Seattle
landscape. There were the early days of Far East shipping and airplane
manufacturing and canning which led up to World War I. The Second World War
also changed the landscape and mentality here as the city became a reasonably
self-contained war machine manufacturing town with smelters and refineries and
mills and foundries and the whole industrial era
panoply.
Then there was the 1962 World's Fair and the decline of the smelters and mills but the uptake of the aircraft and local retail industries. Then there was the numbing crush of the early 1970's Boeing bust and the classic billboard notice asking "Would The Last Person To Leave Seattle, Please Turn Out The Lights." And then, there was the whole early grunge and game and application software creative boom which segued to the '90's dot-com boom and subsequent crash, reminding everyone of the Boeing days. In the meantime, money and brains here began a nascent biotechnology industry, adding to the resiliency mix. Seattle today is much more diversified and somewhat more resilient to any single sector's crashing. Because it's still a manufacturing center, there is still a need for skilled workers; and because housing must be built there is also a need for skilled tradespeople. In fact, given the history of and pride associated with early Northwest implementations of the Craftsman style, there is still a strong demand and high price to be paid for master carpenters and architects and others.
Seattle's evolved a great deal from its roots. There still are fishers and lumberers and millers, but their numbers are representative and not dominating. There still are foundry workers and machinist mates and hull designers and assemblers but their numbers are not dominating any more either. There are now also an approaching-equal number of designers and software authors and software-hardware integrators. There is an industry related to all aspects of tourism which now counts as a significant but not dominant economic engine. There has been and continues to be a strong food sector here, ranging from the actual farmer through the processors and distributors to the four-star restaurants. The city has also grown in relative size to its neighbor urban areas to the north and south - Vancouver and Portland. It's an unskilled-blue collar-white collar-professional-creative and entertainment labor town.
Part of the early appeal and a strong element in the continuing appeal of this place to the people who choose to live here or who are born and choose to remain here is the strong and embedded relationship of the many neighborhoods and the local labor force - be it fishermen near Ballard or artists and artisans near Fremont or heavy manufacturing near Georgetown and South Park and West Seattle. These and the other neighborhoods of the city reflect their mixed residents in a lot of ways from the kinds of stores and shops to the nature of the local parks and parkways. Even one's house color can reflect a style as the multi-colored and plain funky housepaint jobs seen in Fremont or Wallingford. There are, as there have been since the beginning, exclusive neighborhoods reserved for the very rich and powerful within the city's political, business and manufacturing centers. These neighborhoods, like their kin in older Eastern cities or newer Midwestern and Western cities, look like enclosed or encircled estate parks - each house literally trying to out-do the neighboring abode. There's a section overlooking Lake Washington where the property allotments were sparse but that hasn't stopped the rich of Madison Park from building one 5,000 square-foot house right next to another, each with dramatic and divergent architectural styles.
Because many of the neighborhoods began their history as independent towns, there's a rich variety of street grids and angles-of-approach for intersections throughout the city. Some areas have kept a semblance of their early history alive in local park and facilities enhancements. The entire city has engaged in this historical perspective and such things as new bridge abutments are created with bas relief sculpture appropriate to the area as in salmon in Ballard and ships' ropes and compasses along the waterfront.
Since roughly the turn of the 19th into the 20th Century (circa 1900), Seattle has stayed pretty much the same relative to the other cities in the U.S. Seattle has held the 20th place, or thereabouts. However, in the urban area sweepstakes, Seattle is in the middle of the second tier and not at the bottom of it as it is when compared to city limits only. There's roughly three million people in the Seattle metro area and roughly six million people in the greater Puget Sound region - which is tied to and an extension of the Seattle metro and of Seattle itself. The boatways lead to Seattle, the airways lead to Seattle, the roads lead to Seattle, and the trains lead to Seattle. Whether it wanted to or not, Seattle has become the doyen of the region. I'm sure the founding members of the Denny party would have wanted this to be true. Their names, as is true of most "settled" places, are found in the names of major local streets or neighborhoods or even hills which they got to name.
One-hundred and fifty or so years after the founding of the city, it's at another point in its evolution. State law passed in the past decade required the counties and municipalities of Washington to come up with urban density plans and a means of applying "smart growth" practices to ongoing development. Seattle has embraced this notion and first came up with the notion of "urban villages" which would anchor the business, service and community aspects of neighborhoods. Furthering the previous notions of Seattle citizens that they live in a collection of small towns and not a big city. Yes, the urban villages are allowed to densify and grow taller and pack more people-per-block. They're also supposed to enhance any existing non-automotive transportation that's available, including feet and bicycles.
Now we have "urban villages" which are going to become more "urban" which means more "city-like" and we've voted for this so we like it. But we still haven't given up on the notion that we live in a small town connected through mutual needs and wants to the rest of the city. In the end, we go home to our neighborhood - our "town." All well and good so far. Further, we decide to enhance all the neighborhood infrastructure elements such as police stations, libraries, schools (we hope, soon), parks and open space. Mind you, all this was done with bonds paid for by self-taxing instruments installed on a huge number of things people need to buy. But, that's okay, we're flush, the dot-com boom is "booming" and we want this place to be even nicer. As a for example, you really SHOULD see, explore and understand the new Seattle Central Library to get a sense of what the folks who call Seattle home think of their home. It's a stunning example of the right thing to do in the right place with the right results. Things can and do work in this city. Remember, too, that if they work in Seattle, folks living in the three-or-four state / two-province region will be paying attention. This is where they come to go to the main Nordstrom's or see the Mariners, after all. Then in a series of fits and piques, the "regionals" and the "Seattleites" decide to tax themselves again - this time on their cars - to get not one, but two mass and/or rapid transit systems underway. So we're thinking ahead and willing to sacrifice even more of our maybe-yes, maybe-no discretionary income for positive-value and value-added elements of our city.
There's this analogous concept to Gross Domestic Product known as Gross Metropolitan Product. In these citations, Seattle comes out again in the middle of the second tier. That's sort of where this city began and will stay. It's never going to be New York, or Chicago, or even Washington. But, what Seattle's got and is going to be is the biggest US city in the Northwest - so in that sense it is already a New York. Just not for the country, only for the region. For everyone outside the region it's just Seattle, for everyone inside the region it's the city. And what a grand region it is - West of the Cascades really goes from the upper reaches of British Columbia down to the last volcano across the California border - Humboldt County. And within that grand region are two geophysical twins - those things tending towards the Columbia River and those things tending towards Puget Sound. Seattle has always wanted to be the Queen Bee in the Pacific Northwest. In the past century the city has achieved stature as America's last big city, last in the sense that the Northwest is the least populated and last in the line of places to explore and exploit. Vancouver, BC is big, too, but not nearly; and Anchorage is also big - for its location, that's for sure - but it's really a sophisticated outpost, which leaves Seattle as the largest urban entity in this quadrant of the North American continent and a natural bridge to Russia and the Near Far East. San Francisco is out of the region; Denver's out of the region; and anything further east or south is seemingly out of the "country."
Us Seattleites have conflicts arising within a few of the designated "urban villages." On the one hand we've got a city filled with people who were born here or moved here because they liked it and don't want to see any dramatic changes in what they see as their city. On the other hand we have these same individuals and collectives who have willingly and repeatedly voted to move forwards with a plan which would evolve Seattle into the same "sort" of city but one with as many as two times the density - that's for now, the future could have even more density. This is where it gets to be the scary part.
No one wants to "really" change what they like about this place. But think about it for a minute! Seattle is cited in the GMP table above as contributing $135 billion dollars annually to the GNP of the USA. It's a city which is inside the first tier of economic engines of the country. A metro region where the collective personal income is $117 billion. So, it ain't no small town or collection of small towns or string of urban villages any more, is it? Well, yes, and no. Technically, Seattle is a major metro and does and should act like it. But, spiritually and socially and psychologically Seattle is a collection of small towns with a central core where everything just ties together nicely but is still separate and distinct. We've got a conflict or something here.
Some cases in point. The Capitol Hill crowd - and the rest of city and area - have long called Broadway home. It's one of those stretches of street which is perfectly reminiscent of the best small-town "downtowns" ever seen in a 1950's Hollywood movie. For decades it's been home to some of the city's oddest collections of ideas, stores, shops, theaters, restaurants, cafes, bars, and what-not. It's vibrancy has waxed and waned as the town has weathered a variety of national and local changes. Seattle, along with a number of other cities, counties and even states, has a liberal view on vagrancy, homelessness, the right to "camp" in a public space, and so on. This causes problems in areas where lots of people with money pass back and forth in a constrained area. Broadway is a constrained area. First Avenue and Occidental Park in Pioneer Square are constrained areas. Pioneer Square merchants and gallery and shop owners complained that the street people and rowdies were causing visitors to steer clear and they were losing money as well as their neighborhood to these vagrants. The city admins did listen and soon the rowdies are contained and moved along - to Broadway.
Where the present complaint is that they are scaring away the people who used to walk up and down Broadway and spend their money. To answer this time, the city admins say to raise the height limit on Broadway with complex and appropriate mixed-use developments and fill the place with a new band of people who live there. The present residents of Broadway in the few apartments along there now and the nearby residents on the adjacent streets say this will ruin Broadway. That the quaint atmosphere of the 1950's small town downtown would be lost in the canyons of condos. And maybe it will. But, Seattle is now grown up enough to come to grips with what happens to an older, cherished, neighborhood when change is inevitable. The smart growth act actually causes the city to think twice on this one because there will be a light rail station at one end of Broadway. Why should there NOT be additional people living right on Broadway and why shouldn't Broadway evolve the way - say - Wisconsin Avenue in DC has, or Connecticut Avenue?
The city admins, spending appropriated monies, recently finished with a refurbishment of the main drag through the University District - University Way, known as the Ave. It was the hope and expectation of the city admins, many city residents, and the Ave's merchants and shops and cafes and restaurants and bars that this would infuse downtown U-District with a renewed vigor and life. Why, because previously the Ave had become a "too" popular hangout for another kind of vagrant - the homeless teenager or young adult. The Ave, too, had been known for the diversity and richness of the shops and cafes which lined its sidewalks for the stretch from Campus Parkway to NE 50th Street. But previous to that, the Ave had also been known as a formal shopping destination for the city's well-to-do and the general rowdiness of the students in the '60's chased that crowd away. Again, rowdiness and seeming vagrancy - as in "Don't you have something better to do than just stand around?" And, no, many folks apparently don't have anything better to do. Will the Ave respond? Adjacent Roosevelt Way and busy NE 45th Street suggest that the Ave will evolve but not the way folks want. Time was when 45th was very low-key, now there's big buildings everywhere. The stretch of Seattle from the U-District to Ballard through Wallingford is nearly complete now. Market - 46th - 45th, the same road essentially, is one big urban village main street now. Time was it wasn't. Those folks evolved to a denser and more urban environment living a reasonable distance from downtown. Surely the Capitol Hill folks will survive a "high-rising" of Broadway.
And what to do about vagrants? I find it perfectly logical and acceptable to consider that anyone can use public property to "camp" so long as they are willing to share that public space. I guess that means not sitting in a park for weeks on end with a tent. The way people are kept honest in Seattle is to close the parks at a certain time - in our case from 11:30 pm through 4:30 am. If a group of otherwise ordinary folks want to camp out on the sidewalk on University Way and panhandle passers-by then there's probably a Constitutional reason why that should be allowed. It becomes problematic when those passing by feel intimidated or threatened or even disgusted when confronted by this group of otherwise ordinary folks sitting on the sidewalk.
This is my philosophy here so take it for what it's worth, but, I feel that in a public space I have as much right as anyone else and won't cede that right just because someone is asking me for money. Sometimes I say yes and give money, sometimes I say no, other times I say no "sorry." But I don't avoid walking the streets because of a fear that I might run into someone who will inject themselves into my life for no reason other than to get something out of me. Hey, it's still the real world out there and staying alive is still a survival skill. Sometimes I ponder my luck when passing by folks like this and other times I'm reduced to sadness that the world works the way it does and they weren't as lucky or fortunate or whatever as me. But I never feel threatened, even when - as sometimes happens - I meet up with someone who truly is making a pubic nuisance or has an obvious mental disturbance. If it's too serious, as has been the case a couple of times so far, then I'll get the authorities (cop of medic, depending) to come over and will stay there to ward off the fears of others while the authorities arrive. This is why we have a society - to be able to get out there and mingle around and not feel frightened and when we do to be able to call someone or some group to come and help. It's why we pay taxes - that and having libraries which have books and internet.
I'm not buying the street person theories about the decline and fall of local favorite streets. The Ave will come and go and evolve with the University and its populace and the nearby folks who want all that comes with a big university. This part of town will also get a light rail station - or two - at a point in the indeterminate but foreseeable future. Maybe the future of the Ave isn't a bunch of used book stores and model shops and gaming parlors but small companies using university patents to create new services or products. That would shift the book stores to Roosevelt or Brooklyn, which would be fine. The density is going to happen and the stores which get dislocated from a previous "correct" address will congregate in a new "correct" address.
Witness Pine and Pike Streets east of the I-5 overpass on Capitol Hill. Up to and past their intersection with Broadway, these two relatively steep streets have become filled with exactly the same sort of club, cafe, restaurant, shop, store or dive which people used to flock to Broadway to see. And, guess what, the same mix of folks who used to congregate along Broadway now ply Pike and Pine and some still even congregate along Broadway. Pike and Pine have also been built up of late with a lot of multi-story mixed-use developments going in. Broadway will evolve and in the meantime Capitol Hill gets still more dense and even more interesting. What's lost in the mix, though, is the remnant of the 1950's style downtown small town USA. That was over fifty years ago and the residents of Seattle who were in their prime then are now being outnumbered by either their offspring or the newcomers. The past is remembered and maybe commemorated or incorporated but isn't still active. That was then, this is now. Then, the city was half-a-million and that was it. Now the city is slightly over half-a-million but there's five-and-a-half-million others who we have to share Seattle with, and that's just the immediate Puget Sound region, the greater Northwest includes another twelve million or so. This is a destination place and we need to remember that, which is to say we need to keep our wants in mind but include the potential wants of those who might visit or be new.
Seattle's fortunate. It's far enough away from the rest of the country to essentially escape a mad migration - for whatever reason. The city's population and that of the region have seen only a few spurts and otherwise have enjoyed a steady growth pace. The next growth event will undoubtedly be tied with Asia as China matures and Japan and Korea and Thailand and Malaysia all adjust. The city's multi-lingual approach to signage and documents bodes well for this. For a while now Seattle, King County and the other counties of Puget Sound and the Northwest, have been offering up to a dozen language options for nearly everything.
The same throes which are occurring in the U-District and on Capitol Hill are also making themselves known in West Seattle and areas in between. The thing is, in ten years no one here will WANT to have to drive. Yes, there's times of the day and days of the week when driving is great fun. There are no end of fantastic viewscapes from the highways, bridges, tunnels, and elevated causeways in this town. Driving north along the Alaskan Way Viaduct as the sun sets directly west over the Sound and behind the Olympic Mountains is a fantastic experience. But in ten years most of us are going to want to get to some other part of town reliably, quickly and without hassle. We'll have become accustomed to taking one or another of the new light rail, monorail, and (hopefully) integrated two-line trolley systems. The city will begin to work as a city. No longer will people live in their reclusive and detached urban villages and connect via bridge or tunnel or causeway to each other. They will connect because it's easy to do and simple to do.
This won't change the inherent nature of the city to its residents. Ballard will still be Ballard and the salmon festival couldn't possibly happen any place else. But like so many other great cities, the great neighborhoods of Seattle will be minutes away from each other instead of major fractions of an hour away. No longer will time of day be a constraint on inter-neighborhood travel and as that happens each neighborhood will be able to share and evolve in sight of each other. If Broadway's higher density has turned out to be a good thing, maybe the upper reaches of Roosevelt Way might be interested. There's long-range plans for a possible rapid-transit link somewhere along what is now a very small-town 1950's stretch.
A major element here is the conflict between knowing how to evolve the city correctly for its present and future role and relationship with its residents and citizens and the desire of the existing residents and citizens to preserve what is known to be likable and which works - even if the traffic and getting around part doesn't. I don't think one has to live ten blocks away from an urban village to retain a small town feel in a neighborhood. Just being two or three blocks off a main drag is plenty of space to re-create that small town neighborhood feel. I know this to be true because we lived three blocks off Wisconsin Avenue and six blocks off Connecticut Avenue at a point in both those avenues trails where there was a very busy and active streetlife. Our house felt like it was sited in the middle of "no-name" small town. From my front porch in DC I could look across a field and watch the planes on final approach down the Potomac to National Airport, or take a five minute walk and get a cappuccino at my favorite cafe on Wisconsin Avenue. There's no reason to believe that same feeling can't evolve here as Seattle densifies and evolves into a more functional "city."
Those who fear that Seattle is going to be ruined (again) by all this development, new transit systems and major neighborhood changes should be somewhat eased to know that Seattle is presently only two-thirds as dense as Washington, DC and there are plenty of folks who love living in DC and who love their neighborhoods. Seattle's growing and it's growing up - neither is occurring without some pain and second guessing. It's never going to be the middle of the fifties again. There's never going to be a landscape dominated by the Space Needle again. Heck, just since I've been here I've noticed the lights on Bainbridge Island and across on the Kitsap Peninsula growing to more than double what they were when we arrived. That's a lot of new houses and other constructed elements. The early and present admins of this city, along with its residents and citizens, have done a really great job of preserving green space. Everywhere in the city there is greenspace and in nearly any direction within a mile there's significant greenspace - like up to a hundred acres of forest here and there all over. The city keeps buying back stretches of property which would have a good common affect such as stretches of beach or re-daylighting a buried creek. This approach means that the city can become more dense and the residents will still have nearby and easy access to the great out-of-doors in such a way that the crowding will not seem pervasive - but localized. If you live in a condo, you know your neighbors are feet away but then there are other reasons for living in a condo.
In the next several years the city is going to try and build or re-build a major portion of its transportation infrastructure. When that happened in DC with the Beltway and various feeder freeways and the Metro, they also thought they were practicing smart growth - and they were. The highway part didn't quite work out as well as expected but the subway part did. Seattle has been reluctant to appropriate funds for any new roadways and the major next events are the re-building of one or both major Lake Washington bridges and the tunneling and/or refurbishment of the existing viaduct. Any of these would wreck havoc on over a hundred-thousand people a day (well, same people different days). If all of them become concurrent the residents of greater Seattle are going to have to find new ways to get around. The present timing calls for the monorail, light rail and integrated trolley systems to be nearly or fully operational when the highway construction gets underway. That could be a major shift for a lot of folks who might ultimately decide that a 40-minute transit ride is better than a 20-minute car ride.
None of this will change what's great about Seattle and will only help eliminate some of what's not-so-great about Seattle. The "loss" of Broadway has meant the birth of Pine and Pike. The "loss" of the Ave has produced an interesting evolution on Roosevelt. The loss of the viaduct or one of the bridges might mean the evolution of mass transit - if it's ready by then there will be no reason not to migrate. The car then becomes used for food shopping and excursions to the islands or Olympics or Cascades. On this last point I'm hopeful but there are historic trends and evolving social customs which give me reason to believe that I'm on the right track.
The final thought about the reluctance of so many of the locals to accept a reasonable future - even with great change - is that I sense a great many Seattleites and Puget Sounders have not lived outside this area nor travelled enough or frequently enough to be aware of how other equally-wonderful places have handled the crush of urban densification. Too many folks here remember when they could easily drive from one part of town to another. But, the reason this place is attractive is also the reason more people will live here or be born here and not leave. My advice to Seattle and Seattle residents is "imagine the city without cars and then imagine how you would make that happen and then work on it." We'll always have cars and will always be able to find a good reason to use them, but the more times we find an equal or better reason to use something like light rail, or monorail, or a trolley then the better off we will be. Peace of mind, ease of movement, unfettered freedom, all these things can be improved. One of the great things to me about San Francisco is that, despite its geography, it's got an amazing range of public transportation systems. Whatever works - the cable cars, the street cars, the Muni, BART, CalTrans, the ferries. Oh, yeah, and there's still the bus. Seattle's as unique and fun-shaped as San Francisco and should have as unique and fun-shaped a set of transportation options. These will enhance what's special about the city. The monorail - I'm sure there will be people who strive to catch the exact right train as it glides along Second Avenue so they can catch glimpses of the sun setting over the Sound. Or the early risers who take the light rail just to catch the sunrise over the Cascades. It will happen. In the meantime, Seattleites, rest easy, we're not trying to ruin the city.
Ciao, more thoughts later...
Chas
Then there was the 1962 World's Fair and the decline of the smelters and mills but the uptake of the aircraft and local retail industries. Then there was the numbing crush of the early 1970's Boeing bust and the classic billboard notice asking "Would The Last Person To Leave Seattle, Please Turn Out The Lights." And then, there was the whole early grunge and game and application software creative boom which segued to the '90's dot-com boom and subsequent crash, reminding everyone of the Boeing days. In the meantime, money and brains here began a nascent biotechnology industry, adding to the resiliency mix. Seattle today is much more diversified and somewhat more resilient to any single sector's crashing. Because it's still a manufacturing center, there is still a need for skilled workers; and because housing must be built there is also a need for skilled tradespeople. In fact, given the history of and pride associated with early Northwest implementations of the Craftsman style, there is still a strong demand and high price to be paid for master carpenters and architects and others.
Seattle's evolved a great deal from its roots. There still are fishers and lumberers and millers, but their numbers are representative and not dominating. There still are foundry workers and machinist mates and hull designers and assemblers but their numbers are not dominating any more either. There are now also an approaching-equal number of designers and software authors and software-hardware integrators. There is an industry related to all aspects of tourism which now counts as a significant but not dominant economic engine. There has been and continues to be a strong food sector here, ranging from the actual farmer through the processors and distributors to the four-star restaurants. The city has also grown in relative size to its neighbor urban areas to the north and south - Vancouver and Portland. It's an unskilled-blue collar-white collar-professional-creative and entertainment labor town.
Part of the early appeal and a strong element in the continuing appeal of this place to the people who choose to live here or who are born and choose to remain here is the strong and embedded relationship of the many neighborhoods and the local labor force - be it fishermen near Ballard or artists and artisans near Fremont or heavy manufacturing near Georgetown and South Park and West Seattle. These and the other neighborhoods of the city reflect their mixed residents in a lot of ways from the kinds of stores and shops to the nature of the local parks and parkways. Even one's house color can reflect a style as the multi-colored and plain funky housepaint jobs seen in Fremont or Wallingford. There are, as there have been since the beginning, exclusive neighborhoods reserved for the very rich and powerful within the city's political, business and manufacturing centers. These neighborhoods, like their kin in older Eastern cities or newer Midwestern and Western cities, look like enclosed or encircled estate parks - each house literally trying to out-do the neighboring abode. There's a section overlooking Lake Washington where the property allotments were sparse but that hasn't stopped the rich of Madison Park from building one 5,000 square-foot house right next to another, each with dramatic and divergent architectural styles.
Because many of the neighborhoods began their history as independent towns, there's a rich variety of street grids and angles-of-approach for intersections throughout the city. Some areas have kept a semblance of their early history alive in local park and facilities enhancements. The entire city has engaged in this historical perspective and such things as new bridge abutments are created with bas relief sculpture appropriate to the area as in salmon in Ballard and ships' ropes and compasses along the waterfront.
Since roughly the turn of the 19th into the 20th Century (circa 1900), Seattle has stayed pretty much the same relative to the other cities in the U.S. Seattle has held the 20th place, or thereabouts. However, in the urban area sweepstakes, Seattle is in the middle of the second tier and not at the bottom of it as it is when compared to city limits only. There's roughly three million people in the Seattle metro area and roughly six million people in the greater Puget Sound region - which is tied to and an extension of the Seattle metro and of Seattle itself. The boatways lead to Seattle, the airways lead to Seattle, the roads lead to Seattle, and the trains lead to Seattle. Whether it wanted to or not, Seattle has become the doyen of the region. I'm sure the founding members of the Denny party would have wanted this to be true. Their names, as is true of most "settled" places, are found in the names of major local streets or neighborhoods or even hills which they got to name.
One-hundred and fifty or so years after the founding of the city, it's at another point in its evolution. State law passed in the past decade required the counties and municipalities of Washington to come up with urban density plans and a means of applying "smart growth" practices to ongoing development. Seattle has embraced this notion and first came up with the notion of "urban villages" which would anchor the business, service and community aspects of neighborhoods. Furthering the previous notions of Seattle citizens that they live in a collection of small towns and not a big city. Yes, the urban villages are allowed to densify and grow taller and pack more people-per-block. They're also supposed to enhance any existing non-automotive transportation that's available, including feet and bicycles.
Now we have "urban villages" which are going to become more "urban" which means more "city-like" and we've voted for this so we like it. But we still haven't given up on the notion that we live in a small town connected through mutual needs and wants to the rest of the city. In the end, we go home to our neighborhood - our "town." All well and good so far. Further, we decide to enhance all the neighborhood infrastructure elements such as police stations, libraries, schools (we hope, soon), parks and open space. Mind you, all this was done with bonds paid for by self-taxing instruments installed on a huge number of things people need to buy. But, that's okay, we're flush, the dot-com boom is "booming" and we want this place to be even nicer. As a for example, you really SHOULD see, explore and understand the new Seattle Central Library to get a sense of what the folks who call Seattle home think of their home. It's a stunning example of the right thing to do in the right place with the right results. Things can and do work in this city. Remember, too, that if they work in Seattle, folks living in the three-or-four state / two-province region will be paying attention. This is where they come to go to the main Nordstrom's or see the Mariners, after all. Then in a series of fits and piques, the "regionals" and the "Seattleites" decide to tax themselves again - this time on their cars - to get not one, but two mass and/or rapid transit systems underway. So we're thinking ahead and willing to sacrifice even more of our maybe-yes, maybe-no discretionary income for positive-value and value-added elements of our city.
There's this analogous concept to Gross Domestic Product known as Gross Metropolitan Product. In these citations, Seattle comes out again in the middle of the second tier. That's sort of where this city began and will stay. It's never going to be New York, or Chicago, or even Washington. But, what Seattle's got and is going to be is the biggest US city in the Northwest - so in that sense it is already a New York. Just not for the country, only for the region. For everyone outside the region it's just Seattle, for everyone inside the region it's the city. And what a grand region it is - West of the Cascades really goes from the upper reaches of British Columbia down to the last volcano across the California border - Humboldt County. And within that grand region are two geophysical twins - those things tending towards the Columbia River and those things tending towards Puget Sound. Seattle has always wanted to be the Queen Bee in the Pacific Northwest. In the past century the city has achieved stature as America's last big city, last in the sense that the Northwest is the least populated and last in the line of places to explore and exploit. Vancouver, BC is big, too, but not nearly; and Anchorage is also big - for its location, that's for sure - but it's really a sophisticated outpost, which leaves Seattle as the largest urban entity in this quadrant of the North American continent and a natural bridge to Russia and the Near Far East. San Francisco is out of the region; Denver's out of the region; and anything further east or south is seemingly out of the "country."
Us Seattleites have conflicts arising within a few of the designated "urban villages." On the one hand we've got a city filled with people who were born here or moved here because they liked it and don't want to see any dramatic changes in what they see as their city. On the other hand we have these same individuals and collectives who have willingly and repeatedly voted to move forwards with a plan which would evolve Seattle into the same "sort" of city but one with as many as two times the density - that's for now, the future could have even more density. This is where it gets to be the scary part.
No one wants to "really" change what they like about this place. But think about it for a minute! Seattle is cited in the GMP table above as contributing $135 billion dollars annually to the GNP of the USA. It's a city which is inside the first tier of economic engines of the country. A metro region where the collective personal income is $117 billion. So, it ain't no small town or collection of small towns or string of urban villages any more, is it? Well, yes, and no. Technically, Seattle is a major metro and does and should act like it. But, spiritually and socially and psychologically Seattle is a collection of small towns with a central core where everything just ties together nicely but is still separate and distinct. We've got a conflict or something here.
Some cases in point. The Capitol Hill crowd - and the rest of city and area - have long called Broadway home. It's one of those stretches of street which is perfectly reminiscent of the best small-town "downtowns" ever seen in a 1950's Hollywood movie. For decades it's been home to some of the city's oddest collections of ideas, stores, shops, theaters, restaurants, cafes, bars, and what-not. It's vibrancy has waxed and waned as the town has weathered a variety of national and local changes. Seattle, along with a number of other cities, counties and even states, has a liberal view on vagrancy, homelessness, the right to "camp" in a public space, and so on. This causes problems in areas where lots of people with money pass back and forth in a constrained area. Broadway is a constrained area. First Avenue and Occidental Park in Pioneer Square are constrained areas. Pioneer Square merchants and gallery and shop owners complained that the street people and rowdies were causing visitors to steer clear and they were losing money as well as their neighborhood to these vagrants. The city admins did listen and soon the rowdies are contained and moved along - to Broadway.
Where the present complaint is that they are scaring away the people who used to walk up and down Broadway and spend their money. To answer this time, the city admins say to raise the height limit on Broadway with complex and appropriate mixed-use developments and fill the place with a new band of people who live there. The present residents of Broadway in the few apartments along there now and the nearby residents on the adjacent streets say this will ruin Broadway. That the quaint atmosphere of the 1950's small town downtown would be lost in the canyons of condos. And maybe it will. But, Seattle is now grown up enough to come to grips with what happens to an older, cherished, neighborhood when change is inevitable. The smart growth act actually causes the city to think twice on this one because there will be a light rail station at one end of Broadway. Why should there NOT be additional people living right on Broadway and why shouldn't Broadway evolve the way - say - Wisconsin Avenue in DC has, or Connecticut Avenue?
The city admins, spending appropriated monies, recently finished with a refurbishment of the main drag through the University District - University Way, known as the Ave. It was the hope and expectation of the city admins, many city residents, and the Ave's merchants and shops and cafes and restaurants and bars that this would infuse downtown U-District with a renewed vigor and life. Why, because previously the Ave had become a "too" popular hangout for another kind of vagrant - the homeless teenager or young adult. The Ave, too, had been known for the diversity and richness of the shops and cafes which lined its sidewalks for the stretch from Campus Parkway to NE 50th Street. But previous to that, the Ave had also been known as a formal shopping destination for the city's well-to-do and the general rowdiness of the students in the '60's chased that crowd away. Again, rowdiness and seeming vagrancy - as in "Don't you have something better to do than just stand around?" And, no, many folks apparently don't have anything better to do. Will the Ave respond? Adjacent Roosevelt Way and busy NE 45th Street suggest that the Ave will evolve but not the way folks want. Time was when 45th was very low-key, now there's big buildings everywhere. The stretch of Seattle from the U-District to Ballard through Wallingford is nearly complete now. Market - 46th - 45th, the same road essentially, is one big urban village main street now. Time was it wasn't. Those folks evolved to a denser and more urban environment living a reasonable distance from downtown. Surely the Capitol Hill folks will survive a "high-rising" of Broadway.
And what to do about vagrants? I find it perfectly logical and acceptable to consider that anyone can use public property to "camp" so long as they are willing to share that public space. I guess that means not sitting in a park for weeks on end with a tent. The way people are kept honest in Seattle is to close the parks at a certain time - in our case from 11:30 pm through 4:30 am. If a group of otherwise ordinary folks want to camp out on the sidewalk on University Way and panhandle passers-by then there's probably a Constitutional reason why that should be allowed. It becomes problematic when those passing by feel intimidated or threatened or even disgusted when confronted by this group of otherwise ordinary folks sitting on the sidewalk.
This is my philosophy here so take it for what it's worth, but, I feel that in a public space I have as much right as anyone else and won't cede that right just because someone is asking me for money. Sometimes I say yes and give money, sometimes I say no, other times I say no "sorry." But I don't avoid walking the streets because of a fear that I might run into someone who will inject themselves into my life for no reason other than to get something out of me. Hey, it's still the real world out there and staying alive is still a survival skill. Sometimes I ponder my luck when passing by folks like this and other times I'm reduced to sadness that the world works the way it does and they weren't as lucky or fortunate or whatever as me. But I never feel threatened, even when - as sometimes happens - I meet up with someone who truly is making a pubic nuisance or has an obvious mental disturbance. If it's too serious, as has been the case a couple of times so far, then I'll get the authorities (cop of medic, depending) to come over and will stay there to ward off the fears of others while the authorities arrive. This is why we have a society - to be able to get out there and mingle around and not feel frightened and when we do to be able to call someone or some group to come and help. It's why we pay taxes - that and having libraries which have books and internet.
I'm not buying the street person theories about the decline and fall of local favorite streets. The Ave will come and go and evolve with the University and its populace and the nearby folks who want all that comes with a big university. This part of town will also get a light rail station - or two - at a point in the indeterminate but foreseeable future. Maybe the future of the Ave isn't a bunch of used book stores and model shops and gaming parlors but small companies using university patents to create new services or products. That would shift the book stores to Roosevelt or Brooklyn, which would be fine. The density is going to happen and the stores which get dislocated from a previous "correct" address will congregate in a new "correct" address.
Witness Pine and Pike Streets east of the I-5 overpass on Capitol Hill. Up to and past their intersection with Broadway, these two relatively steep streets have become filled with exactly the same sort of club, cafe, restaurant, shop, store or dive which people used to flock to Broadway to see. And, guess what, the same mix of folks who used to congregate along Broadway now ply Pike and Pine and some still even congregate along Broadway. Pike and Pine have also been built up of late with a lot of multi-story mixed-use developments going in. Broadway will evolve and in the meantime Capitol Hill gets still more dense and even more interesting. What's lost in the mix, though, is the remnant of the 1950's style downtown small town USA. That was over fifty years ago and the residents of Seattle who were in their prime then are now being outnumbered by either their offspring or the newcomers. The past is remembered and maybe commemorated or incorporated but isn't still active. That was then, this is now. Then, the city was half-a-million and that was it. Now the city is slightly over half-a-million but there's five-and-a-half-million others who we have to share Seattle with, and that's just the immediate Puget Sound region, the greater Northwest includes another twelve million or so. This is a destination place and we need to remember that, which is to say we need to keep our wants in mind but include the potential wants of those who might visit or be new.
Seattle's fortunate. It's far enough away from the rest of the country to essentially escape a mad migration - for whatever reason. The city's population and that of the region have seen only a few spurts and otherwise have enjoyed a steady growth pace. The next growth event will undoubtedly be tied with Asia as China matures and Japan and Korea and Thailand and Malaysia all adjust. The city's multi-lingual approach to signage and documents bodes well for this. For a while now Seattle, King County and the other counties of Puget Sound and the Northwest, have been offering up to a dozen language options for nearly everything.
The same throes which are occurring in the U-District and on Capitol Hill are also making themselves known in West Seattle and areas in between. The thing is, in ten years no one here will WANT to have to drive. Yes, there's times of the day and days of the week when driving is great fun. There are no end of fantastic viewscapes from the highways, bridges, tunnels, and elevated causeways in this town. Driving north along the Alaskan Way Viaduct as the sun sets directly west over the Sound and behind the Olympic Mountains is a fantastic experience. But in ten years most of us are going to want to get to some other part of town reliably, quickly and without hassle. We'll have become accustomed to taking one or another of the new light rail, monorail, and (hopefully) integrated two-line trolley systems. The city will begin to work as a city. No longer will people live in their reclusive and detached urban villages and connect via bridge or tunnel or causeway to each other. They will connect because it's easy to do and simple to do.
This won't change the inherent nature of the city to its residents. Ballard will still be Ballard and the salmon festival couldn't possibly happen any place else. But like so many other great cities, the great neighborhoods of Seattle will be minutes away from each other instead of major fractions of an hour away. No longer will time of day be a constraint on inter-neighborhood travel and as that happens each neighborhood will be able to share and evolve in sight of each other. If Broadway's higher density has turned out to be a good thing, maybe the upper reaches of Roosevelt Way might be interested. There's long-range plans for a possible rapid-transit link somewhere along what is now a very small-town 1950's stretch.
A major element here is the conflict between knowing how to evolve the city correctly for its present and future role and relationship with its residents and citizens and the desire of the existing residents and citizens to preserve what is known to be likable and which works - even if the traffic and getting around part doesn't. I don't think one has to live ten blocks away from an urban village to retain a small town feel in a neighborhood. Just being two or three blocks off a main drag is plenty of space to re-create that small town neighborhood feel. I know this to be true because we lived three blocks off Wisconsin Avenue and six blocks off Connecticut Avenue at a point in both those avenues trails where there was a very busy and active streetlife. Our house felt like it was sited in the middle of "no-name" small town. From my front porch in DC I could look across a field and watch the planes on final approach down the Potomac to National Airport, or take a five minute walk and get a cappuccino at my favorite cafe on Wisconsin Avenue. There's no reason to believe that same feeling can't evolve here as Seattle densifies and evolves into a more functional "city."
Those who fear that Seattle is going to be ruined (again) by all this development, new transit systems and major neighborhood changes should be somewhat eased to know that Seattle is presently only two-thirds as dense as Washington, DC and there are plenty of folks who love living in DC and who love their neighborhoods. Seattle's growing and it's growing up - neither is occurring without some pain and second guessing. It's never going to be the middle of the fifties again. There's never going to be a landscape dominated by the Space Needle again. Heck, just since I've been here I've noticed the lights on Bainbridge Island and across on the Kitsap Peninsula growing to more than double what they were when we arrived. That's a lot of new houses and other constructed elements. The early and present admins of this city, along with its residents and citizens, have done a really great job of preserving green space. Everywhere in the city there is greenspace and in nearly any direction within a mile there's significant greenspace - like up to a hundred acres of forest here and there all over. The city keeps buying back stretches of property which would have a good common affect such as stretches of beach or re-daylighting a buried creek. This approach means that the city can become more dense and the residents will still have nearby and easy access to the great out-of-doors in such a way that the crowding will not seem pervasive - but localized. If you live in a condo, you know your neighbors are feet away but then there are other reasons for living in a condo.
In the next several years the city is going to try and build or re-build a major portion of its transportation infrastructure. When that happened in DC with the Beltway and various feeder freeways and the Metro, they also thought they were practicing smart growth - and they were. The highway part didn't quite work out as well as expected but the subway part did. Seattle has been reluctant to appropriate funds for any new roadways and the major next events are the re-building of one or both major Lake Washington bridges and the tunneling and/or refurbishment of the existing viaduct. Any of these would wreck havoc on over a hundred-thousand people a day (well, same people different days). If all of them become concurrent the residents of greater Seattle are going to have to find new ways to get around. The present timing calls for the monorail, light rail and integrated trolley systems to be nearly or fully operational when the highway construction gets underway. That could be a major shift for a lot of folks who might ultimately decide that a 40-minute transit ride is better than a 20-minute car ride.
None of this will change what's great about Seattle and will only help eliminate some of what's not-so-great about Seattle. The "loss" of Broadway has meant the birth of Pine and Pike. The "loss" of the Ave has produced an interesting evolution on Roosevelt. The loss of the viaduct or one of the bridges might mean the evolution of mass transit - if it's ready by then there will be no reason not to migrate. The car then becomes used for food shopping and excursions to the islands or Olympics or Cascades. On this last point I'm hopeful but there are historic trends and evolving social customs which give me reason to believe that I'm on the right track.
The final thought about the reluctance of so many of the locals to accept a reasonable future - even with great change - is that I sense a great many Seattleites and Puget Sounders have not lived outside this area nor travelled enough or frequently enough to be aware of how other equally-wonderful places have handled the crush of urban densification. Too many folks here remember when they could easily drive from one part of town to another. But, the reason this place is attractive is also the reason more people will live here or be born here and not leave. My advice to Seattle and Seattle residents is "imagine the city without cars and then imagine how you would make that happen and then work on it." We'll always have cars and will always be able to find a good reason to use them, but the more times we find an equal or better reason to use something like light rail, or monorail, or a trolley then the better off we will be. Peace of mind, ease of movement, unfettered freedom, all these things can be improved. One of the great things to me about San Francisco is that, despite its geography, it's got an amazing range of public transportation systems. Whatever works - the cable cars, the street cars, the Muni, BART, CalTrans, the ferries. Oh, yeah, and there's still the bus. Seattle's as unique and fun-shaped as San Francisco and should have as unique and fun-shaped a set of transportation options. These will enhance what's special about the city. The monorail - I'm sure there will be people who strive to catch the exact right train as it glides along Second Avenue so they can catch glimpses of the sun setting over the Sound. Or the early risers who take the light rail just to catch the sunrise over the Cascades. It will happen. In the meantime, Seattleites, rest easy, we're not trying to ruin the city.
Ciao, more thoughts later...
Chas
Posted: Tue - June 21, 2005 at 12:54 PM
Quick Links
Categories
Calendar
| Sun | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat |
Archives
XML/RSS Feed
Statistics
Total entries in this blog:
Total entries in this category:
Published On: Jul 04, 2005 05:41 PM
Total entries in this category:
Published On: Jul 04, 2005 05:41 PM