Urbanist thoughts

[gfish]

This is a weird time to be a dedicated urbanist. Cities are popular again -- everyone is finally acknowledging what I always knew to be right! Real development is happening in them again, with a focus on walkable, liveable neighborhoods. That's great... except for how it is pushing out all the diversity which made the cities interesting in the first place. The new construction is all so bland and safe and boring, and every few days we lose another neat old building to it just here in Seattle alone. I know I will never have the cool shop I've always wanted, in some old brick industrial building. They're all condos already.

I don't see any way around it, unfortunately. We failed to invest in cities for the entire second half of the 20th century in this country, during which the population more than doubled. They have a huge technical debt which will take decades to pay off. Even if there was some way to stop it (if you know how to reliably, easily subvert market forces on this scale, please let me know!), it would just mean continuing to throw resources in the cultural, environmental, psychic pit that is the American suburb at the expense of cities. No thanks.

Eventually, hopefully, we'll get back to balanced cities which have enough housing for everyone, with strong transit systems that help the poor instead of gentrifying them out into the exurbs. The current overwhelming sameness of the new construction will fade as things age and get remodeled. We'll end up with a healthy blend of buildings in various states of disrepair, supporting a wide range of uses like Jane Jacobs talked about. For much of my life, cities were seen as mostly for poor people. Now suddenly they're only for rich people. But both of those are anomalous on the scale of human history. Cities used to be for everyone, and I see no reason they can't be once again.

But it does really kind of suck right now, and likely will continue to for at least the next 20 years.

ETA: This was partly inspired by reading Happy City, and partly as a reminder to myself to walk the walk. The University District in Seattle is about to be considerably upzoned, since the light rail station will be open in a few years and students don't form NIMBY coalitions. Which is great -- creating a second area of truly dense urban living in the city is huge. But it'll inevitably destroy the squalid charm of the Ave, which I unironically love. There is also a good chance it will push away two of my favorite retail establishments of all time, Hardwick's Hardware and Thai Tom's. I can't help but feel conflicted, so I need to focus on the big picture.

Comments

[caladri.livejournal.com]

Do you think that new cities, or new urbanization, is a tolerable alternative to redevelopment of existing urban centres and infrastructure? You see bits of that on the fringes of some places, and while it's unlikely to become the dominant development model, I'm curious whether you think there's any reason it can't or shouldn't. It seems that there are pockets of that happening throughout Cascadia, that pockets of the sprawl start to increase in density to the point of being urban or at least nigh-so. There are parts of Bellevue's fringes I never would've called urban a decade ago, but which clearly are now, and that seems to be part of the future for bits of the WA-167 corridor, especially as transit expands. Hell, Tacoma is even planning significant new urbanization efforts to meet future population needs, not just playing catch-up with the present like Seattle.

(It seems to me that there is also a narrow tier of cities built up in the latter half of the 20th Century which, rather than being for the poor (since that happened to primarily extant urban centres, or to ones which were built up and followed a similar downward arc, as some of the newer build-ups in the Rust Belt), were for the rich, just not at night. Financial and knowledge-industry centres which housed very few people in their urban core. While there's not a huge number of those, there are some cities which house disproportionately few people, and which seem like they could be redeveloped to support human habitation.)

[tylik.livejournal.com]

It also kind of begs the question of "which cities?"

I mean hi, I'm currently living in a city that is still hanging out at about half of its peak population. And it's coming back, and doing okay - but there's a huge amount of porosity where other cities have density, and razing blighted old homes, and turning them into urban farms and other craziness. Also, our incredible diversity of wildlife. We still have a lot of cool old buildings in decent thought needing to be rehabbed sort of shape, and the cost of living is cheap, and because of all the old endowments from when this place was wealthy, there's a crazy arts scene.

...I have deeply mixed feelings, because while it makes me happy to see this place coming to life, and to know that this is becoming a place where young crazy folks can afford to do interesting things, culturally, I'm much more comfortable out west. Or in coastal cities. Still, I think it's easy and deeply myopic to think too much about places that are already crazy expensive.

[sistawendy.livejournal.com]

I don't see why cities can't play carrot-and-stick with building permits: "Hey there, developer, we'll give you a permit for this ultra-lucrative condo thing if you also build this other thing for poor people."

I'd also like to see areas zoned for art & noise, or at least a percentage of art and noise - and ixnay on the bogus noise complaints. I'm tired of seeing artists pushed out of venues, e.g. the Josephine and CHAC.

[sistawendy.livejournal.com]

Seattle went from cheap to chic in about a decade, say, '95 to '05. With any luck (?) that'll happen to Yourtown. It sounds as if it's happening already.

[tylik.livejournal.com]

Mm... maybe? I mean, I think you can make an argument for a general climb since the nadir in the seventies (not to say there haven't been other busts, I'm just thinking "Would the last person leaving Seattle please turn out the lights?" makes a reasonable starting place.)

I'm not really intending to stay here, at least not unless I can get some serious community, and even then there's the job thing. And there's *room* here that will take a while to fill it - oh, there are already trendy neighborhoods, but there's just so much porosity.

[gfish.livejournal.com]

That kind of thing is important, and I'm glad to see it being done, but I can't imagine it will actually have a very big impact.

[gfish.livejournal.com]

Good point! I admit to being rather focused on where I happen to live, and where I could conceivably convince my loved ones to move to.

I keep suggesting we form a group of ~20 people and buy a bunch of industrial wasteland in the rustbelt. To me, if you have enough friends with you, and bring in good internet, who cares where you are? But so far, that view has been distinctly in the minority.

[gfish.livejournal.com]

They're an improvement, I guess? I'm not sure they really outperform true sprawl in many of the metrics I'm concerned about anyway, like carbon emissions. And they mostly seem almost as impossibly expensive as the city proper.

I'm certainly eager to see how they develop as Link expands over the next 30 years, though! Expanding things like has to be part of the solution.

[tylik.livejournal.com]

I've found that it's pretty easy to find good community out here - what's been really hard is finding family. Maybe this is largely about my specific situation (I think it's more than just that, though that probably intensifies the effect) but I can make friends, but it's been hard to make close friends. And argh, dating in Ohio has been so made of fail. *facetokeyboard*

[randomdreams.livejournal.com]

I feel that Hardwick's should be placed on the National Historic Register forthwith.

[randomdreams.livejournal.com]

I'd consider this plan, of course. I can even create some industrial wasteland in a hurry if I have access to a large enough trailer.

[tylik.livejournal.com]

Fuck yes.

I bet we could get a lot of support from the Boeing Engineer's Union...

[gfish.livejournal.com]

Let me reassure you there are no immediate threats that I know of. I'm just worried in the 5+ year range, if the u-dist is going to develop like Belltown has over the last decade.

[gorgeousgary]

IANAL, but that is very likely illegal and possibly in violation of both state constitutions and *the* Constitution. Building permits are strictly about whether the building complies with the life safety, fire safety, health, etc. requirements of the building code. You can perhaps give a break on permit fees to encourage certain activities, but you can't outright hold up the permit.

OTOH, zoning laws can be adjusted to require a mix of market rate and affordable housing. Often called "inclusionary zoning". Usually hated by developers; if applied porrly it can result in the developer having to sell/rent the affordable units for about what it cost to build them in the first place (if not less), meaning they have to increase the prices on the supposedly market-rate units to make any sort of profit, even a modest one.

[Note: I work with building codes for a living.]