Eds Note: Cliff Portman, Principal Land Use Planner with DPD, sent me this poem in response to our ongoing discussion of livability.

Urban Optimum

For each in the city there is a hum and a beat
To which routines and transitions freely repeat.
The flow and the ebb, with less take and more give,
Is the meter of living for work and working to live.

A calm, easy cadence connects home with labors.
No sour note commute nor dead malls for neighbors.
Uses, mixed local and small, supply points of life.
To them walk, pedal or twitter - modal options are rife.

Among other urban livability measures
Are ample green features and amenity pleasures.
Add a multi-cultural chorus, the polyrthmic part,
With civility and inclusion to give place a heart.

More Seattleites muse about livability here and here.

I have accepted a research associate position with the Sightline Institute. This is a wonderful opportunity for me and was made possible, in part, by writing here on SeattleScape and for the DJC’s opinion page for the past year.

It has been an amazing year for anyone watching the economy, and interested in housing, development and future growth in Seattle. I have written a fair amount here about the way we define and measure key aspects of growth in Seattle.

Time for a new dream?

The fundamental battle lines on growth were drawn 20 years ago with the passage of the Growth Management Act and the City of Seattle’s Comprehensive Plan. The decision then was to avoid sprawl by putting growth in cities, and more specifically in urban villages. Some resisted this planning effort as social engineering aimed at foisting a social agenda on single family neighborhoods.

Others argued that in order to limit and prevent further environmental degradation, enhance mass transit options and support a more sustainable approach to infrastructure, concentrating growth in the cities would be essential.

Does this sound familiar? Today we are taking a piecemeal approach to growth, arguing lot by lot, parcel by parcel, and neighborhood by neighborhood. When will we finally get on with what we decided to do 20 years ago?

More than 60 percent of Seattle is still zoned single family. And any project that increases density, even when supported by underlying zoning, faces a gauntlet.

Strolling Seattle by serakatie

Increasingly, the debate has been cast as a class conflict pitting growth management against the sacredness of the single family home, which for decades has been the organizing economic principle in America and the Northwest.

This year’s election provides the city with a huge opportunity to consciously settle this question. Will candidates for city office embrace the practices we know will reduce climate change, improve the health of the Puget Sound and support less use of the automobile? Compact communities that are safe to walk in with public open space and easy access to transit are what we must have.

The most important question for the candidates is “how will you get us there?” The question for Seattlites is “are we willing to go?”

During these tough economic times, Mayor Greg Nickels says more Seattle homeowners should have the option to build cottages in their backyards to supplement incomes or provide a loved one with housing.

Welcome to the dollhouse

Backyard cottages, smaller dwelling units unattached to single family houses but sharing their lots, are now allowed in southeast Seattle only. Seattle allows smaller attached units citywide.

Nickels said in a release Thursday he would soon be sending legislation to council to allow up to 50 more backyard cottages to be built per year across Seattle neighborhoods. The homeowner would have to live on site, lots would have to be at least 4,000-square-feet and the cottages could not exceed 800 square feet. Height and lot coverage limits would also apply.

“In these difficult times, now more than ever, people are asking for a range of good housing choices,” said Nickels in the release.

“Whether it’s for a family member, an option to downsize, or simply a financial decision that allows you to stay in your home, the backyard cottage can be a real-life solution.”

So far, 14 backyard cottages have been built in southeast Seattle. The cottages are also allowed in Portland,  Issaquah, Kirkland, Mercer Island, Shoreline, Newcastle, Redmond, Woodinville and Vancouver, B.C.

Christian de Portzamparc's elevated train

A green belt circling the city.

A metro hub beneath the Louvre’s Pyramid.

A new ringed metro line around city outskirts.

These are among the proposals stemming from master planning now underway for the City of Light. The New York Times has the story.

Stay classy, Seattle.

Seattle hasn’t done a good enough job convincing its residents of the pluses of density, and the current slowdown will give the city a chance to try again, Denny Onslow of Harbor Properties said Friday at a CityClub luncheon that explored the impacts Seattle’s sluggish economy could have on livability.

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…

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

The $5,000 scholarship will pay for her travel and research. She’ll visit seawalls in Sydney, Melbourne and Vancouver,  exploring the impact alternative approaches have on urban development and natural habitat.

Bump

Bump plans to work with partners at the University of Washington, the city of Seattle and the U.S.  Army Corps of Engineers to develop a series of recommendations for Seattle’s seawall replacement. She will present her research through an exhibition and model at AIA Seattle’s gallery in late 2009.

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?

The recent war, economic crunch and environmental picture of our world provide another and ample wake up call to the fact that not everyone here in the States is completely engaged and committed to the concept and cause. Just like many things in this land of the free and home of the brave, there is just enough leeway to lose sight of the big picture.

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