If you had ultimate super-human power, how would you design the region you live in to support more people? Would it look like the picture of sprawl directly below or would it look like Vara in Fremont, the project pictured below right? Or would it look like something else? 

That was the question on the mind’s of the Puget Sound region’s top 250 most powerful political, environmental, development, business and nonprofit leaders, who gathered at the University of Washington on April 30 for Reality Check 2008 (for more on this see posts below or my story in Friday’s edition of the DJC).

The overall results of Reality Check? Leaders want a region with compact and livable transit-oriented communities that are also beautiful and support the region’s quality of life. Easy, right?

… Or is that too much to ask and if so, why? If not, what do you do to create those communities? Bill Krieger of Mithun said it means local politicians will have to reinvent zoning and reinvent the entire process of land use, permitting and transportation….. are any of our politicians quite that brave? 

If density is the answer, what’s the best example of good density in your city? Or if density is a word you associate with ‘nightmare,’ why does it have such bad connotations? Where’s an example of how density went wrong?

Ed McMahon of the ULI was the keynote speaker. He said our country is doing some really good work on cleaning air, and cleaning water - but our sense of place is slowly being replaced with convenience stores and Wal-Mart’s.

“The truth is…  the special, unique character (of our towns and cities)… has been in many ways disappearing faster than ever.”

“I could drop you in any U.S. city and you couldn’t tell where you were because it all looks exactly the same,” he said.

If regions plan better and decide what sort of a community and quality of life they want, he said they can keep their character and quality of life. Dense, compact developments are a part of that, he said.

So what do we do? What should the Puget Sound region do? What should the U.S. do? Is there anything to do or is this just a hopeless situation. What would help you build dense communities, or convince you to live in one? Let me know what you think!

Legos have been played with. Leaders have created their plans for people and transit. Gov. Chris Gregoire has extrolled the benefits of compact communities, and Washington’s role as an international leader. In short, Reality Check 2008 is halfway under way and will soon be done (for a definition of Reality Check, see the post directly below).

The fact that so many regional leaders are playing with Legos is definitly interesting and will no doubt be the major focus of the plethora of different news organizations that are here from NPR to TV to print papers. But something else is happening beneath the surface of the Legos… people are listening to the concerns of other regional leaders they might not necessarily otherwise hear.

That’s one of the main points of this excercise, said Greg Johnson, ULI Seattle chair and president of Wright Runstad & Co. For example, members of my table included representatives of Microsoft, Fort Lewis, a Snohomish County economic council member, and the Washington Roundtable. Other people at my table were Seattle City Council Member Sally Clark, Seattle developer Jim Soules, Executive Director of the Puget Sound Clean Air Agnecy Dennis McLeran and Bert Gregory, president of CEO of Mithun.

Representatives of ULI said they spent an awful lot of time planning those tables, and making sure differnet groups were represented, to come up with broader solutions.

What do you think? Will this event come to anything, or will it become yet another regional plan that people trumpet as the next big thing, then forget about a month later? Does this region have any hope of coming up with a comprehensive plan to deal with density, jobs and people?

If you live in an area that has went through this excercise already - Sacramento, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles…. have you seen any differences because of this process? Tell me what you think, you never know who may be listening.

I’m about to head out to Reality Check 2008, along with 250 of my closest business, environment, political and civic leader friends.

Held at the University of Washington and presented by the Urban Land Institute, it’s a high profile day-long event where leaders in their field come together to play with Legos. Yes, I’m serious. After a series of welcome speeches, the 250 leaders will do a planning exercise that uses Legos to represent people, transit and other things. They will physically plan for where a whole lot of people projected to come to this area by 2040 - 1.7 million people and 1.2 million jobs, to be exact - will go.

Perhaps the most impressive thing is the guest list, and the group of people ULI has been able to get it one place. Attendees should include Gov. Chris Gregoire, U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell, Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels, the mayors of Auburn, Redmond, Bothell, Sumner, Lynnwood (and other cities), and an impressive list of council members from different city and civic councils.

On the business front, there’s going to be representatives from Mithun, CamWest Development, Vulcan Inc., Microsoft, Opus Northwest, Wright Runstad and Co., Boeing, and Uwajimaya. Most of the attendees are high level executives, if not presidents. Basically, anybody who is anybody in planning and development is going to be there (or at least is sending a representative). The event is by invitation only.

The exercise has already been done in Washington, D.C. and Sacramento. For more information on it, press here. I’ll keep you updated as it moves along.

Dear reader, it is time to put your analytical (or more likely guessing) powers to the test: what exactly is it you see in the photo to the left?

If you said a mini-mansion, most likely inhabited by a couple or prim family of four, you are dead wrong. Instead, it’s a model of dense urban living that houses ten people in eight bedrooms.

This is where I stayed last week while attending Cascadia’s Living Future Conference in Vancouver, B.C. It’s a charming space that a developer bought, renovated and began renting out to young professionals and students in January.

It’s bright, daylit, airy and dense. It’s clean and well lit and is filled with amicable students and young professionals, including my sister. It’s within walking distance from a number of shops, bars and restaurants in a trendy family neighborhood. It’s a street away from a bus line and only a couple of the house’s inhabitants even have cars.

My only question? Why doesn’t this happen more.

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