The New York Times had an interesting story this week on the promise of modern pre-fab.

Reviewing MOMA’s “Home Delivery” exhibition, Allison Arief laments that the show lauds designs that are never actually built, ignoring those designers who bring pre-fab fantasies to life (see some local examples here, here, here and here.)

A pre-fab apartment might not look as appealing behind glass as Archigram’s living pods or Instant City airships, but people actually rest their heads there at night.

Archigram's Instant City Airships, c. 1969

Speaking of the way we live, the Oregonian reported Tuesday on Portlanders tearing up their lawns for gardens. The article cites a chain-reaction that occurs where one lawn goes garden and neighbors break out spades to follow suit.

The article asks the question: Do we keep our lawns just to keep up appearances? In Seattle, a lot of us let grass go brown in summer. But when one lawn goes gleaming green, neighbors quickly follow suit with sprinkler and fertilizer.

(The article also said lawn mower fumes make up one-third of greenhouse gas emissions in certain urban areas, though the source was not clear. Yikes!)

With people growing gardens street-side, going green on top isn’t much of a stretch. The Portland Tribune reports on the Rose City’s coming green roof grants.

How do we live in the Northwest? How should we live?

If you find yourself spending too much time ruminating on these questions, consider attending the coming Design for Livability Conference, Thursday’s Envisioning the Future of Architecture, or touring Friday’s local Park(ing) Day sites. In addition to the parking spots listed there, AIA Seattle and Site Workshop are transforming a spot in front of AIA Seattle at 1911 First Ave., and Owen Richards Architects and HyBrid Architects are rethinking a spot in front of their shared office at 12th and East Pike in First Hill.

Still thirsty? Check out my colleague, Katie Zemtseff’s blog for more upcoming events.

The residential market may be slowing and the office market uncertain, but many small neighborhood projects seem to be moving along smoothly, thanks to grants and successful capitol campaigns. Many of them are seeking landscape architects and master planners.

Won't you be my neighbor?

Here are a few projects and awards that got Department of Neighborhoods matching fund awards this week:

- Create a plan for a series of small gardens, a “pollinator pathway” starting at Nora’s Woods and ending at Seattle U. Pollinator Pathway received a $6,000 award for a pilot park. Applications due Sept. 19.

- Design new playground equipment for the Cottage Grove Playground. The North Delridge Neighborhood received a $15,000 award.

- Create a master plan for a new trail system at Seward Park. Friends of Seward Park got a $15,000 matching grant towards hiring a consultant.

- Design a playground at California Place Park. Friends and Neighbors of North Admiral received a $15,500 award to help them hire a landscape architect.

- Design a new streetscape for 33rd. Ave. E. in Lake City. The 33rd Ave. N.E. Vision Group received a $15,000 grant to help hire an architect. I’m not sure who to contact on this one. Patricia Lopez manages the Neighborhood Matching Fund program and could probably steer you in the right direction. She’s at (206) 684-0713.

- Site analysis and planning for a Wallingford community center. The Wallingford Community Center Steering Committee got a $15,000 grant.

Learn more about the awards.

Since most of it was regraded a century ago, the area we now call Belltown has always been on the way to some fantastic destiny. The current vision has been clear since the 80s: Belltown should be a dense spinoff from Downtown proper, primarily residential but with offices too, and with lots of amenities.

Plymouth Housing's new project at at 2119 Third

I’ve always thought Belltown was just one more wave of projects away. After a few waves it’s not there yet. But it’s getting closer.

In many ways, Belltown is a huge success already, and I love living here. It’s vibrant to a point, and every convenience is either here or nearby. Young adults, empty-nesters, and a large poor population mix with less difficulty than some imagine. Half of us walk to work or use transit.

Traffic and street width are a hurdle. Belltown is “on the way to” Ballard in addition to destiny. The narrow streets and low traffic of Portland’s Pearl District magnify the feeling of people out and about, while Belltown needs lots of pedestrians to seem right, and busy crossings discourage strolling. Some avenues are probably unfixable, but Second and Third are low-volume toward the north and could be narrowed, perhaps replacing a lane or two with greenery.

We should concentrate our retail. Belltown is populated enough to have a couple good retail avenues, or one great one, but instead it has a lot of “sort of” retail streets. The culprit is code that favors/requires retail everywhere, and doesn’t require it to be wall-to-wall anywhere. We ought to pick a couple avenues for retail, and sharply reduce requirements elsewhere, leaving space for corner stores of course.

For those wishing for a bigger-city feel, another lesson is that a few hundred new housing units won’t have much effect in such a large area. That’ll take thousands of people, which will take years. Luckily some of us enjoy the journey.

Perhaps we can talk about amenities in another post!

Some are making lemonade from the housing bust’s lemons. The New York Times had an interesting story today on cities buying up foreclosed property to prevent blight from seeping into their towns. Boston, Minneapolis, San Diego and others are busy buying up land with public and private dollars, then redeveloping and flipping it.

Housing bust not a bad deal for all

On Morning Edition the story this morning was the “green lining” on the cloud of bad housing news. Nature and land trusts have taken advantage of falling prices and foreclosures to get good deals on properties or areas they plan to turn into open space and preserves, including a significant stretch of coastline on Oahu that will be turned into a wildlife preserve.

And, if you haven’t yet heard through the grapevine, two very non-serious new news sources have hit the Seattle media. One is about (supposedly) ugly condos, the other is Seattle’s own Onionesque fake news site, the Naked Loon that touches on development, politics and just how silly it is to be a Seattleite.

Seven mature trees along the Burke-Gilman trail were likely injected with herbicide and are dead or dying, Seattle Parks and Recreation announced this morning in a press release.

Staff on a routine maintenance visit found three silver poplars and four Douglas Firs along the trail at NE 77th St. had quarter-inch holes drilled into them, and the speed of their death suggests they were likely injected with herbicide.

It's not easy being green

The three poplars are already dead, two of the Douglas firs are dead, and the other two are starting to turn brown.

Parks staff have submitted a police report and said in the release that the crime could be prosecuted under the State Malicious Mischief statute or under the Timber Trespass Statute. Anyone with information is asked to call the Seattle Police Department at 206-625-5011.

The trees are valued at $40,000 to $60,000 and it will take up to 30 years for replacement trees to reach maturity.

It took moving – and cleaning out a storage locker – for this pedestrian to think about bicycling again. I thought of biking as something other people did, people with farther to go, in great shape, and more skilled with flat tires than I. But the idea grew, and after $200 of fixes at Elliott Bay, I was off as a recreational biker.

It has been AWESOME.

Getting Converted on the Sammamish River Trail

There’s something exhilarating about heading off to new places and doing it under your own power. Biking is a great mix of the “I’m here now” feeling you get walking, the changing scenery you get in a car or bus, and just enough risk. And our region is splattered with destinations – from pleasant town centers in places like Mercer Island (yes, really), to the Issaquah Alps, to close-in nirvanas like Green Lake.

In some ways it’s been easier than expected, and in in other ways it’s been a challenge.

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Green Lake, still harmless

Update!: The P-I is now reporting that the spikes in Green Lake are indeed an innocent occurrence, apparently left over from a Eurasian milfoil eradication effort in the 1980s.

From July 25 SeattleScape: Seattle Parks just said in a press release that it is now hiring professional divers to sweep all of its nine beaches and two small craft centers.

The move comes after 41 additional spikes were found in Green Lake this morning by volunteer divers. The first 45 spikes were pulled out of the lake last week after a wader reported seeing one in the water.

Parks said it will keep all of the beaches and centers open while the sweeps are being scheduled.

Is there possibly an innocent explanation for this? If someone really wanted to hurt swimmers, wouldn’t Lake Washington have been a better choice? I guess we’ll find out.

It was Memorial Day weekend, a few years ago. A warm day but not hot. Great time to visit the Space Needle observation deck. Of course the Center was packed with Folklifers that day. Looking at this mass of people from 520 feet taught a surprising lesson.

Seattle residents love sun, right? They’ll do anything to get more of it. We design our parks and buildings to capture as much of it as possible. All good? Well, to a point.

New amphitheatre proposed at Memorial Stadium

Almost directly below the Space Needle is the Mural Amphitheatre, one of the Center’s larger concert venues. At first glance that day, it looked 1/4 full. On second glance, the people were there, but they were packed around the shade trees on the perimeter. People were out in droves, but avoiding the sun.

What does that mean? Clearly, anecdotal evidence isn’t a mandate. Sunlight is important. But it’s an interesting window on what people, many of them, really prefer.

A new amphitheatre is being discussed for the Memorial Stadium site. Will this have lots of trees around the edges? Perhaps a nice shady grove or two? I hope so. People sit in amphitheatres for long periods. Heat and glare are just the start. Two hours can be bad-sunburn territory. Other walkways at the center should have trees as well.

And yes, let’s add more street trees. For those of us who take long walks and aren’t sun worshippers, nothing is worse than block after block in blazing sun. And few things are finer than the cooling effect and ambiance of a canopy of huge trees, or at least mid-sized ones.

As the financial credit crisis puts the crunch on local redevelopment projects, an additional unpleasant consequence is the increasing number of vacant lots and vacant buildings, especially in Downtown Seattle and nearby neighborhoods.

Who knows how long these sites will remain vacant? In the interim, we’re stuck with illegal parking lots at best and eyesores at worst.

East Pine Street at Belmont

On a quick drive through Downtown the other day I spotted three illegal parking lots on stalled redevelopment sites. While some folks may enjoy the suddenly greater availability of low-cost surface parking, these impromptu parking lots fly in the face of the City’s vision for Downtown and often create a false “value added” that can perpetuate the parking use for years.

First, in many parts of Downtown, as well as other pedestrian-designated commercial zones, surface parking is NOT an allowed use by City code. Occasionally, temporary surface parking is permissible, but only with special approvals.

Second, even where allowed, surface parking obviously cannot simply be set up as dirt or gravel lots. They need to be paved, with adequate storm water drainage, as well as include landscaped buffers adjacent to the sidewalk, plus interior landscaping. If you’ve seen some of these impromptu lots around town you’ll notice that the cars abut or even hang over onto the sidewalk, with no buffer but for weeds and occasionally black tarp staked up a few inches, ostensibly to contain runoff.

Lastly, surface parking lots are a valuable commodity in certain parts of town. Look at the parking lot at the southeast corner of Second and Pine! It’s been there for generations – a missing tooth in the otherwise improving stretch between the retail core and Pike Place Market.

Second Avenue in Belltown

Suffice it to say, in some cases what may seem like a casual, impromptu use can last for years. And, if the parking lot is either not allowable in that location and/or lacks the appropriate buffering, drainage, landscaping, etc., it’s a real detriment to the streetscape and neighborhood.

And what about those other “eyesores?” Other locations where projects have been stalled simply sit fallow – vacant lots, vacant buildings, or even semi-demolished buildings. Overnight, of course, these become targets for graffiti, litter, vandalism and crime, or simply become weed-choked, litter-strewn lots. Think of the former Safeway site at 40^th and Stone Way N, or the collection of buildings along Westlake Avenue that Carr America hopes to redevelop. The list goes on.

This issue may be a bit more complicated, but the question is: should the City consider a minimum-maintenance ordinance for such properties?

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Green Lake, in happer times

Seattle Parks just said in a press release that it is now hiring professional divers to sweep all of its nine beaches and two small craft centers.

The move comes after 41 additional spikes were found in Green Lake this morning by volunteer divers. The first 45 spikes were pulled out of the lake last week after a wader reported seeing one in the water.

Parks said it will keep all of the beaches and centers open while the sweeps are being scheduled.

Is there possibly an innocent explanation for this? If someone really wanted to hurt swimmers, wouldn’t Lake Washington have been a better choice? I guess we’ll find out.