Stay classy, Seattle.

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…)

We often hear the “30% of income” statistic used to define housing affordability. This is clearly inadequate. No one statistic will recognize our wide variables in lifestyle and situation. A suitable housing cost can be very different, for example, if a person doesn’t have a car, has a big family, doesn’t have a family, eats for free at a restaurant job, spends half their income on medical bills, etc.

If your expenses are mostly housing and food, paying 30% for housing seems downright quaint, however admirable and however great for retirement savings.

If a single metric is useful, how about 50% for housing plus transportation? It’s not perfect, but it’s much closer to the truth for pretty much everyone.

Local governments can do great things to encourage affordability. Some are happening now, and some aren’t.

First, take this...

Housing construction is expensive, and some of it is our own fault. Buildable sites are expensive because not enough land is zoned higher than what’s already there. Seattle’s famous “process” adds significant cost and risk for every project. We’re tacking on massive new fees onto projects above the older zoned heights. We’re disincentivizing new construction even though new supply is our greatest weapon to avoid SF/NY prices.

More on that: I don’t mean the new supply is affordable, because construction is expensive. But new supply means less demand for the old supply. That allows the old supply to gradually become cheaper over the years. That’s why the middle-class housing of 1920 or 1970 is generally more affordable today. (And the opposite is why similar housing in San Francisco or Manhattan is still outrageously expensive.)

Major kudos to the City for reducing parking requirements. This is already paying off as developers are developing parking in line with demand, rather than the average nimby’s idea of demand. The savings are dramatic for every space not built, and some projects that didn’t pencil with 25 spaces now pencil with 20 (with garage geometries, even one added space will sometimes trigger new costs in the hundreds of thousands).

In the third-rail department, our own expectations are part of the problem. In the US we tend to think 2,000 square feet is necessary for a family, and 800 square feet is barely livable for an individual. Basically we think we’re entitled to what much of the world would consider out-of-reach luxury. Why can’t a couple with two kids live in a two-bedroom apartment on a quiet street a few blocks from a park, at least until their careers advance a little?

Is Seattle affordable?

But we want to know what these words actually mean, and how the city can acheive them.

In today’s DJC, SeattleScape blogger Roger Valdez introduces the topic of affordability.

On next week’s editorial page, we will run brief comments provided by members of the community, including elected officials, organizers and A/E/C industry players. (We asked them all to answer the question: “What is affordability and what can Seattle do to achieve it?” in under 50 words.)

Bloggers at SeattleScape will also take on the debate over the next few weeks. We hope you will join the conversation by commenting on the blog or emailing your comments to me at shawnag@djc.com.

Maybe I’m the only native Seattleite who has found herself suddenly having to drive across three lanes of traffic to make it to a turnoff that I’ve consistently missed for the last 12 years, or who always remembers too late, on the way to my parents’ house, that the right lane ends two blocks ahead and I’m stuck in it now.

Wait, did I just miss Olive again?

Just getting from some point North of downtown to some point in SoDo is enough to give me hives: Do I stay on I-5 the whole time or is this one of those streets where I briefly merge onto 90 to get to the exit?  Or is this one of those exits where I follow signs to merge onto 90 but then don’t merge at the last minute?

Part of my driving chaos stems from my taking the bus most of the time (and vice versa). A lot of the rest of it comes from Seattle’s unique geographic layout which means there are seven ways to get to any one place across the city, and none of them are ideal.

But there are also places in the city where street signs are tiny, blurry or entirely obscured by tree branches, or lanes abruptly end or you just can’t tell if that arrow is directing you to go straight or make a slight right.  (Check out the Seattle sign gallery at Morgan Wick’s site. )

My family affectionately refers to this as Seattle sign snobbery because really the best way–sometimes the only way– to get around this city is to know it by heart. Many drivers here have little sympathy for you if you have to wait for a sign to tell you that a lane is ending.

But maybe we’re wrong. A recent comment thread over at the Times has some readers mocking those who admit they think Seattle’s intersection signage is confusing. Maybe it’s my problem. But I get lost in the city of my birth more than I’ve ever been lost on vacation.

Last week the Seattle Great City Initiative leader Michael McGinn hosted an end-of-the-year happy hour to toast the season and thank volunteers and supporters for their work. McGinn and Great City regular Brice Maryman were leading proponents for the successful parks levy that passed in November.

Great City has focused on trying to bring together neighborhood advocates, developers and environmentalists to be more supportive of growth.

There are some tremendous individuals with decades of experience in wide array of fields that are part of Great City. It was good to catch up with a few of those folks and talk about the last political year and the one coming up.

We started talking about the possibly three Seattle City Council seats that may be open next year and we hit on a lot of different topics. What three questions would we ask the burgeoning field of candidates? There were three that I distilled from our conversation that focused on transportation, density and affordability.

• Studies show that 1 new mile of highway construction creates between 1,400 and 2,300 tons of CO2. And a recent Sightline study indicated that “adding one mile of new highway lane will increase CO2 emissions by more than 100,000 tons over 50 years.” What will you do as a member of the Seattle City Council to reduce vehicle miles traveled and limit new highway construction in the city, especially on the waterfront?

• More than 60 percent of Seattle’s land is designated single family. The Puget Sound Regional Council projects that 1.7 million new people will be coming to our region in the next 20 years. As a member of the Council, what would you do to support accommodating Seattle’s share of that growth? Would you support the expansion of Detached Accessory Dwelling Units (DADUs) city wide? How would you create density in single family neighborhoods?

• With the economy in a severe downturn, concepts of affordability are changing and some would argue a major shift that may be systemic or even paradigmatic. What do you think the downturn means for housing affordability in Seattle and specifically what would you do to set definitions and goals for affordability? Please tie your answer back to the recent debate over incentive zoning.

So what would your questions be? What are the answers we should expect and demand? 

The Seattle City Council’s Planning, Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee will have another hearing, discussion and possible vote tomorrow morning at 9:30 a.m. on a plan to extend the city’s incentive zoning program beyond downtown.

This proposal would insure all buildings taking advantage of future upzones come with units earmarked for certain income levels. It has been kicking around long enough to have germinated amid a flood of permits and plans. Now, it’s about to poke out of the dirt in a totally different development environment.

Does the change matter?

With development slowing in Seattle and financing tough to come by for even some of the seasoned pros, will any incentive help? Or should the city just be lapping up any new building plans it can get and putting off hopes of getting more public benefits out of the deal?

Some people testifying at previous public hearings on the proposal have pointed out that economic slowdowns are the best time — sometimes the only time– to right policy wrongs and prepare for the next building rush.

Others have testified that it’s important an incentive actually be an incentive. It may be tough to evaluate what that looks like now.

As suggested in part by the time it’s taken this proposal to move forward, it’s also hard to make development decisions amid huge uncertainty over the future.