The Moda Apartments ... roommates not required.

Few topics are as visceral. A 300 square foot apartment is an affront, and 200 square feet is downright inhuman…right?

Not to me. They fill an important and underserved need. And for a lot of people they’ll be a good and even fun way to live.

With the Videre opening up on 23rd soon, and with the Moda Apartments recently opening in Belltown (originally sold as condos), small apartments are a hot subject in more ways than one. There’s something about the very idea that compels many people to speak as if they’re being asked to live there personally.

Maybe those people think no housing is better than small housing. Or that the only legit route to affordability is to live farther out (as if that math makes sense), or to have roommates (there’s a way to maintain sanity!), or to live with Mom and Dad, or to live with a subsidy, or to live with the pitter-patter of rats, as a friend of mine once did.

You might think this is all theory to me, but I’ve lived it, and recently. Spent four months in a hotel room on Lower Queen Anne while between condos in 2008. Probably 250 square feet. Stuff away in a storage locker. The only thing roomy was the ADA-compliant bathroom. Living in the middle of things made it much easier…sort of like Moda, and even Videre for some people.

Costs can be high on a square foot basis, for example because plumbing costs don’t scale down with the size of the bathroom, the electrical load for each unit might be nearly as high, and elevator service is related to the number of units more than square footage. With shell costs automatically high, developers can be excused for spending a little bit extra to put in finishes that bring the perceived value up to the prices they need to justify.

About “fun.” We’re all wired a little differently. Some people think fun is living in 3,000 square feet and stretching out, with the whole family having a different room for each thing they do, and spending a lot of time fussing with the lawn, and having lots and lots of furniture, and, well, why on earth do people assume we all want that? Maybe fun is living within one’s means in a cozy place, knowing where everything is, and having freedom from stuff. Maybe fun is using that money to eat better, travel more, or have a financial cushion. Maybe it’s trading square footage for a location in the middle of it all. Yes, it’s possible to live small as a lifestyle choice.

Some people want fun, while others just want to live affordably and without subsidy in a clean place without roommates of the various kinds. Nothing wrong with that. Let those subsidies (such as the levy we should renew this year) go to more needy people. And it’s great when people choose to live near work or school, rather than taxing the transportation system.

Apparently the Videre project was fit into the zoning through creative use of the code, and wasn’t specifically envisioned. Rather than scurry around to fix this “loophole,” we should find ways to help more of these projects happen.

The concept of “urbs” and “suburbs” is one that we’ve lived with in the United States since the end of World War II. It might be time to rethink these categories or get rid of them all together.

In an article that ran in Crosscut last week Knute Berger characterized as simplistic the distinction between suburb and city.  I agreed with that characterization in a response at the Daily Score.

But I couldn’t abide with Berger’s claims that somehow smart growth or density (the dreaded ‘D’ word) somehow contributes to sprawl. This conclusion is fueled by the very simplicity Berger seems to deride.

What seems to be happening instead is that it is getting harder to develop large projects in Seattle because of a kind of strange single-family preservationist streak here.  My point was that projects like Bel-Red on the Eastside are almost impossible to do here because of vehement opposition by neighborhood groups and labor.  Neighborhoods oppose the density and labor hopes for more public benefits for their workers from the projects.

As time ticks off the clock projects like the redevelopment of the Campfire site in North Seattle and the Goodwill project in the Southeast part of the city languish and die.  So while we resist growth in Seattle most of the 1.7 million people projected people coming to the region in the next two decades may end up living in Bellevue, which may, ironically, according to the old view, make Bellevue the city and Seattle a “suburb.”

Earlier this year John Fox, leader of the Displacement Coalition, organized against House Bill 1490 titled “reducing greenhouse gas emissions through land use and transportation requirements.”

Fox took issue with many parts of the bill, including the claim that it would wipe out existing affordable housing and replace it with out-of-scale condo developments for the rich. Fox and supporters of the bill argued over whether the bill would really reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

“There are hundreds if not thousands of low income and minority households all along the transit route whose homes would be turned into rubble,” he said. “What’s green about tossing that into a landfill and pouring tons of concrete for all the new high density development?”

The fight was over how to quantify whether the high density development proposed in the legislation would cut green house gas emissions or if the demolition and construction would actually increase emissions. Fox argued, without substantiation, that the bill would actually make things worse. Advocates were caught somewhat off guard. But a recent study sheds some light on the debate (although the bill is dead).

The authors of the study, published in The Journal of Urban Planning and Development, quantified the emissions from building materials and construction, home heating and power demands, and transportation energy, in both urban and suburban neighborhoods in the Toronto metro area.

They found that downtown residents use radically less energy, and consequently emit about two-thirds less climate-warming CO2 than their suburban counterparts.

While the study has its limits — it compares just two neighborhoods in a single city– it points, as other studies do, to the evidence that sprawl and car dependence are closely linked, and are responsible for a disproportionate share of GHG emissions.

This study or dozens like it probably won’t persuade John Fox. But it is an early indicator that indeed high-density development really does produce fewer green house gas emissions than low-density sprawl.

Read more about the study at the Sightline Daily Score Blog.

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.

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.

By now, most of us have heard Metro’s grim warning of a $100 million funding decline next year, and a potential 20 percent cut in service. We’ve also heard that an increase in local taxing authority might be a solution to keep our service. If it’s Thursday morning, the anti-tax, anti-transit crowd is undoubtedly out in full force. If history is an indicator, their arguments are hollow.

They’re probably saying more taxes will make the economy worse, and asking how we could even consider such a thing, and don’t we want to be business-friendly?

They’re backwards. Saving bus service will help us IMPROVE our economy, and improve a lot of people’s lives, even if requires a tax increase.

Of course, Metro hasn’t mentioned a tax increase per se, just maintaining a similar amount of revenue via a higher rate. But it’ll be argued as such.

With decent bus service, more people can leave their cars at home, saving operation and parking costs and wear and tear, and keeping away from the financial cliff. Transit gives people the option to not have cars at all, which can make poor people middle class. Anyone need reminding on the importance of saving individuals on the brink for the good of the rest of us?

Businesses are increasingly locating where the transit is good, because transit helps them attract employees. This is a major reason most office construction and tenants stick to a few urban districts in our region, and those in other areas are asking for better transit. Even if the boss doesn’t use it, the rank and file often do. I’ve heard 60 percent of my office uses transit at least sometimes, aided by our Downtown location.

Financial benefits to the region as a whole are less immediate but even more significant. We save tax dollars in the long run because good transit lets us reduce the amount we spend on road capacity, where our wish list is in the tens of billions because road capacity is outrageously expensive. Consumers end up saving because transit can reduce the amount of parking required (or wanted) for everything we spend money on. For example, the City of Seattle has reduced parking requirements for housing in a few areas, often saving tens of thousands of dollars per unit. Why throw these advances away?

Transit helps the nation use energy and materials more efficiently, from steel and leather to gas and oil. True, our whole metro is 1 percent of the country, but we can be part of the solution. Between the materials to produce the car and the resources to operate it, even a US-made hybrid sends money overseas hand over fist. We reduced oil demand when prices rose; again, why throw that away?

It’s hard to tell where the economy will go, and where tax revenues will go. Maybe things won’t be so bad. But count me as one who’s happy to vote yes if necessary to keep our bus service…and to stay up way too late tonight to write this.

Seattle’s hefty Comprehensive Plan is subtitled “Toward a Sustainable Seattle.”  In the vision section of the plan there is a sub-section called Environmental Stewardship which calls for compact development for  reasons that sound familiar.

The emphasis on compact development is intended to mitigate air and storm water discharge pollution from automobiles, loss of green space, and increases in impervious surfaces that results from non-compact development (page vi)

But what about the Mayor’s latest efforts to put people back “to work and get our local economy moving?” Those plans will include $16 million for sidewalks and repaving.

The City of Seattle has a serious consistency problem when it comes to sustainability. Surface water is probably the best example.  The right hand is working on fixing pot holes and keeping promises of building more sidewalks, while the left hand is writing glowing language about the importance of reducing impervious surface. This is a case where being ambidextrous is a bad thing.

Of course it feels great to pander to demands from neighborhoods for more sidewalks and acknowledge the importance of reducing storm water discharge caused by paved surfaces.

Surface water management is perhaps the most glaring example that the City is still a long way from a real comprehensive plan that moves us toward a sustainable Seattle. We need to ask: What are the actual outcomes of what we do, compared to what we say?

The bottom line must be to limit the creation of more impervious surface, reduce the impervious surfaces we have, and develop safe walkways for pedestrians and lanes for bikes that don’t create more water discharge. Tto do that, we have to know how much impervious surface we have, set a quantifiable goal to reduce it and hold ourselves accountable. Change starts with measurement.

We need to grab the measuring tape before we go for the shovel.

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.

The single biggest challenge to true growth management, and therefore the strongest driving force behind suburban sprawl, is in fact the average American household’s pursuit of the “American dream” – which ultimately becomes a very personalized definition of “affordable housing.”

The real barrier?

While the “American dream” is often loosely defined as one’s own tidy single-family home on a sizable piece of property behind the proverbial white-picket fence, in fact this dream is a moving target, influenced not only by the marketing machines of corporate homebuilders, federal tax policy, and even cable television, but also by still lingering suburbanite fears of “urban living.”

While growing up in my family of five in eastern Bellevue in the 1960’s I lived in what was then deemed a model of middle-class housing. Yet that same 1600-square-foot, three-bedroom, 2-bathroom house on a large lot is today considered substandard by most even two- or three-person families seeking new housing.

With new homebuilders and the massive media storm that has grown around them bombarding American society with imagery and messaging meant to convince us all that we should live in 3,000-plus-square-foot “faux chateaux” in the distant-most exurbs, the tidy, comfortable, and, yes, more modest suburban homes of yesteryear pale in comparison.

As a result, when today’s small family laments that they cannot “afford” a house unless they move out to the exurban fringe on yesterday’s farms and forestland it’s often because they cannot afford the current media-driven image of what they should afford. In fact, 15- to 30-year-old suburban homes in first- and even second-ring suburbs are far more affordable than houses in the brand-new subdivisions but are often overlooked. (more…)