Stay classy, Seattle.

Onslow and other panelists at the luncheon said the current downturn will give the city a chance to rethink some its growth and density regulations, like how much parking it requires, and where and when civic infrastructure should be built. And that might help single-family heavy Seattle to see that denser development in their neighborhoods comes with livability improvements for them, too.

“There’s a lot of good things that can come when density comes,”Onslow said.

“The problem of people wanting to live here is a good one,” agreed Michael McGinn with the Seattle Great City Initiative. “I think we’re smart enough to build smart places, we just need to do it.”

Justin Carder, president of the Capitol Hill Community Council, said even proponents of density have had a hard time stomaching what’s happened to certain sites, like the vacant lot that used to house Bus Stop, Manray and Pony.

“The ideals of density are very popular with the people of Capitol Hill,” Carder said. ”It’s the specifics that they take issue with.”

McGinn said too often, infrastructure is an afterthought to buildings, and it should happen the other way around. Onslow said that is especially true of where the city chooses to build transit corridors.

Seattle needs to think ahead about what its civic infrastructure should look like and let those priorities inform regional decisions, McGinn said. For example, officials should not cut bus service to fill budget holes. With Seattleites voting last year against a tunnel replacement for the viaduct, McGinn said the money now being earmarked to build a bored tunnel should be allocated elsewhere.

He said local government should also be doing more to become efficient, planning ahead so that utility and street improvements always happen at the same time.

“The way we currently live, we could do a helluva lot better,” McGinn said. “And we need to go there, immediately.”

Read the whole story here.

Way back in 2002, I lived in an apartment in East Portland just off Burnside Street. At first, I thought the proximity to Burnside would be kind of a bummer (the nearby Sandy Hut notwithstanding). But after I few days, I realized that my location meant I would never need a bus schedule again. That’s because I could see the bus stop’s digital display from my apartment hallway. Once it read “4 minutes,” it was time for me to grab my bag and head out the door.

The best bus schedules are those that tell you when the bus will actually be there, and a printed schedule, even if its online, isn’t always a good place to find that information. Does such a thing really matter? Many people who ride the bus are minutes from their stop, and they don’t want to stand out in the rain inhaling gas fumes for five minutes. And seeing a line of people in the rain waiting for their bus and inhaling gas fumes definitely isn’t going to get other people out of their cars.

But if you live in Seattle rather than Portland, and you ride the bus, you do have options. Some of you might already know about My Bus, but I only recently realized it was a real thing and not some mock-up. Choose your bus number and stop location, or search by neighborhood to see when buses are likely to arrive. It also tells you when the last bus left, so you can track your loved ones or, if you’re feeling really wonky, do some calculations on whether the 7:57 is consistently so late that you might as well just stick with the 8:13 and squeeze in some extra minutes of sleep.

The best part: It looks like they actually have more stops listed than on Metro’s site. Sometimes, when you’re taking an unfamiliar route, it’s nice to know where the actual stops will be rather than just guessing based on a route map or having to use the Trip Planner just to find out where the stops are.

They’ve got apps for web-enabled phones and texting options, too. I’m going to start using it and see how it goes. If anyone’s already using mybus, let me know if you’re really spending less time standing in the rain.

A reader also alerts me to the presence of One Bus Away, though I haven’t had much chance to explore that yet.  It has a call-in, SMS and iPhone-special version options.

Oh, and if you plan to stay in Seattle for a few more years, Metro plans to have real-time displays on its five Rapid Ride routes, starting in 2010 from Federal Way to Tukwila. Ballard and West Seattle routes will come online a few years later…

I’ve been meaning to post some various babblings about condo design, marketing, and building operation for a long time, as someone who just went through the buying process and managed to close in October (whew!). What struck me during the process was how off-target many of the products and marketing plans were.

My #1 criteria would apparently surprise many people: not style or amenities, but quiet. That meant a big bedroom so I’d be far from the window and far from any common walls, no locations on noisy streets, no big window walls, and no “dog walks.” I chose a unit on the alley side of an all-residential block…it’s been nirvana.

It’s important that the washer/dryer be at least two doors from the bedroom, because the dryer might be turned on right before bed. Alas, my plan was thwarted because my machine has an incredibly loud and lengthy buzzer. Need to figure out how to disable that.

It’s disconcerting to think one’s conversations might be heard from the hall. You know, when one is planning crimes. So an entryway of some kind is important, vs. a door right off the kitchen.

Kitchen against the wall? Why on earth? You need an “L” or “C” shape so you can be at the cutting board and see guests and/or the football game. And who wants to spend their time looking at the wall?

My building has slow elevator doors and the “close door” buttons don’t work. This is infuriating even in a 25 percent full building. As the building fills up, it’ll result in dramatically longer waits for the elevator to arrive.

As for the 25 percent full thing, score! No condo dues are being charged until we reach a much higher sales figure.

It’s a mystery how a building’s front door that can’t be opened from the inside with gloves or by anyone below a certain size can be considered safe egress, let alone user-friendly. (It’s triggered by a person’s electrical charge.) At least it’s been recalibrated so small people can get out OK.

Carpet in the lobby is nice. Otherwise wet shoes squeak.

Condos that are being marketed often have awful websites. First, they use way too much technology, focusing on animations and unfamiliar functionality, and therefore confusing many people and slowing all. Second, and worse, they attempt to typecast their buyers, and blatantly say so in every ad. All that mattered to me was prices, floorplans, and descriptions. A project whose site didn’t provide all of that, or required my contact information, simply wasn’t on my list.

There are many positives too. We have a nice and helpful staff, who put up with my pointed questions about doors and so on (even middle-class buildings have staff if they’re big enough). My punchlist was zero.

P.S. Since the November blog entries died, and my “glad I bought” entry was lost with them, I’ve been meaning to reprise that. While I paid at the top of the market, I’m still glad as hell I bought. You can try to time the market, but it’s more important to watch long-term fundamentals, and to buy a home you like. Seattle looks overbuilt right now, but some of that is just people staying on the sidelines. They’ll get off the fence sooner or later, and when they do they’ll find that this city has at least a three-year gap in new condo buildings. More on that later. . .

Itching for more insight on how Seattle is faring and what the future holds? Several events are coming up next week that might strike your fancy.

On Tuesday, March 10, Mossback columnist and Crosscut contributor Knute Berger is giving a reading of his new book Pugetopolis at Kirkland’s Parkplace Books. The reading starts at 7 and it’s free.

On Thursday, March 12, The Seattle Great City Initiative and GGLO are hosting a free brown bag lunch to talk about ID Vision 2030, a plan to guide growth in the International District. Tom Im, a community organizer and planner for InterIm Community Development Association, will lead the discussion. The brown bag is from 12 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. at GGLO at 1301 First Ave in Suite 301. Enter through the door about a quarter of the way down Harbor Steps, on the north side.

On Friday, March 13,  a CityClub lunchtime seminar will take up “Tough Times in the Livable City,” with a panel discussing what the downturn means for livability and sustainability, “and how we can best use the present moment to prepare for a positive future.” The program runs from 12 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. at Rainier Square in the 3rd Floor Atrium at 1333 Fifth Avenue. Tickets are $20 for members and $30 for everybody else.

Since you’re already mulling, maybe you’d like to write a 50-word response to the question “What is Livability and what can Seattle do to acheive it?” This is the third in the series of 50-worders, after affordability and sustainability, running on the DJC editorial page and in the blog. It’s been a fun conversation so far, and I’d love to hear your thoughts in the final installment.  Send submissions my way by March 19.

In this month’s Atlantic, Richard Florida talks about the America that will emerge from the rubble of the current recession.

Too bad he hasn’t spent more time in the Rainy City, or we might have gotten our own cover, like they did in New York, San Francisco, Chicago and Toronto, proclaiming our coming hegemony. No matter. For the America Florida describes is one where cities like Seattle will get all the candy.

Seattle wins.

No one will escape some serious hurt, Florida says, but some cities will find themselves bouncing back a lot faster.

And some might not bounce back at all. Gone are the days of easy credit fueling growth, Florida says. That will hurt some Sun Belt cities like Phoenix and Las Vegas and the fauxconomies that formed there based largely on speculation and flipping.

Also beaten back (again)  is the long-suffering rust belt and its dated manufacturing and distribution core.  Wisteria Lane-type suburbs will also find a hard time attracting people and growth to their sprawling reaches.

Ironically, Florida argues, cities like New York, the financial centers of the U.S., the ones where much of the damage was done that caused this crash in the first place, will emerge stronger than ever thanks to diverse economies and concentrations of highly educated people.

Florida describes a post-crash America where talent clusters in super-dense mega-regions will rule the day, places with lots of intellectual capitol and the ability to keep attracting those types of people. Places like Cascadia (which he actually mentions by name).

He argues the new administration would be wise to divert resources to those areas to keep people and capitol moving and ready for the economy of the future.

AIA Seattle has just given its first Emerging Professionals travel scholarship to Mithun‘s Cristina Bump to study innovative seawall design in Australia and Canada.

Sydney's Botney Bay seawall

Bump

The scholarship is funded by contributions by Seattle-area Fellows of the American Institute of Architects and AIA members.