A moment to be proud of:
The first commenter on the YouTube post: “…and it will be 11 years before we get this in toronto… omg.” It’s good to be the object of desire. It’s good to begin to be a real city. ๏ปฟ
Charles Mudede—who writes about film, books, music, and his life in Rhodesia, Zimbabwe, the USA, and the UK for The Stranger—was born near a steel plant in Kwe Kwe, Zimbabwe. He has no memory... More by Charles Mudede
yeah, except Toronto has had a subway system for years and years that we’ll never have.
Meh, I like being a fake city. The more people in the PNW the sadder I get. ๐ ๐ ๐ ๐ Those are four faces of sadness. Don’t make my type out anymore, for the love of god PLEASE.
@1: Hate to break it to you, but no, Seattle is not a real city. It’s a big suburb: car-centric transportation, single-family homes everywhere, whitebread culture, full of people yearning for a simpler, less crowded, more rural lifestyle. As Jonathan Raban has observed, it’s a place people move to in order to be close to nature. What the hell kind of “city” is that?
@1: See, look at DoolDoo’s comment @4. Like most Seattleites, she/he wants to roll up the welcome mat and keep everyone else out. That is not the mark of a real city. People in real cities welcome newcomers, they love diversity, they love the intensity and energy of, well, city life. People in fake cities (at least DoolDoo is honest) want to keep things small and cozy, are distrustful of newcomers, are forever nostalgic for a lost golden age. This is small-town mentality.
@1 yes, in the rest of the world “city” doesn’t mean Albany NY or Portland Oreg. or Greenville SC it means a national or regional metroplis like Paris, London, NY LA etc. Those are “real” cities. Funny, but that’s what people (other than us) mean. Seattle is unique because it’s not as big or urban or sophisticated as those places, yet it’s the biggest thing around for 900 American miles. So we are vastly more sophisticated than the surrounding 900 miles, vastly more urban, generally, so it sort of feels like we’re world class. Compared to Bend and Spokane and Sand Point, in fact, we are, we’re in a totally different class, culturally.
But in terms of the world scale, no, Seattle isn’t a world class real city.
Same with the light rail, for us it’s a wowie zowie! Woo hoo! But really one measly line on which you will be able to visit hotbeds of “urban” living like the lower Rainier Valley with its vacant land, or that vibrant area known as Tukwila — isn’t much of a transit system. Even after the expansion its coverage will be very limited. It will not change daily life for most people in Seattle, so it will not be like the systems in those “real” cities.
So before light rail we weren’t a real city and afterwards we still won’t be. The funny thing, that’s why most of us like it here. We’re not overdominated by a huge metropolitan agglomeration of people, sprawl, highways, commuter lines and we don’t want to be. What we are is something that doesn’t exist elsewhere. Imagine, say, Bordeux — if there was no other big city in all of Spain, England, France, Switzerland and most of Germany. We’re a unique combination of isolation and sophistication, a center with its own hinterland that is set off from the rest of America. We are literally an outlier.
We don’t have the the word for our uniqueness.
We’re the noncity city.
Much faster than I thought it was. This should get you from dowtown to the airport in just over one minute at that speed?
But actually with the stop in Tukwila I wonder if getting to the airport will be like Oakland Airport’s Air BART Bus that takes you to the nearby BART Station. You sit for ten minutes, on a ten minute bus ride, because the driver is always on their break.
“Hate to break it to you, but no, Seattle is not a real city. It’s a big suburb: car-centric transportation, single-family homes everywhere…”
Agreed, but this is one big step forward.
No, Seattle. You ARE a real city and always have been.
The only thing you have that’s not characteristic of a “real city” is low low self-esteem.
Suck it up already.
@6
Get over your “uniqueness.” The smugness of Seattliets is getting dangerously close to that of NYers but they at least have a subway.
This still isn’t anything.
Light Rail will become an expensive folly. It will be grossly underutilized by those it was intended to get off the roads. Those with cars will continue using cars. Since there is ZERO parking, those who live further than a few blocks away will continue using their cars. They will NOT want to walk in the rain just to have the pleasure of sitting with the masses.
All light rail does is shift those who were displaced off their former bus routes onto the light rail routes.
The wealthier taxpayers have simply paid for a fancier way of the lower class(es) to arrive in style into Seattle. The goal of reducing congestion has failed.
Until such time as they decide to put in high capacity parking garages, this is complete foolishness. Light Rail will instead quickly develop a poor reputation which it will fail to be able to shake. Sound Transit is failing to consider that Light Rail will develop a certain reputation, either positive or negative, and word will quickly spread whether it is worthwhile to put up with the unwashed masses in exchange for the much smaller benefits of mass transit in the rain.
Can’t wait to take this to a Sonics game.
@5 You hit the nail on the head. I am from a VERY small town, so I’m probably not the best representative of what it is to be a “Seattlite,” and I really don’t care if people move there, in the end, but it IS detrimental to the natural beauty of the region, and that IS valid worry. Plus, it was sorta funny.
Also, I don’t think it’s up to you to decide what constitutes a ‘real’ city. The beauty of the city, in my eyes, is the overwhelming diversity and constant redefinitions. It is it’s own life, independant of the creatures that live in it. It is constantly shifting and changing and growing. Seattle is as valid a city as any else, just different, which, as a city person, I’m sure you understand and embrace….right?
Why yes number 14, when people say it’s not a real city, they are absolutely speaking LITERALLY.
As in “what is the legal definition of this place called Seattle…city or township or unincorporated area?” That’s what we’re talking about for sure!
Thank you for pointing out that in fact, in reality, Seattle is a city.
“we are in fact real,” can we quote you on that?
From that perspective, this thing looks even more horrifyingly dangerous than imagined!
Dumb question: why does it stop in the middle of nowhere, and then reverse? I don’t live in Seattle.
Wow, @14, dude, calm down. Nobody was questioning the physical reality of Seattle. Time for a little coffee to wake up the basic comprehension function of your brain.
@11: “Light Rail will become an expensive folly. It will be grossly underutilized . . .” Well, for a while, certainly. But it’s not because, as you claim, it lacks massive parking structures nearby; it’s because NIMBY assholes have obstructed transit-oriented development near many of the stations.
@13: “I am from a VERY small town, so I’m probably not the best representative of what it is to be a ‘Seattlite,’ and I really” Actually, that makes you a perfect Seattle immigrant. I’ve found (after being trapped here for six years) that the folks who move here and love it almost all came from small towns or suburbs. As for the whole idea that population growth is “detrimental to the natural beauty of the region,” the problem is the kind of growth we’ve had (suburban sprawl), not the fact of growth. Other cities (Portland and Vancouver, for starters) have show that they can grow with less effect on the surrounding countryside and fewer carbon emissions (because of density and public trans).
@2 Toronto has had an underground subway system for 55 years in fact. Plus street cars and buses that cover pretty much all of the city. But, in fairness to Seattle, Toronto is very much a grid with mostly straight NS-EW streets.
“@11: “Light Rail will become an expensive folly. It will be grossly underutilized . . .” Well, for a while, certainly. But it’s not because, as you claim, it lacks massive parking structures nearby; it’s because NIMBY assholes have obstructed transit-oriented development near many of the stations.”
I thought the developers controlled the city. If there was enough demand, the units would be built.
“I’ve found (after being trapped here for six years) that the folks who move here and love it almost all came from small towns or suburbs.”
Trapped here? Please call the police, have them untie you and leave for your precious better place.
People that come here and rave about what a great place it is and then proceed to argue that we should change to be much more like the place they came from, well…
Toronto is also five times the size of Seattle, and is part of the great East Coast megalopolis of a hundred million people.
“Real city” doesn’t mean anything; Seattle is a medium-sized Western-style (i.e., spread out and suburban) city. It resembles Phoenix more than it resembles Sao Paolo.
So many stops on this light rail line that are outside of Seattle. Maybe the city itself needs to break off from the suburban car f-ers and start making its own metro system. I vote for streetcars (that’s in the plural).
it’s a start. 40 years late, but a start.
skipping southcenter and not reaching the airport on opening day were bad bad moves.
@20: “I thought the developers controlled the city. If there was enough demand, the units would be built.”
Well, you thought wrong! Developers can only build what’s legal. I know about the Mt. Baker stop best. It’s at the huge intersection of MLK and Rainier. It’s not zoned for multi-family housing (it allows light industry and retail). Developers asked for the zoning to be changed, the rich neighbors to the east freaked out, and thus, no zoning change. I believe the same thing happened on top of Beacon Hill. So, no, the developers do not control the city.
“Trapped here? Please call the police, have them untie you and leave for your precious better place.”
Is there some literal pill that Seattleites have taken this morning? For lots of folks, in lots of places, family/work obligations outweigh one’s preferences about where to live. That’s my situation. So, no, I didn’t mean “trapped” literally.
“People that come here and rave about what a great place it is and then proceed to argue that we should change to be much more like the place they came from, well…”
I’m sorry, did you ever hear me rave about what a great place this is?
Actually since they’re about to start building light rail, Toronto is scheduled to have their first line open in 3 years, in 2012.
Once they’re done with that, they’re going to build 6 more lines for a total of 7, the last one scheduled for completion in 2018.
So what that Torontonian really meant was, it’s going to be 10 years before Toronto has 7 of those.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transit_Cit…
Also, I was really amused by the person who called the entire eastern half of the US a ‘giant megalopolis of a hundred million people’. They must have gotten confused when they were in upstate New York and found that the rural East Coast was about as dense as Ballard.
Note in the video that all the cars moving in the same direction as the light rail pass it. Suck.
It is so stupid that light rail is slower than cars on the freeway. What the F? It would be obvious and persuasive if people on the freeway saw that it was faster, not slower.
#11. “The unwashed masses?” Whatta prick, this guy.
I’m home for a visit, love Seattle, Seattle is my home, but hell yes, Seattleites are smug. I spent six months in Iowa City announcing, “I’m from…Seattle!” only to be looked at blandly rather than with the envy and awe I thought I’d generate. So now I say, “Oh, yeah, I’m from Washington State.” They’ll say stuff like, “Where? I lived in Bellingham once.” But nobody – well – nobody gives a shit that I am – or any of us are- from Seattle. Hate to break it to you.
@25, are you dense or something? I didn’t call the entire eastern half of the US a megalopolis; I was referring to the Portland-to-Richmond corridor, for which it has been a standard name for fifty years (Gottman, 1961). And Toronto, while slightly discontinuous from it, is by Western standards a mere hop away, an afternoon’s drive, and the intervening “rural” area is dotted with small cities that would be considered quite large out here — Syracuse and Albany are both bigger than Spokane, for instance.
@27: It will be faster than the freeway traffic at rush hour, that’s for sure.
As to whether Seattle is a “real” city or not, yes it is. Maybe you don’t think it compares well to other cities, particularly on the east coast, and that’s fine. But don’t say it isn’t a real city; that’s so patently stupid as to be ludicrous.
@27…the cars on the freeway are faster in this movie, but wait until there’s traffic…a daily occurence on southbound 5 most every weekday. The train will look plenty fast then.
@29: “hell yes, Seattleites are smug. I spent six months in Iowa City announcing, ‘I’m from…Seattle!’ only to be looked at blandly rather than with the envy and awe I thought I’d generate.”
I’m so glad you shared this, Lola. Before I moved here, a friend (who moved here many years before and fled) had warned me about the smugness, and I didn’t even really know what the word truly meant until it hit me in face. When I was brand new here, I’d tell people that I’d moved recently from Chicago, and they’d say, in one form or another, “Wow, you must be glad to be out of that hellhole.” A barista actually used those exact words.
The layers of assumption in that attitude — that other places are hellholes, that Seattle is the promised land, that everyone always knows that these assumptions are true without even having to question them — really just blew me away.
It needs sound, so we can turn our speakers up to federally-unsafe noise levels to properly appreciate it.
Almost every North American city has a lot of civic pride, which is a good thing… but that can be misinterpreted and/or miscommunicated as smugness in a different city. Shocker.
Intentional smugness is a common quality in the homo sapiens species (and probably other animals in a language we don’t understand yet.) Shocker.
“Real cities” are just bigger, usually older cities. Shocker.
The term “real” is the stupidest (and most smug) colloquialism of modern culture i.e. “real city”, “keepin’ it real”, etc. Shocker.
Since this video lacks audio, I suggest listening to Philip Galss’ “Modern Love Waltz” while viewing. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=le6cQKC1_…
Firstly, I think the word people mean to use when they say “real city” is actually “metropole” or “metropolis” (I like the sound of the former better). To that, I would agree and say that Seattle is most definitely not one. It is a large high-tech, aerospace and retail core, with a state university, surrounded by large bedroom communities but it is not a metropole. Defining what a metropole is is always an interesting exercise, because there are some clear parameters to consider — population size relative to region, political/financial/cultural infrastructure, research institutes, world/nation/regional influence, transportation, tourism, etc. — but within a country or world-region, there’s also an amount of relativity especially with regard to population and local/state/national role as a city. In Germany, even Cologne (2x the size of Seattle) and Frankfurt aren’t considered metropoles, even despite that Frankfurt is the seat of the German stock exchange, and Cologne is the country’s major media hub. Out of the dozens of really big (500,000+) German cities, even considering Hamburg and Munich, Berlin (3 mil) is probably the country’s one and only metropole.
On a much larger population scale, Shanghai is obviously a metropole (18 mil), while Chengdu with 11 million residents, is (strangely) probably not one — an enormous industrial city, yes; metropole, no.
The Seattle area certainly has cultural, research and economic draws, but doesn’t add up anywhere else, certainly not in population. The San Francisco area, similarly sized, however, is. I find it all hard to explain, but difficult to disagree with. It’s half logic and list-checking, and half ‘feeling you get when you’re there’, isn’t it?
The funniest thing to me so far about this thread is the Seattle smugness that has been discussed. Funny only because just a three-hour drive to your north is, in fact, a metropole, a “real city” whose population has every right in the world to be smug about itself, but somehow isn’t. Funny, and a little embarrassing. I guess it’s sort of like “ugly sibling syndrome”…
well put Judith
YMMV, but there’s definitely smugness in Vancouver, mainly to the rest of the U.S. moreso than Seattle or Portland.
Toronto’s rail transit network is quite a bit larger than Seattle’s. Moreover, their public transportation network is the second most heavily used in North America, behind the MTA. Several other US cities have larger rail networks, but Toronto has a system that makes it very practical to use transit over any other option. In other words, it makes far better use of the existing infrastructure than many larger operations.
So, no, I really don’t see how Seattle’s one light rail line through a low-density corridor is really so enviable to residents of the great North American metropolises. It’s not.
Cool video, though.
what’s extra dumb is that you have to take two transfers to get from the light rail station to southcenter mall.
@11 – you are the hatterdasher to asshats throughout the intersphere. My single question for you, ‘reality check’, is what massive car parking structures are there in say, NYC or Paris, cities with inarguably impressive and successful transit systems? I’ve travelled both, and am a former NY’er: and the point of the trains, as well as I could tell , wasn’t to give a link to car traffic – it was to create a way to move people, preferrably from home to work and back, and often from home to commerce/events/ports and back. I wonder if your mindset is a bit trapped in your car (with the proverbial windows rolled up on a hot day). By no means should seattle take baby steps (or step backwards) and cater to transit-phobes by laying a gentle transistion for them. And yes, the light rail is a very nice way of burdening the taxpayers to pay for a tool that likely more poor people will use than rich people. Like every other government service (DUH).
Besides, it counters some of the bad will the so called ‘lower class’ might feel toward the city billionaires for buying their way through to getting the SLUT built, or the stadiums, or biotech rezoing in cascade, or the Viadumb tunnel, or the rich landowner nimbyism keeping 520 from being retired/built right….
Judith – thanks for the POV. I prefer the idea that Seattle is quite happily (smugly perhaps) a Small city. 25th largest in the nation according to some counts, but tiny on a scale compared to hong kong or nyc. But it’s a city in my book, no doubt. I find the qualifiers (metropole, real city, big city, urban enough, blahblahblah) an exercise in futility. It’s not a village, nor a farm. Seattle has wonderful architecture, interesting/unique industry, port/transportation connections of importance, areas of density (pinehurst: not a city, cap hill – very much a city) and culture (though arguably its fading there). my 2 bits on the table, there you go
frak: haberdasher, even.