Successful street corner at 36th Ave SW and SW Snoqualmie St in West Seattle. Photo by Nate Cormier.

Last time I promised to contrast that miserable corner of 35th Ave SW and SW Avalon Way in West Seattle with something more gracious. This one is three blocks away at the corner of 36th Ave SW and SW Snoqualmie St. The context is quite different in terms of available right of way, traffic volumes and level of investment by the adjacent developer, but my interest here is in highlighting some of the aspects that make it a successful street corner.

• There are wide and nicely landscaped curb bulbs to slow traffic and buffer pedestrians at the corner from passing automobiles.
• The building entry is close to the intersection with decent transparency to the lobby so there should be a good amount of foot traffic and eyes on the street here.
• There is a seating area near the intersections for passersby to take a break. This is particularly valuable for seniors and others that pause frequently while walking. Hopefully once they lease up the apartment building they can get rid of those plastic signboards.
• There is a broad area between the ramps that is separated by a curb from turning traffic. This makes waiting to cross feel safer.
• The curb ramps align with the sidewalks and the unmarked crosswalks so the visually impaired can more easily guess the correct angle to make their way to the paired ramp on the other side of each street. Note that this leaves a triangular bit at the bottom of the ramp that needs to be carefully graded to not collect water.
• Finally, and this one is tiny, but the attention to detail is sweet…where the tactile warning strips meet adjacent curbwalls, there are subtle joints aligned with the tactile tiles. They may play a role in controlling cracking of the curb, but I like how they make those tactile strips appear rooted intentionally in those locations. Too often tactile warning strips look glued on as afterthoughts. Not here.

All in all, a solid contribution to the public realm!

There is a new position at SDOT in the Street Use and Urban Forestry Division; Public Space Manager; and with this new role there is hope brewing for more permanent parklets coming to a Seattle neighborhood near you. The re-purposing of parking spaces into miniature open spaces has grown from the latest soup d’jour for urban areas across the nation with San Francisco leading the charge and most recently followed by Los Angeles’ activity parklets to a more common wrench in the toolkit of cities as varied as Philadelphia and San Jose. Now it’s Seattle’s turn. Let’s give SDOT all of our support as they move forward.
Congratulations to the very capable Jennifer Wieland as she takes on this role. She let me know that Seattle can expect to see the pilot program roll out this summer with several projects in Center City neighborhoods.
If you would like to know more about how to develop and implement parklets, see this (very thorough) study from the UCLA Lewis Center here.
http://lewis.ucla.edu/content/completestreets-publications

San Francisco Parklet

Today’s DJC has a good story by Patrick L. Phillips of the ULI about housing affordability, particularly the importance of housing near jobs for people with moderate incomes. This needs to be a priority for Seattle, not because everyone is automatically entitled to live in their favorite neighborhood, but for limiting stress on our transportation system, giving low-wage workers an easier route up the ladder (minus the absurd commute), invigorating neighborhoods, and essentially making the city function for people and as an economic engine.

Terrazza aPodment (rendering courtesy of Kauri Investments)

Thankfully Seattle is doing a lot of things well.

Voters keep approving housing levies.  In 2009 we passed a $145,000,000, seven-year measure, which averages over $20,000,000 per year, most of which goes to rental construction and preservation. This is big reason Seattle always has low-income units under construction. A host of outstanding non-profits, such as LIHI and Plymouth Housing Group,  do an excellent job building and owning housing that both helps people and improves neighborhoods.

Seattle’s reduced/zero parking requirements for new housing are a big reason behind our current housing boom. The economics of 200 one-bedroom homes are much easier with a 0.6 parking ratio vs. a 1.0 or 1.2. The units that get built are cheaper, and more units are getting built, helping keep housing supply/demand in check.

We allow smaller units than most cities. New York and San Francisco have been wringing their hands about allowing 220 square foot units. Seattle already allows much smaller units than that, both with traditional apartments and in rooming houses. These are proliferating on Capitol Hill, in the U District, etc. What a phenomenal idea…the private market providing workforce housing without subsidy! Of course having little or no parking is a necessary precondition for these units.

Most importantly, we’re letting housing get built in sizeable numbers. Our biggest affordability weapon is to avoid undersupply, the bane of the most expensive cities. With decent supply, everyone avoids the worst price war scenario, and the less desirable units tend to be substantially cheaper. This is why the average building from 1920 or 1970 is relatively affordable today. Increasingly, units from 1988 play that role, and someday units from 2013 will as well.

Unfortunately we’re moving backwards in other ways. We’re attaching more bonus fees to taller buildings in some areas. This is counterproductive because it disincentivizes supply, and also makes the units in these building more expensive. (Disclosure: I work for a contractor that builds highrises.) We’re putting the burden on a relatively small number of residents and developers, apparently a politically expedient way to avoid paying it ourselves. It would be better to expand the levy.

And of course we need transit. Seattle is doing moderately ok, but clouds are on the horizon for big cutbacks to Metro.

So, while more needs to be done, we can pat ourselves on the back for doing some good things.

Others do a great job covering the major issues and signature projects of our region. I’d like to turn your attention, usually downward, to the less examined details of our cityscape. Let’s call it “The Sidewalk Observed.”

Dodgy street corner at 35th Ave SW and SW Avalon Way in West Seattle. Photo by Nate Cormier.

This is the corner of 35th Ave SW and SW Avalon Way in West Seattle. A new building here, now called The Residences at 3295, has become notorious for its construction fits and starts. Neighbors are probably grateful to finally have the project  done, but WOW, this street corner is disappointing. We can surely do better at the intersection of two busy arterials with heavy bus and truck traffic. I write that  ‘we’ can do better because I’m not particularly concerned with who designed it. This is the kind of urban landscape shaped less by design intent than by underlying regulatory and economic forces that maxed out vehicular flow and land value at the expense of a safe and inviting pedestrian experience.

Typically, a corner like this would have two ramps with a bit of curb in between to protect a safe place for people to pause. Short of this, providing a contiguous flat area behind the sidewalk could have helped, but here we are pinned between the street and a step up to the corner of the building. For my next post, I’ll contrast this with a better example of a recent street corner improvement. And if you have a cityscape scene or detail you’d like me to highlight, please drop me a line at natec@svrdesign.com.

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.

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

Ballard is an urban village and a fun place to walk. Photo by Clair Enlow.

“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.

Vocalist MC Geologic is a member of the Seattle hip-hop group Blue Scholars, which teamed with Sound Transit to produce a video promoting safety around Sounder commuter rail train tracks and crossings. Photo courtesy of 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.

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.

Photo courtesy of HBB Landscape Architecture

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.

What organizers are calling the first comprehensive conference on national happiness will be held Friday and Saturday at Seattle University.

The event brings together more than 150 professionals and activists from as far away as South Africa, and from more than a dozen U.S. states for discussions that range from economic and policy decisions affecting happiness to personal change.

Organizers see this as a way to begin to implement the United Nations’ call to refocus national policies on happiness, they said in a press release.

They said that in July of 2011, a United Nations declaration urged member nations to concentrate on “the pursuit of happiness” rather than unsustainable economic growth and to seek ways to measure their success.  A UN conference in April of this year urged a “new economic paradigm based on sustainable happiness and well-being.”

Topics at the conference include Spreading the Happiness Initiative (www.happycounts.org) in other communities and on campuses; planning for Pursuit of Happiness Day 2013 (former President Thomas Jefferson’s birthday, April 13); and developing better surveys and metrics to measure well-being.

The keynote speaker  is Eric Weiner, former NPR reporter and author of the best-seller, The Geography of Bliss, a story of his search for the world’s happiest countries.

Other speakers include Vicki Robin, author of Your Money or Your Life; local author Cecile Andrews; Tom Barefoot, director of the Vermont-based organization, Gross National Happiness USA; Rita Hibbard, director of the Compassionate Action Network; ecological economist Robert Costanza; Laura Musikanski, director of the Happiness Initiative; and psychologist Ryan Howell, creator of the Happiness Initiative national survey.

John de Graaf, director of Take Back Your Time and co-author of a new book, What’s the Economy for, Anyway? Why it’s Time to Stop Chasing Growth and Start Pursuing Happiness, said “There are those who think of the word “happiness” as something flakey, or a luxury in hard times.  But it’s really central to our identity as a country.  Thomas Jefferson was the first to use the language ‘pursuit of happiness’ and he declared that happiness ought to be the first goal of government.  In those days it was pretty hard to measure happiness.  But now we have a whole science of happiness and well-being that can tell us how well we are doing in meeting Jefferson’s goal.  We’ll be explaining how it works at the conference.”

Conference sponsors include The Happiness Initiative, Take Back Your Time, the Compassion Action Network, Sustainable Seattle, and the communications department of Seattle University.

Registration is at www.timeday.org/happiness2012.   Tickets may be purchased at the door, and the keynote address will be open to the general public without charge, based on seating availability, thanks to support from Humanities Washington. A conference program is at  http://tiny.cc/32hejw/.