When drivers’ manners and safety are discussed, it’s generally about their impacts on each other. But ask anyone who walks – the whims of drivers have huge effects on pedestrians.

I admit to some bias as a constant pedestrian and non-driver. To be honest, I’m pissed.

Typical scene at Second & Spring

It’s not just the big stuff like red-light runners, speeders, and drivers that turn without looking right. All of those can kill or maim pedestrians. Why offenders are allowed to keep their licenses is a mystery.

It’s also the subtle rudeness. My special pet peeve is cars that edge into crosswalks at red lights. This doesn’t endanger (necessarily) but still manages to convey…that the driver doesn’t care about others, that they aren’t qualified to drive, that cars are more important, who knows.

For 20 years, my response has been to touch every car in every crosswalk. Some drivers don’t like that, which is exactly the point. If they look like they might turn without looking, they get a couple taps on the hood. They like that even less, but maybe they’ll think twice next time.

Cars parked on sidewalks are equally annoying. Again, they’re (usually) not safety hazards, except when they force people to walk in traffic, but aside from some rare scenarios (giving birth perhaps?) it’s always rude. Architects are well-schooled in symbolism – maybe one of you can weigh in here.

Drivers don’t want pedestrians to take over lanes of Fourth Avenue. And we don’t plan to — it would be both dangerous and rude, as well as illegal. It goes both ways.

P.S. We’ve done a good job cracking down on drunk drivers. But isn’t rude and dangerous driving just as bad when the driver isn’t drunk?

P.S.2 Thanks to anyone who drives with pedestrians in mind.

Seattle was absent from the American Planning Association’s 2008 Great Places in America list but Boise and Portland both made a showing. Last year, the Pike Place Market made the Great Neighborhoods list.

Could be a protest, could just be lunch time

This year, Boise’s North End Neighborhood was ranked among the 10 Great Neighborhoods and Portland’s Pioneer Courthouse Square was ranked among the Great Public Spaces by the American Planning Association.

I think it makes sense for Seattle to make the list every year. Still, I’m pleased to see other great Northwest spaces make the cut.

Pioneer Courthouse Square serves at once as Portland’s Grand Central Station and Times Square. It’s sandwiched by Max tracks, hosts public concerts and protests and has built-in chessboards and benches that are popular to the homeless, businesspeople and tourists.

Thirty years ago, it was a parking lot. Portland’s 1972 Downtown Plan proposed the square and in 1982 the group “Friends of Pioneer Square” raised $1.5 million to make the project happen.

Yes, this is Idaho

Boise’s North End is a great close-in neighborhood that allows most of its residents a 10 minute walk to downtown Boise and is home to some great old houses.

It has its own little walking district, Hyde Park, that’s peppered with little shops and restaurants. Neighborhoods with strong identities are common in Seattle and Portland, but in Boise, the North End really stands out. In terms of its architecture and walkability, it’s similar to Queen Anne.

Also on the list this year: New York’s Central Park, Wichita’s Old Town, Washington Street in Boston and the Santa Monica Beach.

Incentive zoning to create affordable housing had a lengthy public hearing tonight.

Labor likes incentive zoning saying that “development left unchecked [will] widen the gap between rich and poor.” That doesn’t sound very “pro-development.”

But Steve Williamson from UFCW Local 21 said “We are pro development.” But Williamson added that we “want shared prosperity” which means requiring housing for people making 40% AMI requiring union labor for construction.

Labor supports incentive zoning as 'Development with Justice'

Low income housing advocates are in favor of this as well seeing an opportunity for new housing units and new dollars from a pay in lieu element in the legislation.

But there are two unlikely groups aligned against incentive zoning.

The first is John Fox’s Displacement Coalition. Fox in a recent e-mail about incentive zoning he said that “for months, our Mayor and most of our City Council have been hashing over new programs designed to reward developers with tax breaks, more density, and other giveaways.” In the same e-mail Fox calls for a moratorium on growth.

The second vocal group tonight was the business community and developers. Steve Leahy of the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce said that the proposal is actually a disincentive for new development. Up zones are incentive enough and the best way to create more affordable housing. They don’t see a giveaway here.

What do single family neighborhoods think of incentive zoning? On October 21^st the City Neighborhood Council will be holding a meeting to discuss what incentive zoning might mean for single family neighborhoods.

Will single family neighborhoods join developers and the Displacement Coalition against incentive zoning? Do neighborhoods see incentive zoning as more density at their expense? Does the recent financial crisis make incentive zoning moot since credit has frozen and nobody can build or buy?

Erica Barnett’s column in this week’s Stranger focuses on sidewalks. It is a great rundown of the politics of sidewalks, street improvements and today’s tension between developers and neighborhoods.

But I would suggest that, like many issues, single-family politics drives the sidewalk discussion.

Last weekend I was visiting family in Tacoma. Someone walked in and said “What is the deal; you have the last unpaved street in Tacoma. Gravel? What gives?”

A heated discussion ensued about why the project didn’t happen. “We wanted asphalt and rolled curbs. The City wanted sidewalks that would have slashed into people’s yards and been outrageously expensive.”

I piped up and said “actually the way it is right now is best for everyone, especially for China Lake. If the street was paved, it would create a huge drainage issue because of the new impervious surface. That would create a huge expense and a bunch of dirty water. The road now has much better drainage. Gravel is the way to go. Keep it the way it is!”

Everyone looked at me for a beat with a bit of bewilderment and disdain—as if I had just spoken in Latin—and then continued their debate about sidewalks.

No offense to Tacoma. The opinions expressed there are the same ones that drive the sidewalk debate in Seattle. The bottom line on sidewalks is that they are often needless status symbols creating more impervious surface which is expensive to mitigate. How about those swales?

The next time you hear someone saying “for crying out loud, we don’t even have sidewalks!” think about Palantine NW pictured here.

We don’t always need sidewalks to support pedestrian-friendly and pedestrian-safe neighborhoods. And they shouldn’t be a litmus test as to whether a neighborhood has favored status with the City.

Sidewalks add impervious surface which we have to mitigate with huge drainage projects. Let’s focus on how we move pedestrians safely, not creating more sidewalks. Progress can be less sidewalks!

A recent afternoon walk around Capitol Hill led me from Volunteer Park down 14th.

Along the way I saw this single family fantasy:

Beautiful bricks!

Then not to far down the road yet another study in brick:

This is the Fairhome. Unfortunately there is no vacancy.

The Fairhome is a solid building that recalls a time when apartment buildings looked like they were built to last forever.

If we peek around the corner of the Fairhome we see:

Gasp! Single family!

And across the street are some great looking old homes.

Solid Seattle houses.

And just to the south is this little multifamily number:

Kid on bicycle not included.

And a bit further south, a duplex.

Scale (as in “this project is out of scale with our neighborhood”) is often used to reject multifamily in and around single family neighborhoods. This neighborhood came together when suburbs were not common and when expectations about scale were different. Look at the stark contrast in scale on 14th and Mercer:

This is a Seattle Housing Authority property.

Talk about out of scale! A high rise of low-income housing?

But this neighborhood — old and new, wealthy, middle class and poor–seems to be working.

The mix is what we want in Seattle’s housing future. There isn’t a clear line or barrier between types of housing but a gradual progression of types of housing, income materials and style. This looks like it happened “organically” but couldn’t we plan the same kind of integration? Who wouldn’t want to live in any unit or house between the Park and John?

Does the financial crisis mean the end of the American Dream? What does that mean for the Seattle Dream?

News from Washington D.C. has people baffled, worried and angry.

An economist from Harvard offers an observation in a recent commentary that raises some questions similar to the ones raised in our discussion on Monday:

So what should the government do? Eliminate those policies that generated the current mess. This means, at a general level, abandoning the goal of home ownership independent of ability to pay. This means, in particular, getting rid of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, along with policies like the Community Reinvestment Act that pressure banks into subprime lending.

The right view of the financial mess is that an enormous fraction of subprime lending should never have occurred in the first place. Someone has to pay for that. That someone should not be, and does not need to be, the U.S. taxpayer.

His argument is persuasive and has me rethinking the bailout (cough) I mean rescue.

But abandoning the goal of “home ownership independent of ability to pay” is a prescription easily given by a Harvard economist but not from local politicians. Politicians don’t have the courage to ask people to revise their expectations as Miron suggests. But what if they did?

Is it possible that growth pressures combined with the financial crisis could spawn a local movement supportive of density in and around single family neighborhoods?

Will the crisis push environmentalists, developers and housing advocates closer together? Or will the crisis between Main Street and Wall Street add fuel to the fire of our own local class worries about housing and growth? Could this mean a rematch between the ghosts of Forward Thrust and Lesser Seattle?