Go to any city council meeting on density, an environmental group meet-up, or even a house party, and you’re going to find them. I refer to new urbanists. These folks care very much about growth in our cities, and through their work they hope to have an impact on what this growth should look like. They advocate for density, for walkable neighborhoods, for transit, for human-scale development, and for a greener future. And according to my experience, they never do any of this outside the city of Seattle.
Take, for example, the proposed development on the current Dearborn Goodwill site south of the International District (which has since been canceled). The project had all sorts of critics, but urban design folks came down especially hard on the supposed deficiencies: too big, too much parking, box stores are bad, and so on. Friends of Seattle complained that “though the development may feature up to 200 affordable housing units … the commercial scale of the project (two big-box retailers) and bloated parking garage could overwhelm the local neighborhoods.” Whatever that means…
For any new project in Seattle, it seems there are no shortage of Seattle-based urbanists to complain. The Dearborn development would have bested just about any suburban development outside the city, but I can say with some authority that you wouldn’t have seen the quality density/quality design crowd on a Tuesday evening in the city hall of Newcastle, or Redmond, or Auburn.
To my new urbanist friends, I ask: Why so much attention on Seattle projects? Instead, try concerning yourself with developing the city centers of places like Auburn, Federal Way, or Redmond, places where your cause has more room to grow. How about pushing for dense, well-designed workforce housing in Bellevue near Crossroads? Go to Kent and help them redevelop their town center around their train station. Fix your gaze (and your expensive black frame glasses) towards downtown Renton, and help them to transform their downtown from an automall to a place people actually would like to live?
Seattle is a nice place to live in no small part because folks like you have demanded the best from the new development. But its time to take the fight to places where the battle isn’t already won.
Nobody cares about the suburbs. So long as Kemper Freeman rules Bellevue, and Kent is stupid enough to turn down light rail, why should we expect them to change?
Other than say Everett and a few places.
Pushing a pebble uphill is ok, but pushing a boulder up a steeper hill is not fun.
why don’t YOU move there and fix it? it will only take the rest of your life to see incremental improvement.
and fuck your expensive glasses comment.
A good call to action, with a good point, that is undermined by your complete failure to engage with the reasons that these new urbanists do not engage where you want them to.
A few off the top my head:
-The burden of traveling to distant communities that are not your own or following the doings of those communities so you know when to engage. Especially since these people work on a largely volunteer, passion basis.
-The potential (real or perceived) for these sub and ex-urban communities to distrust or be out and out hostile to “meddling” from city folk
-The less immediate and obvious necessity and benefit of working in and for communities that remain largely out of sight, out of mind.
Not saying any of those issues are right, but your ignoring of them in favor of moralizing harangue is going to do little if any good. Especially with your useless, demeaning crack about expensive glasses. If you want people to do something to vicariously assuage your moral guilt, you should probably engage with the realities of their position and not demean them.
You make a good point here. That Dearborn development was a paradise compared to how a similar project would’ve been designed in Renton or Lynnwood.
Duh, it’s because we don’t live in those places! I feel very comfortable advocating for Capitol Hill, which is my neighborhood, and pretty comfortable advocating for Seattle, my city, but the suburbs? Who am I to tell Federal Way how they should make their city? I think the best we can do as new urbanist Seattle residents is to make Seattle an example to the suburbs. Actually, one other way to influence suburbs would be to become active with a nonprofit like Futurewise, which works on a more regional scale.
Cascade Land Conservancy has a program to do exactly what this article proposes – the Cascade Agenda Cities program. The “Cities” program has an advocacy arm (in addition to other arms that work with City/Regional leaders and local planners) called the “Community Stewards” program that recruits, trains and organizes people to push the new urbanist agenda all across our region. Very cool stuff.
Why not focus on the suburbs? Because the new urbanists you mentioned are first and foremost NIMBYs, and the suburbs don’t happen to be in their backyard.
The opposition to that Dearborn project was easily the stupidest, most misguided, self-defeating application of liberal urbanism this city has ever produced.
That project would have drastically reduced 10s of thousands of car trips, brought affordable consumer goods closer to those who need them, provided low income housing, expanded the Goodwill program there, brought thousands of shoppers to the area, and turned several blocks of wasteland into a pleasant and walkable public space. Not in our backyard!
P.S. to the Stranger: You lost your best people to Publicola, and you hire people like Will that attack new urbanists trying to stop a new mall in Seattle? Get back on track guys–hire some real journalists, please.
@7: New urbanists aren’t NIMBYs. They are YIMBYs if the development is positive. For example in Capitol Hill we are saying “yes we want a streetcar” as opposed to NIMBYs in South Seattle who said “no light rail” and now are saying “no density.” The Dearborn development may have tried to dress itself up as a new kind of urban mall, but it was still going to be a mall. Believe me, I would love to have a Best Buy downtown–that doesn’t require a mega-shopping-center. Malls are part of the past and have no place in this city. We can do better.
@ 8 FTW.
Fuck you, political hipster.
A worthwhile movement finally gains enough momentum to really shape the city into a better place to live, and now you’re snickering and suggesting that, “Hey, guys, don’t get too serious about this! I mean, like, whoa, amirite? We already did that! Urbanism is so 2008.”
Fuck you.
don’t you live in exurban redmond? black pot, meet will kelley-kamp.
Have you been to Renton lately? I mean real downtown Renton, not the car sales area along Rainier/Grady? Your comment suggests you haven’t. My aunt lives there, and they’ve been doing some amazing transformation around their old downtown, concentrated around the bus transfer center which is right next to the old downtown, and near the river. Shiny new dense condos, new shops and restaurants, a new space for their very nice farmer’s market…
It’s pretty darn impressive in my opinion.
Oh you were talking about The Landing. That is most definitely NOT downtown Renton. You should go to the real downtown Renton, it’s pretty quirky. Go when the farmer’s market is going.
@7: you are totally right. The anti-Dearborn ‘coalition’ was a legion of idiots. I hope they enjoy what they got–blocks and blocks of blight interrupted by crack whores and transients. And everyone south of the ship canal drives to SeaTac if they need something from Target. Good work guys.
@9
Malls have been around since the dawn of cities, although they’ve been called things like “markets”, “piaza”, “plazas”, and “platze”.
I suspect they’ll be around for another few thousand years as well.
One size does not fit all.
Something that makes sense in Seattle doesn’t always work for an area with different geography and density.
Let’s look at a place like Kent – building anything long term is a bad idea, cause it’s in a flood plain that will be wiped out when Rainier goes, and it really shouldn’t do anything to increase residential density other than on the hills (aka the places to go when the valley burns).
Think before you blog.
Seattle urbanists descending on Auburn to tell them what’s what? Dumbest idea on the Slog in, well… OK, there were some pretty dumb ideas on the Slog yesterday, come to think of it.
Dumbest so far today, but the day is young.
Because the suburbs don’t need better design for their sprawl. They need to be stopped from sprawling.
What the fuck?
Oh my god, thank you! Please come out and save us from ourselves!!! We don’t have much book learning or fancy pants plannin’. Just ad hoc task forces, and permanent Planning & Policy Commissions to back that up, and council Land Use Committees to back that up. Sure we have to make policy by the flicking lamp light of our log cabins, but somehow we get by.
As for “stopped from sprawling,” kindly read the Growth Management Act or STFU. The Seattle area has the second most strict growth rules in the US (behind Portland). And in my little neck of the woods, we’re completely against sprawl, all of our growth recently having come from annexation.