The Smart and Narrow
Doing Density Right
Cities everywhere are struggling to grow in healthy, eye-pleasing, eco-friendly ways -- a concept the Dutch have got dialed. In Seattle, where building big hasn't always worked out financially or aesthetically, it might be time to try things Amsterdam-style. Cross-posted from our partners at Crosscut.com.
By Guest Writer, 6-18-09
Stand in the shadow of any giant residential megablock in Seattle and you can’t help but wonder: Isn’t there a better way to do this? The reality of massive buildings now being auctioned off at fire-sale prices seems proof that bigness alone is neither necessary nor a sufficient condition for successful development in Seattle.
Developers have long crowed — and local politicians have cowed to — the notion that “we can’t make money in Seattle unless we build six-story buildings.” After a round of developer-driven up-zoning we now behold the post-bubble result: fleets of full-block behemoths standing half-empty, unsold, even half-built.
What will we make of this enforced economic pause? Will we carve out urban and mental space in which to think about growing smartly and sustainably instead of just bigger and faster? Or will we simply wait for the banks to resume shoveling debt so the bulldozers can resume shoving dirt?
A few blocks from the lively Cal Anderson Park on Capitol Hill is a place that could change our thinking about Seattle urban density. It means we have to set aside preconceptions, re-tweak some zoning, and steal a few great ideas from elsewhere.
Near the crest of Madison Street where Capitol Hill meets the Central District sits the site of T. T. Minor Elementary School. If the school board ultimately prevails, T. T Minor will soon close up shop. The site is a 3.5-acre chance to do density differently in the middle of one of the most dense parts of the city. It includes the school, a park, and a parking lot with plain old neighborhood on three sides. It has abundant transit connections and a multitude of shops, restaurants, and grocery stores within 3 to 5 minutes walking distance.
It is an ideal spot to explore a dense, diverse development model as an alternative to the Seattle norm. That better model would be something like the Jordaan neighborhood in Amsterdam, one of the most dense and paradoxically most pleasant urban neighborhoods in the world.
It is an urban planning cliche‚ to wish that every city would be more like Amsterdam. (The New York Times’ David Brooks muses on that idea.) However, Seattle is a city that could pull it off, politically, in a neighborhood where it actually makes sense to try it.
The concept is straightforward: create high-density/low-rise living spaces in a neighborhood built for people before cars. The City Design Library website gives an overview of the Floor Area Ratio concept and the value of using less of the land space for vehicles and more for human living. This won’t work everywhere, not even in most areas of Seattle. At the T. T. Minor site, pursuing these ideas could work terrifically well. Here’s what it would take:
Plan on a smaller scale. Keep streets to a single lane wide enough for a firetruck with sidewalks on either side. Keep those sidewalks at street level to make handicapped access, biking, scootering, and carting all easier.
Double the grid density. Remember, twice as many streets means four times as many street corners.
Build shorter, narrower buildings with smaller spaces. Limit building heights to four stories and set the fourth story back a bit to let more light spill into the streets. Keep most units under 1,000 square feet or so to keep the rental and purchase costs more affordable, but make certain to offer a range of sizes and plans.
Keep the first floors tall (12 feet) and flexible-use, so that they can evolve from residences to shops to offices to garages and back over the years. That means that the garages will need to be street-level, few, and far between. Eliminating the need to build vast underground catacombs of parking will go a long way toward affordability.
Seek diversity. Healthy urban neighborhoods thrum with diversity of all stripes: socio-economic, ethnic, cultural, and aesthetic. This sort of experiment would require active pursuit of all those forms of diversity in order to work. It will need renters and owners, rich and poor, blue collar and white collar, natives and newcomers and importantly, a wide range of designers and architects. The death-knell for such a bold experiment would be cookie-cutterism when it comes to design.
Make it last. Finally, it is reasonable to assume that a new neighborhood like this will endure for a century or more, not just the next boom-bust cycle. The design and materials used should be capable of lasting that long.
writes and consults in Seattle, where he has lived since 1988.
[End of article]Hey, don't forget the red light district, the hashish-Internet cafes,the restive radical Muslim population, the warehouses full of state-purchased hideous art, and the needle exchange program for folks seeking alternative realities the mainline way. But then again, much of that exists in Seattle already. Don't you guys already get stoned and check e-mail at the same time in public now? But I agree; what we need to do is be more like the Dutch. And we will be, when cars are outlawed and everybody rides a bike downtown to get stoned and check e-mail. A wonderfully utopian fantasy. I can't wait.
Comment By lewis, 6-18-09I totally agree with Bill's sarcasm!
I think his idea of utopia is one in which every mile of land is paved over by super-highways in which every American drives an H2 while drunk and kills every living creature trying to get across the traffic. Much better than riding bikes and getting stoned!
Lewis, I have no "idea" of utopia. You seem to be confused. Now clean the foam specks off your screen and think hard about what you wrote above. It's quite idiotic. It's a simplistic smear and very typical of a kneejerk-type like you. Hideously stupid. Try to be more creative with your invective. Cliched' ranting has no shelf life. Lewis, go outside and pick some berries or something and think about this. Try harder, Lewis. I know you can do it. You spelled all the words correctly, but your syntax is a bit weak. And you have little regard for punctuation.That said, you're light years ahead of most of the commenters on these threads.Congratulations. Actually, Lewis, with a little work you could be a New West columnist. Good luck, Lewis.
Comment By lewis, 6-19-09I find it idoitic to say that anyone truly thinks that cars will be outlawed. You think the government is going to outlaw a product they now effectively produce?
And yes, I am an amatuer at writing, and yes I got pulled into a kneejerk reaction by the rantings of someone like you. However, I never said anything about being an idot, or writing something stupid. I was just folloeing one rant with another.
Lewis, Calm down. I apologize for being heavy-handed. But look at your post. Full of misspellings. Now our Internet commentary culture forgives this, right? It's all about passion, not prose. But, it's hard to take anybody seriously who doesn't care if they express their points well or not. In the end, it's just illiterate ranting. So you're not going to be a victim of my vitriol in the future, Lewis. You're not worth the trouble. Good luck, Lewis.
Comment By Geoff, 6-25-09Just to step back to the original article for a sec..."doing density right" is one of my mantras. It's easy to do density wrong if you ignore past examples that people show preference for. When confronted with the prospect of increased density coming to neighborhoods, many people go into fear mode and imagine the worst possible expression of what density might mean. Who can blame them? A lot of bad density has been foisted off on communities by developers who have calculated the profit margins on building. [Many developers do take greater care to build desirable projects that fit both the neighborhoods and the market, but there are still plenty of examples of what people DO NOT want.] If, instead, developers showed a range of concepts of what they meant by "density" neighbors could be engaged in a less confrontational way. We have examples from all over the world where people have gotten that right.
Density done right adds value to a neighborhood and a community;density done wrong shifts a cost to the neighborhood and the community. It's as simple as that.