This story appears in our Spring Art + Performance 2025 Issue, published on March 5, 2025.
Back in December, after returning from my honeymoon in Paris, my husband and I settled back into our downtown Seattle apartment overlooking the waterfront—proud of our little city. There’s something about living a few blocks from Pike Place Market that makes it easy to see that, like Paris, Seattle has its cute shops, sights, and (dare I say) culture. I am aware this is not a popular opinion, but living downtown RULES. I love being within strolling distance to everywhere; especially as a person with a disability, I am obsessed with how easy it is to get around. Me, my husband, our cat, and my big-girl city vibes.
So when we returned to the States to find that Overlook Walk—an elevated pathway connecting Pike Place Market to the waterfront—was finally finished and open to the public, I was so pumped to see what they’ve done with the beautiful new city feature, built where the viaduct (RIP) once was. My husband and I have been nosy neighbors about its progress over the past year—we’d walk over to it a few times a week, seeing what looked like paths swirling down the new structure, exclaiming, “Oh my god, those look like ramps, those are gonna be ramps!” Good on Seattle, I thought.
The New Waterfront has promised to make downtown the most pedestrian-friendly version of itself. The fancy overlook walk has worked to “restore connectivity downtown … connectivity between people and place, past and present, sea and shore.”
So what did they finally make? As we walked closer and closer, I thought: “No. They didn’t! Those look like… it’s… stairs.” I quickly realized that the new feature centered massive staircases in every place a ramp could have very easily gone. And worse, the only adapted solution was behind the action. Elevators. Banished to the back of the park. We headed toward them, my back to the vista, steam coming out of my ears. We waited to cram ouselves into a tin can. The whole vibe is to enjoy the park—at least give us an elevator made of windows.
As a person who takes daily walks downtown, I want to help you imagine something: My husband and I are shopping at the Market for dinner, we head toward the pretty way home, where we can look at the sun setting and the stunning views. Suddenly, the walk is interrupted. The ramp we are on ends in stairs. Stair after stair. “Oh, look,” my husband exclaims. “There’s a ramp!” “A ramp that leads you to more stairs,” I reply. Fake ramps. Fake access. Entire sections completely closed off as I am exiled to the other way—separated by back-entrance
elevators and interrupted by ableism.
It shouldn’t surprise me—I’ve been doing life without legs for 40-plus years. But I was stunned and enraged. I watched this thing being built from the beginning, I was its biggest fan. Before the stairs went in, I was so hopeful, I yearned for its potential.
Of course we’d put a beautiful new inclusive structure along our waterfront! We’re Seattle, after all! We are a big, modern, tech-forward city with lots of money, seeping with progressive ideals, right? Nope! For some reason, the City of Seattle chose, on purpose, to build an entire area meant for enjoying a walk along the water that marginalizes 25 percent of its population.
The freaking Colosseum is accessible, and that was built in the first century.
It’s lazy work, and any architects who are operating in this way are simply shit architects. We know better—we know that sticking a crappy elevator in the back is dated and ableist, right? So how did we let this happen?
When I was much younger, my older brother, an architect at the time, took me aside to tell me how cumbersome the ADA makes his job. How “keeping up with code” was a burden that I, and others like me, put on him with our existence, and how finding a place to throw an elevator in after you’ve completed all your designs was an annoying afterthought.
I didn’t fully digest the insulting ableism of his complaint until later in life—after learning about universal design.
Universal designers include access within their design, so spaces are equitable, simple, intuitive, and can be used by all people, without any additional adaptations. UD architecture generally looks better because they aren’t just pinning a very important element on at the end, as an afterthought. It’s fluid, inclusive, and stunning. And you already see it all the time: stairless entries, curb cuts, or no curbs at all! What can be harder to imagine, maybe, is sets of ramps and stairs so imaginatively designed that they are used in lock-step with one another as part of one design goal, to be used by all people. So that no one is going the other way, and no matter who you are, you experience the space in the same way.
The Overlook Walk is massive, as surely was the budget. Certainly, finding an inclusion solution was possible. I saw it with my very eyes, as it was being built.
There are no ADA police for this kind of oversight, so of course, it’s up to us crips, the marginalized, to say something to, do something. So that’s what I’m doing here, stirring the pot the only way I know how. I am always gonna write about it ’cause that’s what I can do. And you know the worst part? My favorite thing to do when I write is to take a stroll. Motherfuckers.
The perfect is the enemy of the good. Every project involves compromises.
The overlook walk is 100% accessible. Once you take an elevator to the top of the new Aquarium, there are ramps all the way into the Market.
There was no room to ramp all the way down. Go to the SAM park and see how long the ramp would be to make up all that grade.
It’s pretty steep for a ramp.
In other words there is a reasonable accommodation but not the one you pictured.
You’re missing the point. ADA is about EQUAL access. Not back of the room, can’t see the view, have to leave your partner and ride in a tin can, afterthought access. Equal. It’s a real shame they got this design wrong.
Another big problem with making elevators the sole means of access for people with disabilities is that when they break they tend to stay broke, because no one else cares.
“dripping with progressive ideals?” maybe get out of your downtown bubble and see what Seattle claims is part of the city. Did you know it extends north of the UW? Crazy, right? The boarded up stores and dreary car-choked expanses out here don’t have much in common with the author’s experience.
She kinda lost me at “my” honeymoon…did she go alone?
But yes, Paris is a terrible comparison, from my experience. 14 métro lines with 2-3 minute headways and < 1 minute dwell times, plus the compactness of a city with 6 times the density of Seattle makes for a very different experience. A lot of urbanists and city lovers need to learn that a lot of the voters in Seattle want to live in Atherton CA [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atherton,_California], not Paris or NYC. They want to claim a city as their address but don’t want to live in a shared municipal/metropolitan environment.
But she obviously makes enough to live downtown, the closest approximation to an urban experience. Good for her. A truly progressive city would make that a walkable, accessible reality for everyone, not just those who can afford it.
Last time I went through the new waterfront I thought that there was a new big glass elevator right in front of the ocean pavilliion that goes up to the walk. Maybe it’s not open yet? It would be cool if the ramps didn’t require stairs, but they are quite steep.
The ADA isn’t about “equal access”, it’s about “resonable accomodation”. Looks like the elevator is a great solution.
No switchbacks
nor Spirals?
how is this
even Pos-
sible?
’tis time for a
“too far out!”
Landscape
Designer
to just
fix it
tho w/the djt’s
Savage presidency,
‘wish lists’ may Soon
give way to shitlists & Hitlists
this mayn’t be the time to Fix Anything
other than our leetle
Experiment in
democracy
@9
yeah
but like
mentioned
above, elevators
like to Break & Then what?
who
can Af-
ford to Fix
Anything any more
Meh, Pike Place Market sits at 125ft of elevation. The overlook park has slightly more than that in horizontal distance to get down that far to sea level. It’s over a parking garage, road, and aquarium – not things that can be removed to make space for ramps.
And still, there are ramps where they fit – down from the market expansion, past old stove, around the kids play area and thru the main viewing area. But yeah, then you need to drop down about 80 feet in short space to reach the waterfront. That’s almost 1000 horizontal feet of ramp at the 1:12 slope required by ADA. There’s no room for that, and thinking the designers are shit designers because of this only demonstrates your selfishness and rejection of expert knowledge. Two big commonalities between the left and the right these days.
Those curbs you lament protect us all from vehicular traffic.
Why is your ease more important than our safety to you?
My wife has a disability. We both love the upper and lower walkways. We enjoy the ramps from Western Ave down to the elevator. We appreciate the elevator. The elevator ride takes approximately 10 seconds.
Do you realize what you sound like?
PS Girl! How was your Paris honeymoon? Did your parents pay for it?
Now do tents blocking sidewalks!
“But yeah, then you need to drop down about 80 feet in short space to reach the waterfront. That’s almost 1000 horizontal feet of ramp at the 1:12 slope required by ADA. There’s no room for that, and thinking the designers are shit designers because of this only demonstrates your selfishness and rejection of expert knowledge. Two big commonalities between the left and the right these days.”
THANK YOU! I have two years of landscape architecture under my belt, but I haven’t done slope/grade calculations in a long time. You read my mind. I also took a look at the Colosseum. Round!!!! You know what that means? A spiral of ramps are possible because a circle allows for much horizontal distance.
This is par for the course for The Stranger, however. We can’t have convenient facts getting in the way of victimhood. I’ll bet the author is a fan of the ‘We believe in science” shit too!
@15
too far Out.
‘science’!
what a
Joke:
we’re
with
the
djt.
“How was your Paris honeymoon?
Did your parents pay for it?”
yeah.
Bingo.
you Shouldda
picked Poorer parents.
fawkin’
idjts.