Do what you say you’ll do. Whatever your business, there’s a good starting point for success. I’ve had two stark lessons in this as a retail customer recently.

In both cases, the businesses are large, respected Downtown establishments I want to support and have been loyal to for many years. In both cases, their failure to meet promises means they’ll lose my business.

What an excellent parallel for those of us in the A/E/C/RE world. Do your customers care about your basic integrity and follow-through as much as your skills?

The first was a new bed. The sales guy said eight weeks. With no word at 10 weeks, the rep said 12. With no word at 14 weeks, the rep said “it’s almost in the warehouse.” With no word at 18 weeks, it was “in the warehouse” but couldn’t be delivered the following weekend. Guessing it wasn’t really “in the warehouse,” I cancelled. Three weeks later they called and asked why I wasn’t home to take delivery, as if this had been scheduled. At that point, I still wanted the bed and could have taken delivery that very day. But after 22 weeks (incompetence? honest error? lies? poorly-managed supply chain? all of the above? who cares), I didn’t act in my own interest. Instead I punished the store by reiterating my cancellation. 

The second was my longtime barber. He’s always done a good job, with excellent service. But four straight times the wait was 20-30 minutes after the appointment. On the last occasion I didn’t say anything, but apparently the ice was obvious, because afterward the cashier cut the price in half. It’s admirable that he acknowledged the error. But the gesture was way too little and too late.  My decision not to go back was made in the waiting room. More importantly, once the impression exists that someone isn’t reliable, that impression sticks. 

At your business, you might assume loyal customers will give you the benefit of the doubt when you screw up. That’s probably true at first in many cases, due to the strength of your relationships, the customers’ inertia, and their human aversion to starting an argument. But eventually it works against you. A loyal customer expects service in return, and can take it personally and deeply when you don’t live up.

Much of it is about being honest when setting expectations. For the barber it might mean more time between appointments. For the bed seller, a realistic due date would have been a start, and a correction would have helped if a shipping error had been made.

In the A/E/C/RE world, that means living up to what you’re selling. Are you?

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?”

The Architecture Billings Index was up two points in February after a slight dip in January. But billings were down slightly in the West, still the country’s strongest region.

Break out the graphite?

The index is compiled by the American Institute of Architects, based on a monthly survey of firms across the country. A score above 50 means billings were up over the previous month; below 50 means they were down.

The American Institute of Architects February index was 35.3, up from the 33.3 mark in January. Reported billings were again worst in the Northeast, with 32.3, and best in the West, with 36.4. But those western billings were down from the 38.3 reported last month. The new projects inquiry score was 49.5.

AIA Chief Economist Kermit Baker said in a statement that there will likely be light demand for construction projects through much of 2009. He said the small uptick provides hope that some stalled projects will move forward in the near future.

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.

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.

Sustainability means doing the minimum necessary to avoid ecological or societal trauma, whether for one location or ecosystem, or worldwide. In other words, it’s a half-measure.

People like half-measures. Public discussions of sustainability tend to reflect giving people everything they already have, but in less-wasteful formats. We hear more about hybrids than encouraging people to have fewer cars, more about responsible forestry than about using less wood, and more about recycling than about ”reducing” or “reusing.”

That’s a start, and plenty for some people, but perhaps we need to work harder on the big stuff too.

Like density. We’re improving a bit, but we still strictly limit density in this region, making it more expensive than necessary (through bonus fees, additional process, lack of sites zoned higher than what’s already there, etc.) and therefore reducing its market share, which in turn adds to sprawl. Meanwhile, denser construction brings huge efficiencies in energy, materials, and land use, due to factors such as shared walls and reduced commute distances. (Transportation is sometimes forgotten in analyses of energy use!)

The trend toward smaller homes (or plateau?) is encouraging. Smaller homes use less materials and energy to build, use less energy to heat, cool, and light (all else being equal), and don’t leave so much room to fill with unneeded stuff. The trend toward multifamily helps for similar reasons, plus multifamily residents have the option of simply deleting the astonishing array of tools and materials often kept by house residents, from paint to edgers to four kinds of shovel.

It’s great that we’re focusing on transit, because transit benefits energy use, land-use, runoff, the need for parking infrastructure, and so on compared to driving. Biking and walking are even better. Density automatically makes all of these modes more viable. Of course we still don’t put our policies where our mouth is on pedestrian issues, with many “no crossing” points even in our most urban districts, our lax oversight of speeding and red light running, and so on.

It’s disgusting what’s happening with the global warming “debate.” In fact it’s a fake debate kept alive by certain industries and those who believe them. We’re exactly where the cigarette “debate” was a couple decades ago. Scientists agree that humans are a contributor to the problem, as much as they agree about anything, except the corrupt (bought) ones and a small number of honest devil’s advocates. The cigarette deniers are now seen as having contributed to countless deaths (and they still troll online bulletin boards, denying everything!). In the coming decades the global warming deniers will be reviled in the same way for the same reason. I’ll applaud any leadership Obama might provide on this issue, and we can all act locally as well, as an industry adding to the strides we’ve made, as a region with policy, and as individuals.

Patients aren’t the only ones getting bigger. In spite of major advances in technology and cash infusions, healthcare spaces are expanding. Maybe rooms just need more space for all the new devices that are used in care, or maybe hospital projects need to go on a diet.

This week, AIA Seattle and AHP Medical are hosting a medical forum “The future of healthcare: Supersized or lean?

The event will include a seminar with H. Scot Latimer of Kurt Salmon Associates called “Are we Supersizing Healthcare?”

Another lecture, by J. Michael Rona of Rona Consulting Group, will address what kind of leadership is needed for a lean transformation in healthcare. I’m looking forward to hearing their takes and learning more about what kinds of waistlines local architects are seeing in upcoming projects in the current economy.

While reading about Obama’s plans to pull the economy out of a nose dive, I happened upon this quote from John Maynard Keynes:

“If the Treasury were to fill old bottles with bank-notes, bury them at suitable depths in disused coal-mines which are then filled up to the surface with town rubbish, and leave it to private enterprise on well-tried principles of laissez-faire to dig the notes up again (the right to do so being obtained, of course, by tendering for leases of the note-bearing territory), there need be no more unemployment and, with the help of repercussions, the real income of the community, and its capital wealth, would probably become a good deal greater than it actually is.”

How long will it be before local officials start touting the tunnel option as a way of boosting the local economy by creating jobs?  The trouble with Obama’s infrastructure plan is that it seems to significantly rely on projects like replacing the viaduct that we don’t need and shouldn’t build.

Now is the time for us to lean into the fact that automakers are facing a downturn in demand for their product.  Why would we keep building infrastructure for single occupancy vehicles?

So my half-serious proposal is we go forward with the tunnel option to replace the viaduct.  Once we’ve dug out the tunnel, we bury bottles with $100 bills, cover it back up and sell the rights to dig them up.  That way, we get the benefits without the downside of more infrastructure for something we are trying to discourage.  So grab a shovel, and let’s start digging!

Life in the current economy

In case you missed it, Mike Lewis had a great piece in the P-I today about Seattle Architect John Morefield’s creative marketing technique.

The 27-year-old architect, who said he’d been laid off twice this year, has spent the last two Sundays at the Ballard Sunday Market doling out design advice and a chuckle - on the cheap. He set up a booth with a sign that reads “Architecture 5 cents.”

These are certainly scary times for the A/E industry, but, as in the case of Morefield, such times can also uncover unique opportunities when designers use creative approaches. I’ve been working on an ongoing series for the DJC  on the economy and its affect on the A/E industry. The story has gotten increasingly bleaker over the past few months, but most architects aren’t resorting to Morefield’s tactics just yet.

In the most recent installment of the series, architecture industry execs told me they see a lot of opportunity in these gloom times. New markets, urban redevelopment, increasing demand for green design and a chance for Seattle to lead in the next economy topped the list.

Hello readers. A flood in the DJC’s server room wiped out some of our November blog posts, comments, polls and other changes.

We’re back in business now and we’re sorry we were gone so long. We missed you!