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!

Frequently in my posts and in opinion pieces I suggest we should organize our thinking about growth as a city into three distinct domains: affordability, livability and sustainability.

I am continuing to think through these domains and defining them in more detail. But when I think of livability the first thing that comes to my mind is pedestrian scale.

If Seattle did one thing to support livability as we work toward accommodating more growth, it would be prioritizing pedestrian travel. The pedestrian would be at the top of the hierarchy followed in descending order by bicycles, scooters, transit, freight, shared vehicles and at the very, very bottom single passenger cars.

Two examples come to mind of what I mean by pedestrian scale and they are at extreme ends of the continuum. The National Mall in Washington D.C. stands out as an example of being out of scale with pedestrian travel. Although it was designed before the rise of the automobile it represents the kind of Brobdingnagian scale that lends itself to cars rather than people. It’s just too damn big.

At the other end is 12^th and Thomas, shown above and at left. A look at these pictures might lead you to think that this is in someone’s back yard or perhaps a park. But the fact that this little oasis is part of a sidewalk near a busy street can teach us something.

Building Seattle as if we had to walk everywhere will make our city more livable. It doesn’t just have to be more sidewalks and gutters.

Instead, humanizing our walkscape means less pavement and more landscaping, less impervious surface and more unpaved amenities. The oasis at 12^th and Thomas won’t save the world but you really can’t appreciate it driving by in a car.

Seattle's Third Avenue

Sometimes Seattle makes me plain crazy. We profess all sorts of environmentally and socially enlightened values and then we often ignore the obvious. Take our public sidewalks. Active, lively, livable? Maybe sometimes. Often, not so much.
We allow contractors to close off sidewalks while they build towers, despite the fact that most other cities have required protected shelters for decades. Contractors here get to close off block fronts for months while we pedestrians have to negotiate a gauntlet of “Sidewalk Closed” signs. Builders elsewhere have figured out how to stage and service a construction site. Yet we let these private companies usurp our precious public space for their own convenience and cost savings.
Another example: The State Liquor Control Board insists that restaurants serving drinks install expensive and space-consuming “corrals” made of cast iron, steel or wood around outdoor seating areas — ostensibly to protect minors. (And how does that work, actually?) Go east to Idaho and there are no sidewalk corrals. Go south to Oregon, same thing: no fences. Tables and chairs spill out onto the sidewalks like they do all over Europe and the rest of the world. Yet, I’ve never heard that those places have hoards of inebriated minors thronging the streets.
I am reminded that until the late 70s, the Liquor Board had a rule that restaurants serving drinks could not have windows, lest anyone be seen drinking. When they dropped that senseless rule, our restaurant industry began to flourish. Just as they changed that rule, they can certainly eliminate the ridiculous fencing requirement that pens us in.

A Portland vendor at Pioneer Square

But here is the worst example, one that truly prevents our urban sidewalks from being lively and livable. The city/county health department’s rules keep us from enjoying a simple delight that is enjoyed by people in most major American cities: sidewalk food carts. (Seattle’s vending ordinance is also very limiting.)
Portland’s downtown is chockablock with outdoor food sellers. Virtually every block has one or two – operating between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. In addition, numerous small food trucks park in lots and back up their counters to the sidewalks. They are often open late into the evening to serve people leaving theaters and night spots. And these are not just mushy steamed hot dogs. They’re fine, cooked-to-order meals of all cuisines, from French crepes to phad thai and burritos.

A vendor in Queens, NY

None of that here, though. Seems our health department folks insist upon an employee restroom and a three-compartment sink — neither one practical for a tiny cart or truck. I am not aware that folks in Portland have been dying in droves from e-coli or hepatitis-C. And that city has been allowing these little street cafes for many years, ample time for any evidence to appear. Of course, they inspect the premises and even inspect the home-based kitchens. Portland now has sidewalks far more interesting than any we have here.
Portland allows these diminutive enterprises to sell fresh, hand-made food for several reasons. First, they see it as an economic development tool. Small, family-based, and often recent immigrant-owned businesses can start up simply and flourish, perhaps eventually moving into a storefront. Second, the city wants to offer downtown workers the choice of inexpensive lunches. Hence, if the vendors keep their prices low, they charge no permit fee. Finally, they contribute to a dynamic public realm. The little businesses maintain eyes on the street and keep the area tidy.
So simple to do. Such amazing results. Not for us, however.

Read more SeattleScape comments on sidewalks and walking here, here and here.

My travels this week led me to Portland’s Pearl District. I couldn’t help but think about places in Seattle that could benefit from broad changes like those that created the Pearl. We don’t have Tax Increment Financing, but we do have Interbay.  

Recently the Interbay/Dravus rezone passed out of the Planning Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee, but has run into some trouble on the way to the full council. 

Should the rezone be subject to the pending incentive zoning proposal? The mayor seems to want this to happen as do some councilmembers. Additionally the Seattle Department of Transportation seems to have some issues with infrastructure missing as part of the rezone. At the PLUNC meeting where the rezone passed, concerns were raised that sidewalks and road improvements wouldn’t happen. 

But Interbay’s time has come.  

Like the warehouse district in Portland that became the Pearl District, Interbay is now a mix of low-intensity uses with no housing to speak of. Because of its location, more people living here is not sparking dissent from neighboring single family neighborhoods. Even the industrial community seems to be supporting the changes.

 The council needs to avoid getting into a battle over the many ‘what ifs’ that could hold this up. The project should look at non-traditional sidewalks to address the SDOT concerns, and a reasonable target needs to be set for affordability. Sustainable reuse of buildings like the Ecotrust building in the Pearl should also be encouraged.  

The council should take the time to get these things sorted out and set some indicators to measure whether the rezone lives up to our expectations. But we’ve waited long enough.