The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat has created a video in which industry leaders talk about how to make tall buildings liveable.
The video is part of an ongoing series by the council addressing big-picture questions about tall buildings.
One would think that moving to the Bay Area would afford great advantages for a mid-career urban planner/designer. What with all of the cutting edge parking management and parklets, there is so much to learn. After 10 months I’m beginning to understand the ins and outs of planning in California. Though there are things that I miss about Washington besides the rain. The one thing I never thought I would reminisce about; I find myself mentioning in even non-planner company, the Growth Management Act.
That delightful piece of state policy borne of the exponential growth of the 80’s and 90’s (and often blamed on Californians) is the one key legislation that is so obviously non-existent in the Golden State, that I find myself quoting it endlessly. While the recession has stemmed the tide of suburban growth, and California has in many places adopted smart growth policies and embraced new urbanism for what it’s worth. The fact remains that most California policy and legislation does not have the teeth or the checks and balances of the Washington GMA. Though the State has recently worked to tie Green House Gas emissions to Vehicle Miles Traveled, it’s not strong enough to define a minimum density to limit suburban or exurban growth in a meaningful way. California continues to grapple with its love for the automobile- even while proposing to tear down freeways. While the ex-urbs continue to expand and demand all of the public transit, freeways and other services that support urban areas. I try restrain myself from asking, “What about your urban growth boundary?”.
For all its idiosyncrasies, the GMA is a valuable tool for the urban planner and I for one, miss it greatly.
Sometimes we forget how lucky we are. Sure, Downtown Seattle isn’t perfect. But what other downtown (or “greater downtown”) in the US has all of the following in combination?
- A strong office base that’s the dominant core of its region
- Leadership in the technology, research, and innovation economy
- Room to grow
- Great shopping, from major chains to mom & pops
- Lots of tourism, including business and pleasure visitors
- A good number of residents, from 20-somethings to retirees, and from rich to starving artists
- Excellent arts and entertainment – performing, visual, movies, etc.
- Fantastic scenery and natural setting
- A mix of new, old, innovative, and traditional
- A heart and soul with numerous beloved touchpoints
The “room to grow” point might seem odd. We city enthusiasts tend to love cities that are already mostly full, like Boston, and we can be impatient that Seattle isn’t there yet. But a downtown is an economic engine, not just for enjoyment. Accommodating growth and change is crucial in a growing region and changing world. Seattle is lucky that (a) we have growing organizations, (b) that they want to be in the center of town, and (c) that the center of town has room for them, at any size.
We also owe a big thanks to tourists, an often maligned group. Many do nothing more than fly in, drop hundreds (or thousands) on clothes, hotels, and related taxes, and leave. They subsidize our museums, which can be far more ambitious because of it. They give restaurants more reason to open beyond standard lunch and dinner times. Most don’t drive, as evidenced by the small garages at our hotels. So what if they get in the way sometimes. Why not be glad for the boost, and even flattered that they chose to come?
That gets to the biggest key for a vibrant downtown – variety. If you want great retail and busy sidewalks, you need a lot of types of people doing a lot of types of things. Office workers bring peak daytime crowds and busy lunch places. Residents buy furniture and groceries, and are always around regardless of time and weather. Retirees, service workers, artists, and executives are all valued customers for broad ranges of stores. Special credit goes to any group that adds activity without focusing it all on 8:00 am and 5:00 pm, like students and tourists.
We’re not only doing well on every front, but improving in most. Retail, offices, tourism, housing, research, and the arts are all growing. As a result, we will gain vibrancy, while the “room to grow” gradually diminishes. And maybe we’ll be even luckier.
Voters in downtown Los Angeles have approved key financing for a $125-million streetcar project, according to an article in the Los Angeles Times.
The streetcar would run mainly along Broadway, and Hill and Figueroa streets, three of downtown’s main arteries, connecting various neighbors, including the old banking district, South Park, Civic Center and the fashion district.
Seattle’s 2.5-mile First Hill streetcar line is slated to be complete in the spring of 2014. It will go from Pioneer Square to Broadway and Denny on Capitol Hill.
Seattle has a number of walkable neighborhoods, from Capitol Hill to Belltown. An article in The Atlantic Cities offers 10 tips for making cities more walkable
It’s the late 1980s. A Lower Queen Anne resident is in the habit of scaling the fence to get to Myrtle Edwards Park, sometimes even climbing over slow-moving trains to get there. He hadn’t heard the Blue Scholars song posted on SeattleScape October 11th.
Myrtle Edwards is a heck of a park, and a great route north and south. But it’s always been (nearly) impossible to get to for thousands of nearby residents and workers without going the long way around. Thankfully the temptation to risk fate just went away.
On Friday, the West Thomas Street Pedestrian and Bicycle Overpass opened! Based upon a visit Sunday morning, it already seems popular. A steady stream of people wandered across in both directions, despite the wet streets and ominous clouds, looking very pleased. It’s a good bet that nearby office workers will do the same on work days.
The bridge is a major boost to Seattle’s bike and pedestrian network, including a lot of commuters. In one of the busiest parts of town, and a crossroads, getting anywhere has meant using major, unfriendly roads to get past the tracks. Now, someone working near the Seattle Center and living in Ballard finally has a direct bike route home entirely on the trail and minor streets, assuming he or she goes over the Locks. In a few years even South Lake Union will be have a highway-free route to Elliott Bay.
Of course, having great parks is important by itself, whether for quality of life or economic development, if the former is too namby-pamby for you. Cities that prosper tend to be places people want to live in. People that prosper, in any sense, are often the ones who like where they are, or get inspired by where they are, with plenty of opportunity for both exercise and relaxation. A short walk to have lunch with the waves lapping at the rocks while watching ships pass the snow-capped Olympics…that’ll do it.
It’s not perfect yet. The middle section of the park could use minor upgrades as more people visit and linger near the bridge. A few more benches would be the minimum. Eventually a larger hardscape area would make sense, maybe with a water feature. Lighting that small area at night would also encourage more use, including winter pedestrian and bike commuting.
Here are two more needs going forward: One is a direct stairway from the Magnolia Bridge to the Elliott Bay Trail (the existing one requires walking over the tracks and is sometimes blocked off). Most important of all is continuing the Thomas (or thereabouts) connection east with a skybridge to Capitol Hill, connecting our densest census tracts with our fastest growing employment center.
“These trains move fast, so don’t play around” is advice offered by the Blue Scholars in a music video titled “Zoomin’ through the Sound,” just released by Sound Transit.
The popular Seattle hip-hop group partnered with Sound Transit to deliver train track safety messages. The Blue Scholars are well known for their love of Seattle and interest in supporting community issues.
The video features MC Geologic (Geo), vocalist for the Blue Scholars, catching Sound Transit’s new Sounder service in Lakewood and riding the train to Tacoma and on to Seattle.
Geo raps about wearing headphones around train tracks (“nah, take ’em off so I can hear the train comin’”), scolds a friend who sends him a text (“you playin’ near the tracks, you playin’ with your life”), and speaks his mind about being smart around train tracks (“don’t be a dummy, and use your head”).
“People don’t realize how quiet the Sounder train is, and how fast it travels,” said Carol Doering, community outreach specialist for Sound Transit. “We want everyone who lives and works in the Lakewood area, where our new service just started, to pay attention and obey all the signs and signals around train tracks. We’re very excited to have a group as popular as the Blue Scholars helping us deliver these messages.”
Geo and the second half of the duo, DJ Sabzi, wrote original lyrics and music for Zoomin’ through the Sound. The video was shot in the Puget Sound area by Seedwell, a digital creative studio based in San Francisco whose founders all hail from Seattle.
Iconic backdrops include Mt. Rainier, the Tacoma Dome and downtown Seattle. Sound Transit said it enlisted the Blue Scholars involvement because of their artistic talent and their commitment to important social issues. The group has performed across the country, opening for and sharing a stage with Kanye West, Slick Rick and De La Soul.
The video is part of a larger campaign called “Be Smart. Be Safe.” launched by Sound Transit in connection with new Sounder commuter train service from Lakewood to Tacoma.
“There are a lot of misperceptions about trains, and we want people to recognize the power of a fast moving train and not put themselves at risk,” said Doering. “This video helps raise awareness of the great need to behave safely around train tracks.”
Zoomin’ through the Sound can be seen on YouTube at http://youtu.be/yAjs_2LJ3ec, and the song alone is available for download at www.soundcloud.com/bluescholars. More information about Sound Transit is at www.soundtransit.org, and about the Blue Scholars at www.bluescholars.com.
Right now, possibly September 26th specifically, represents the largest amount of new housing construction greater Downtown Seattle has ever had. This is very exciting for those who want Seattle to feel and function like a real big city, with the vibe, services, walkable lifestyles, and so on that entails.
The “largest” is based upon my own napkin count of housing under construction in about 2,000 acres, from Lower Queen Anne and South Lake Union to the dense part of Capitol Hill to First Hill and the stadiums, gerrymandered up to 901 Dexter and 15th & Pine. It’s imprecise but probably errs low, particularly east of I-5. The 2006 in-construction number topped out at 5,500 units. This week, including some projects that just got building permits and have had some sort of recent activity (at least demo), or had DJC coverage about starting this week, the number is 6,400 units. Or call it 6,000, in case some aren’t real starts.
So where does that leave us in that journey to big citydom, or, using the Vancouver example, smaller-but-more-vibrant-in-some-ways citydom?
The Downtown Seattle Association reports 60,000 residents in 2012, based on census tracts that are vaguely similar to the area I described. They call it 20,510 residents per square mile. By comparison, Vancouver’s Downtown Peninsula, in just 1,420 acres, had 99,000 residents in 2011 for a density of 44,387 per square mile. Including Seattle’s recent completions plus the 6,000 units and a normal multiplier, we should end up with 70,000 residents. That’s excellent by US standards for a city our size (roughly double a similar count in Denver or Minneapolis, which are well ahead of Houston, Dallas, Phoenix, and many others), but to reach Vancouver’s Downtown Peninsula density, we’d need 130,000. At Manhattan density, we’d have 210,000.
Whether we’ll continue along this path hardly seems debatable. New construction might outpace demand, briefly. But Amazon and a steady inflow of local employer relocations are expanding greater Downtown’s workforce. Perhaps the most important driver, basic desire to live in the center, should grow as services are added and new residents make neighborhoods feel friendlier, a circular effect. The demographics will be fantastic for a while due to both baby boomers and their kids. And apparently driving to work is never going to be cheap or quick again, making a short walk attractive to more people. Even if people start buying rather than renting, very little supply will be available, particularly condos. And that will kick off more condo projects.
So here’s hoping the boom never ends (!) or at least keeps coming back, preferably with soft landings. And maybe when we hit 80,000 Belltown will have a supermarket and a conveyor-belt sushi place.
HBB Landscape Architecture has created the Palletable Plants Park, a temporary installation in a parking space in front of the firm’s Seattle office at 215 Westlake Ave. N.
The “park” highlights edible and ornamental plants while showing what can be done with little more than an open parking space, recycled materials and versatile plants. It also has furnishings constructed from recycled pallets.
The installation is part of PARK(ing) Day, an annual one-day-a-year worldwide event designed to show what cities would look like if more public space was allocated for parks, recreation and social interaction rather than for cars.
Locally the event is sponsored this year by the Seattle Department of Transportation. A total of 14 parking spaces, almost all downtown, have been temporarily converted by groups and firms into everything from a photo booth to a Bocce ball court to a place where you can challenge your inner pedestrian by getting a Transportation Tarot Reading.
As part of Park(ing) Day, a number of local organizations, including Feet First, are sponsoring an event in Pioneer Square, which turns Occidental Park, Nord Alley and parking spots on Main Street into a summer lawn party. It ends at 2 p.m. today.
Nine of the 20 tallest buildings under construction in the world are located in China, which is now leading the way in the development of supertall buildings, according to the latest research study by the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat.
There are 239 buildings taller than 200 meters in advanced stages of development in China, far more than any other country. In 2011 alone China completed 23 buildings taller than 200 meters, which was also the top in the world, CTBUH’s research found.
At the end of 2011, there were only 61 buildings taller than 300 meters in the world; by 2017 China alone will have more than 60.
China’s ascendancy represents a fundamental shift in the construction of supertall buildings. In 1970, 92 of the world’s 100 tallest buildings were located in North America. By the end of 2012 only 29 of the top 100 will be in North America.
“China is dealing with the issues and challenges of developing urban environments on a massive scale,” said Timothy Johnson, chairman of the CTBUH and a partner in NBBJ, in a press release.
The surge in tall building developments in China has drawn criticism recently, with some charging that the buildings are too big and too expensive. A recent newspaper editorial referred to skyscrapers as “white elephants.”
The volume and height of tall building development in China is unprecedented. In 1990 there were five buildings taller than 200 meters in China; by the end of 2012 there will be 249.
The list of towers under development includes the 660-meter Ping An Finance Center, which will be the second tallest building in the world when it is completed, most likely in 2015, and the 632-meter Shanghai Tower.
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