On December 13, the Seattle City Council passed new rules for buildings in high-density residential neighborhoods. The decree has drawn predictable criticism from some activists, who complain the new rules will change the city’s character, but in fact the gripes of these activists hit on exactly what’s great about the new rules: They allow more housing.
And better housing, too.
Specifically, the new rules create sweeping incentives to build row houses. They’re a style of housing that comes with raised stoops out front and an orientation directly to the sidewalk, and they’re common in successful urban neighborhoods across the country (think of Victorian homes lined up on hills in San Francisco, brick homes in Baltimore, or New York City brownstones of the kind that Bill Cosby—er, Dr. Huxtable—lived in on The Cosby Show).
In her pivotal book on urban planning, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs’s opening point is that the vitality of a neighborhood hinges on ample sidewalk activity—the kind row houses encourage. “Nobody enjoys sitting on a stoop or looking out a window at an empty street.” To make the street lively, those buildings also “cannot turn their backs or blank sides on it and leave it blind.”
Homes with their backs to the street are exactly the problem created by Seattle’s last building boom, when town houses—as opposed to row houses—proliferated. The square proportions and gabled roofs of town houses allowed them, theoretically, to look like regular homes. But they aren’t like regular homes. They come in sets of four-pack clusters huddled around a yawning driveway, are encircled by curtains of tall fencing, and snub the street. Worst of all, city rules practically required this impractical orientation by mandating each town house include a driveway, a garage, a fence, large setbacks from the edge of the property, and a little patch of corralled private lawn.
“The new rules don’t necessarily prohibit four- or six-pack town houses,” says city council member Sally Clark, who chaired the development committee that oversaw the new changes. “But now your incentive is to do something more creative that is a better fit for the neighborhood.”
The new rules dictate that there is no limit to the number of row houses that can be placed on a lot, and no limit to the width of the overall structure. They can fill out the property to every edge (except the front, where they can come within five feet of the sidewalk), and this higher density lets developers build more on the same lot, potentially saving buyers money. (They’ll also likely be made of wood, which makes them less expensive than a classic brownstone).
The new rules apply only to 8 percent of the city—the parts of the city zoned for so-called multifamily use. The 65 percent of the city that is zoned for single-family homes will remain unaffected. Yet some residents perceive the new rules as threatening greater density.
“For certain properties, developers could put in more units than they could before,” argues Central District resident Bill Bradburd. Seattle Community Council Federation president Jeannie Hale wrote a letter to the council in late November asking them to slow down, because now where three town houses might be constructed, a developer could instead build six units.
Likewise, Hale is opposed to the city council’s decision to scrap rules that required developers to include off-street parking in projects close to transit stops (such as light-rail stations and near buses that run at least every 15 minutes).
Clark dismisses both concerns. “We want to see the density go where we have better transit service,” she says, adding that the council shouldn’t always dictate where to build parking. (In fact, even without parking requirements, many developers build it anyway to qualify for financing loans.) “As for saying you’re doing this too soon, I say to them that I hardly ever get knocked for doing things too fast,” she says.
If anything, Clark did this too slow. She held her first public meeting on town houses in June of 2008. And since former mayor Greg Nickels gave Clark a draft of the bill that year, 418 town house apllications have been filed—under the old rules. 
Fantastic news.
Why can’t they be brick?
James Yamasaki’s art is always rad.
Old school brick isn’t up to code in earthquake country but you could, theoretically use brick or stone as facing, but few builders will because of the added cost.
Yay on the death knell for the crappy 4 pack townhouse and the omnipresent and ugly first floor garage!
Man, I would totally buy a rowhouse.
Sit on the stoop smoking a cig and drinking a beer like I was back in Long Island City.
I’m all for it as long as they use brick, wood (preferably shingled) and have an aesthetically pleasing structure! And NONE of the BULLSHIT cheap-assed metal siding. A majority of the newer Seattle buildings with said metal siding look like the crappy old tool shed I grew up with in the backwoods of Oregon.
We should be preserving older buildings and moving forward with Seattle’s architecture. Whether that be commercial or in this case, residential.
It’s a beautiful city and should not be ruined by cheap materials as a way to make a buck!
Fun! Row houses are so much cuter than town houses. I also think contractors should have more incentive to fix up Pioneer Square neighborhood.
Most lots divided for townhouses include a set of three or four townhouses that are close to the street and then a similar set in the back, close to the alley. Most lots are deep enough to support this sort of division. What happens with row houses? Would there be a row in the back that faces the alley?
Rubus-rowhouses are defined specifically in the code as fronting the street, not an alley.
Townhouses can be off the alley, even when you row houses in front, so you can mix types on one parcel.
They look like pasteboard shoeboxes. Welcome to housing that will never be worth less than it is when you try to unload it on some sucker.
You all know that “rowhouse” and “townhouse” are essentially synonymous back east, right?
Townhouses were built in rows because it was the easiest way to house a lot of people on the small lots near all the stuff found in the centers of towns big and small.
The west coast took it upon itself to ruin the word “townhouse” with those ridiculous garage-straddling boxes, built nowhere near anything resembling walkable urban space with goods and service.
(Don’t even get me started on what this coast’s euphamizing capitalists have done to the words “town center.”)
Or more, more or less.
“It’s a joke, son!”
I like my little patch of corralled private yard. Just sayin’.
I want a rowhouse in Redmond Towne Center!
Howdy,
Not mentioned in the December 14, 2010 Stranger article by Dominic Holden is the Green Factor. This is a landscape rating system that does not require that trees be planted on multifamily lots, or protect existing trees from being bulldozed prior to construction.
Instead, required points are scored by planting trees offsite in the adjacent parking strip. A 5 foot wide patch of soil cannot contain enough roots to grow more than a midget-sized tree. Neither can a 5 foot wide slice of sky in the reduced building footprint setbacks allow wide, spreading trees that offer respite from ugly architectural structures.
This is contrary to the citywide canopy cover goal mandating shade over 30% of the city. This new housing ordinance actively subverts the Comprehensive Plan recognition of the value of a vibrant urban ecosystem.
Also not mentioned in the article is that it changes the development code to repeal part of the protections for exceptional trees (defined as the 1% of the largest trees of each species in the city). The exceptional tree ordinance previously protected exceptional trees located within the setbacks. Setbacks position structures in the center of lots to serve as a buffer against the neighbors. I don’t think the city council realizes how aghast a citizen becomes when his neighbor is allowed to build a 3 story structure right up next o the property line. It causes mistrust of city government, and results in an election-time attitude of “Throw the Bums Out!”. (emphasis mine)
With required open space being renamed “Amenity Space”, a connotation is implied that it is optional to have part of a lot remain unoccupied by an impervious foundation and roof covering the soil. The Seattle Planning Commission recently stated that this open space ‘is the cake, not the frosting’; a direct contradiction in this game of landscape poker semantics.
For a short video of a Seattle Urban Forestry Commission blasting this proposal, click here. When asked by the commissioners if canopy cover goals were considered in the drafting of the draft over the previous 2 years, staff can be heard answering “NO”. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VE9no5-3…
For the polite letter the commission sent to council, saying this multifamily would result in unnecessarily reducing canopy cover, click here. http://seattle.gov/trees/docs/Commission…
@16: Do you want to live in a city, or do you want to live in the fucking woods?
Go plant your 500,000,000 trees in the 92% of the city not covered by this zoning change. But this is how real mixed-use cities get built. This is how you create residential streets that people can walk down and create the requisite density for real transit service. This is how you build a city that functions.
Seattle and it’s fucking “open space” obsession. This place is nothing but open space. Yeesh!
17 d.p.–92% of the city is not zoned in a way to allow let alone promote open space or trees. Industrial, downtown, Neigh. Commercial.
Seattle is not anywhere near the top in terms of parks/open space per capita or as a % of land area. http://www.tpl.org/tier3_cd.cfm?content_…
Which means we do need to be concerned about loss of green everywhere. Not to speak of the tacky but high priced developments sure to result; the ordinance does NOT stop “six pack” townhouses or other ugliness. Or the loss of sound lower rent housing because the council made no accommodation whatsoever of lower income peoples’ needs in this rezone.
Wooden row houses aren’t necessarily aesthetically inferior to brownstone or brick. Most of San Francisco’s Victorian row houses are made of wood, and they’re both beautiful and earthquake-safe.
As for the distinction between row houses and townhouses, they’re very similar and a debate over their respective merits is missing the point I think. The most important development here is that the city is no longer requiring developers to provide parking and there will be incentives for outward facing development as opposed to inward/auto-oriented development. As the article rightly notes, it’s the parking requirement that’s largely responsible for many of the dreaded “six-pack” developments we’ve seen built in the last decade.
People in this city are going to scream and pull their hair out over these zoning changes, but the truth is that in the long run the city should extend these rules beyond the 8% it will apply to. What I think is discouraging about many of the arguments I see against density-encouraging measures like this is that they seem to ignore the fact that the city is growing. Fighting density in the region’s urban centers is, indirectly, an endorsement of cul-de-sac/big box sprawl in the region’s suburban edges.
@17: From what I’ve read, developers aren’t necessarily in love with the six-pack townhouse model. They built them simply because it was the cheapest way to fulfill the minimum parking requirement. With that gone (in 8% of the city), we’re likely to see less of that style.
These seem good for the higher density areas. Can you give some examples for where the zoning for these row houses will be?
What I don’t understand is why everybody seems to hate townhouses. Whenever I walk/bike through a quiet Seattle neighborhood I’ve always enjoyed the townhouses…
@17: Seattle is one of the most beautiful cities in the country for a reason. Don’t be so eager to throw out the good.