Seattle Department of Neighborhoods is offering six free van tours of the city’s P-Patch community gardens from 1 to 3 p.m. on Saturdays this month and next. They depart from DoN’s Neighborhood Service Centers.

They will be hosted by DoN’s P-Patch Community Gardening staff and volunteers, and offer opportunities to meet the gardeners.

They tours are:

SOUTHEAST TOUR: September 18, 1-3 p.m.
Cascade P-Patch. Courtesy Seattle Department of Neighborhoods.

Meet at Southeast Neighborhood Service Center, 3815 S. Othello St.
Tour includes: New Holly, Thistle, Hillman City, Colman & Bradner P-Patches

Picardo Farm P-Patch. Photo courtesy of Seattle Department of Neighborhoods.

SOUTHWEST TOUR: September 25, 1-3 p.m.
Meet at Delridge Neighborhood Service Center, 5405 Delridge Way SW
Tour includes: High Point, Delridge, West Genesee, Roxhill and Lincoln Park P-Patches

LAKE UNION AREA TOUR: October 2, 1-3 p.m.
Meet at Fremont Neighborhood Service Center, 908 N. 34th St.
Tour includes: Cascade, Belltown, Queen Pea, Interbay and Eastlake P-Patches

CENTRAL TOUR: October 9, 1-3 p.m.
Meet at Central Neighborhood Service Center, 2301 S. Jackson St.
Tour includes: Judkins, Hawkins, Spring St., Squire Park and Howell P-Patches

NORTHEAST TOUR: October 16, 1-3 p.m.
Meet at University Neighborhood Service Center, 4534 University Way NE

Cascade P-Patch. Photo courtesy of Seattle Department of Neighborhoods.

NORTHWEST TOUR: October 23, 1-3 p.m.
Meet at Greenwood Neighborhood Service Center, 8515 Greenwood Ave. N
Tour includes: Good Shepherd, Fremont, Hazel Heights, Greg’s, and Ballard P-Patches

Space is limited and reservations are required.  To register, go seattle.gov/neighborhoods/ppatch/tour.htm, or call (206) 386-4123.

The P-Patch Community Gardening Program, in conjunction with the P-Patch Trust, a nonprofit organization, oversees 73 P-Patches distributed throughout the city, according to the Department of Neighborhoods.  Neighbors plan, plant and maintain the gardens.  Much of the produce harvested is donated to local food banks and feeding programs.  In 2009 alone, gardeners contributed over 18,500 hours and donated about 12.4 tons of food, according to the department.

My bus crosses the Aurora Bridge with its wonderful public view of Mount Rainier, the city, the ship canal, the Olympics and Cascades. Since we’re destined to lose our grand aerial view from the Alaskan Way Viaduct, the pending loss of the view from the Aurora Bridge is even more aggravating.

Aurora Bridge lit up. Enhanced photo by Kenji Tachibana

So we’re spending $4.6 million, forcing residents of Fremont and Queen Anne to endure months of daytime irritation and sleepless nights while the construction crews drill and rivet and corrupt our bridge so we can possibly deter a small subset of suicide attempts.  But we’re not going to solve the problem of suicide this way and we’re not going to eliminate every hazard to our physical and mental health by such clumsy methods.  If the goal is to spend gas tax dollars to prevent loss of life, there are hundreds of unfunded highway safety projects, railroad grade separations, and drunken driving enforcement actions that would be more effective.

As reported in yesterday’s DJC, the Sheraton Hotel is finally going to improve the dreadful blank wall along the western side of 7th Avenue between Pike and Union Streets created by its first and second towers.

While I’m thrilled to hear that this long-awaited improvement scheme has not fallen through the cracks and is scheduled to start next week, it’s taking all my patience not to be cynical about this interesting state of affairs.

As I commented in an opinion piece I wrote on the subject for the DJC on 4/6/09, the big blank wall along 7th Avenue (and parts of both Pike and Union Streets as well) should not have occurred in the first place.  The City’s Downtown zoning code would otherwise require street-level uses and “transparency” (doors and windows that allow both visual and physical access to those activities) along 7th Avenue.  Somehow the Downtown Design Review Board approved a departure from those standards in exchange for wall treatment

Mirrors will be added to the blank wall of the Sheraton to make the streetscape more inviting. Image courtesy of Gustafson Guthrie Nichol.

To my mind, there is no more naturally interesting phenomenon as one walks down a city street than interacting – both visually and physically – with a variety of shops, cafés, and other establishments that organically inhabit street-level tenant spaces over the years.

I commend Gustafson Guthrie Nichol for their bold, innovative and, yes, probably very engaging “garden walk.”  In my article, I made a rather glib reference to such an applied treatment being akin to lipstick on a certain porcine animal.  And, as with any maquillage, I fear it will require an inordinate amount of maintenance and continual primping to remain the engaging and interesting street-side phenomenon that they intend.

As for the intended reflection of the Eagles Temple across 7th Avenue, this is an interesting homage to that landmark.  It reminds me of the storied reflection of Trinity Church in the adjacent Hancock Tower’s wall of glass in Boston’s Back Bay. There’s something playful and creative about this approach to a response to the

The western side of Seventh Avenue between Pike and Union streets consists of one uninterrupted, blank concrete facade. Photo by DJC staff.

Again, actual street-level tenant space, with doors and windows, could last the lifetime of the building with a changing array of establishments naturally responding to their street-level location with appropriate displays and accessibility.  Yet the placement of mirrors seems so impermanent.  Does the Sheraton Hotel management really intend to maintain and likely replace those mirrors essentially ad perpetuum?

Not to be ever the naysayer, I am anxiously awaiting the unveiling of the 7th Avenue “garden walk” next Spring as it will be a vast improvement over the existing pitiful situation.  And the Gustafson Guthrie Nichol group do marvelous work, so it will be a pleasure, yet again, to interact with their work in our cityscape.

Town Hall Seattle is one of 25 sites hoping for cash. Photo courtesy of Partners in Preservation.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation has launched a contest in the Puget Sound region called the Partners in Preservation program that will provide $1 million in grants from American Express to local historic sites.

The online program encourages people to vote for their favorite historic places from among 25 sites in the region.

For information about the sites or to vote, go here. Votes can be cast until May 12. People can also post personal stories about the sites and share photos. Open houses will be held May 1 and 2 at the sites.

A press release from the trust said the winner of the public vote is guaranteed grant funds. Funding for the runners-up will be determined by an advisory committee of civic and preservation leaders in collaboration with the American Express Foundation and the trust.

Grant recipients will be announced June 15.

If you’re taking a stroll up lively Pike Street sometime, take a right at Seventh Avenue and proceed along that block’s western side.  If you haven’t been there already in the past year and a half, you’re in for a shock.

The Sheraton hotel’s two-tower complex uses Seventh Avenue as its alley, with a block-long blank facade, punctuated only by a metal man-door where you’re likely to find hotel catering staff hanging out on their smoke breaks.  The only good thing about walking on this side of Seventh Avenue between Pike and Union Streets is that you get a great view of the landmark former Eagles Temple.

An April 1983 Time magazine article mentioned the then-new first Sheraton hotel tower as an example of nation’s “worst offenders” among modern buildings that present blank facades to the streetscape and deaden city center street life.  Any of us urbanistas who care about Downtown’s streetscape waited 25 years for something to improve that situation: a remodel, an addition, an improvement scheme – anything.  Well, “anything” came in 2007 when the second Sheraton tower opened, but the the 25-year wait was in vain because things just got worse, as you’ll see on your stroll along Seventh Avenue.

The real question we’re left with is: how was this possible?  Don’t we have regulations against such things?  Isn’t there a Design Review process? Shouldn’t have 25 years of lessons-learned informed the decision-makers this time around? A longer editorial on what went wrong ran in today’s DJC (no subscription needed to check it out).

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.

Eds Note: Andy Soden of Seattle Parks and Recreation chimes in on defining sustainability

By Andy Soden, Golf Director, Seattle Parks and Recreation

Based on my spell check, even Microsoft does not fully recognize the concept of sustainability. To begin this exercise, we all would have to agree the impacts and effects that we’re having on our planet, our countries our communities and children are not only profound but far-reaching.

Each and every one of us needs to buy in and get in the role and responsibility to sustain and do it together, a feat easier said than accomplished.

A better reason?

I find it interesting that so quickly after gas prices lowered again, the legions of people who were suddenly riding the bus and the train to Seattle are right back in their cars. Why? They can.

Please let me and other city staffers here in Seattle know what we can do to partner and raise the level of awareness surrounding this issue. Our new Park Superintendent Tim Gallagher is there, I can assure you, and supports all the things we are doing in Parks to raise the bar on this topic.

We’re celebrating Earth Day, March 21, next month at the golf courses in the city to engage our loyal golfers and customers in the leadership role Parks and Recreation is taking to reduce the luxury consumption and use of potable water, fertilizer and pesticides here in the urban environment.

Parks is also rolling out the Green Golfer program this year, which is part of the Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary Program’s Community Outreach component for golf courses. We’ve been participating in this 6-stage process towards Certification for about five years.

These are exciting times, and call for extraordinary and unique efforts towards sustaining our environment, economy, communities and future. Keeping in mind that we’re doing this for our children and their future, we feel that to get there, we’ll need to do it one thing at a time.

Eds Note: These 50-word definitions of sustainability ran in today’s DJC. Agree or disagree, we’d love to hear your thoughts.

For Seattle to become sustainable, it will have to take advantage of the environment we inherited. Preserving open space and protecting the Sound are paramount to a livable and lasting city. The new waterfront will be our next big test. Finding a way to blend the needs of the people with the needs of environment, that’s what will make Seattle sustainable. It’s not a choice between a vibrant urban experience or nature — it’s having both!

Charles Anderson, Charles Anderson Landscape Architects

Sustainability means creating healthy built environments as a means to supporting the larger ecosystems that provide clean water, air and soil for all of us. A collaborative, interdisciplinary approach to designing, building and maintaining buildings is critical to the overall health of the environment.

Yancy Wright, Sellen Construction

We achieve sustainability by fostering long-term cultural, economic, environmental and social health and vitality — by putting all those things together for our future and remembering it is a continuing endeavor, not an end point. That means involving all of our communities in the work, and ensuring that everyone contributes, and everyone benefits.

Richard Conlin, Seattle City Council President

Sustainability requires a vision of where we want to go, and an adaptive strategy to get there in a way that is just for all people and the planet. Seattle needs strong public and private leadership to articulate the vision and inspire all of us to walk in that direction.

Joel Sisolak, Cascadia Region Green Building Council

Seattle must be seen as part of the bioregion and global biosphere. The path to urban sustainability lies in achieving ecological balance integrated with social, economic and environmental regeneration. We will need to retool the urban infrastructure to significantly reduce waste and over-consumption, become less auto-dependent and more walkable.

Peter Steinbrueck, Steinbrueck Urban Strategies

Seattle should broaden the sustainability focus from LEED to SEED: Social Economic and Environmental Design. Environmental responsibility is not a stand-alone issue. Economic equity and social justice are equally essential to creating sustainable communities. If Seattle can achieve this union, we will be the sustainability visionaries we claim to be.

Owen Richards, Owen Richards Architects

Sustainability in Seattle (the cynical version): A term used by politicians and the mostly-white upper class for public appearance or as a business choice, while not actually contributing to sustainability on a broad scale. Real Sustainability: A movement where sustainable actions are an EASY choice and are undertaken by all walks of life, not just the elite.

Rebecca Deehr, Pedestrian Master Plan Advisory Group

Sustainability is grounded in values of stewardship, sufficiency and justice, and includes economic, environmental and community indicators of well-being. Sustainability goes beyond meeting people’s immediate physical needs to creating a just society with laws and policies that allow their needs, and the needs of all Earth’s inhabitants, to be met.

LeeAnne Beres, Earth Ministry

Sustainability is being good stewards of our environment for ourselves, for our community and for future generations. This means creating spaces that give us shelter and comfort in ways that enhance the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the earth that gives us food instead of degrading them.

Christopher Imbeau, Rafn Co.

Sustainability must include our social structures. As the health of our salmon requires sound water policy, the health of our community requires sound social policy: housing appropriate to the needs of the whole community, access to living-wage jobs, and a region-wide transportation plan that provides real options to the automobile.

Richard Bloom, Interfaith Task Force on Homelessness

Sustainability means systemic continuity; it is equilibrium, balance. In relation to the environment, sustainability suggests systems capable of continuing (though not remaining static. Change is constant) indefinitely, perpetuating life (including people). The planet will likely persist for some time; sustainability might enable humans to survive with it.

Gabriel Scheer, Re-Vision Labs, Seattle Greendrinks

Eds. Note: Words like affordable, sustainable and livable are thrown around regularly in conversations about how Seattle should grow. But we want to know what these words actually mean, and how the city can achieve them.

Today, SeattleScape blogger Roger Valdez introduces the topic of sustainability. An upcoming editorial page will offer 50-word definitions of sustainability provided by members of the community, including elected officials, organizers and A/E/C industry players. Bloggers at the DJC blog SeattleScape will also weigh in. We hope you will join in the discussion.

There are as many definitions of sustainability as there are people who care about the issue.  Platitudes about environmental degradation almost always include the word “sustainability” and now it has taken its place alongside meaningless terms like “proactive,” “value added” and “win-win.”

Sustainability gets used interchangeably with words like “green,” “environmentally sensitive” and “green building.” To builders, “sustainable” applies to material. To a salmon advocate it means sound water policy and to someone working on climate change, it means reducing the vehicle miles traveled in our region. The word has become all things to all people.

Seattle even has the Office of Sustainability and Environment, with the laudable but broad goal of collaborating with “city agencies, business groups, nonprofit organizations, and other partners to protect and enhance Seattle’s distinctive environmental quality and livability.”

The Brundtland Commission defined sustainable as meeting “the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”  This language — borrowed from the Iroquois — is comforting, but can it help us make sensible land use policy?

Mithun’s unbuilt Center for Urban Agriculture

It is time to develop a definition of the word that is tied to measurable outcomes. Change begins with measurement. Sustainability is an economic concept, like return on investment. Economies aren’t just about money, but about the relationships between production, distribution and consumption.  Our bodies, our physical environment and our time all have economies.

We can assess sustainability by asking whether something (a project, a plan or a policy) consumes only as much as it can viably produce or less. Our activities should generate long-term profit whether that profit takes the form of excess energy, materials, dollars or other measurable benefits.

Planning, building, eating and living should generate something extra for future use. For example, developable land should not lay fallow and we should replace impermeable surfaces with permeable ones. Some areas should be up-zoned for more housing and others should be depaved for open space and urban farming.

Imagine a city that produces its own food, energy and goods.  This vision of sustainability is possible with a definition, a plan and a system of accountability.