Left alone in Seattle? Dream on
Ballard holdout Edith Macefield wasn't a hero. She was a victim of modern Seattle and its values.
Edith Macefield has died. She was the Ballard resident who wanted to be left alone. She refused to sell her home to a developer who then built around her bungalow, surrounding and overshadowing it. She's entered Seattle lore as a symbol of old Ballard, which itself stands as a symbol for old Seattle, a place that's being turned into a playground for the haves.
Macefield did not want to be a hero. She simply wanted to live out her life her way in her own home. The city is full of such people. They're not standing firm to make a statement, but they are resisting the pressures and temptations of change in order to live life their way. That stubborness is not simply an old Scandinavian trait, an impulse of old Ballard's squarehead culture. It's a human one: People grow into places, become part of them like the rocks and trees and hills.
But we live in an era where place isn't supposed to matter, except as a backdrop for a condo view or on a postcard. Our mobile society can live, work, play, and pursue the American dream anywhere. People bound to place — people with accents, regional loyalties, people with a skepticism about rapid change, people with deep roots — are seen as holding America (and Seattle) back. We live in a time when simply being isn't enough; we have to be moving up and forward and fast. Mobility is our obsession. Change is out mantra. Growth is our lifeblood.
People like Edith Macefield who want to live quiet lives and be left alone are now the equivalent of squatters — they occupy space that has a destiny, a "highest and best use" that doesn't include people who want to live their lives in peace. Steamrollering over them is justified by the notion that we're fulfilling our civic mission to create a denser, more urban city so that we won't pave all of nature. The Edith Macefield's are seen as standing in the way of progress.
A few might cheer her on, but only a few. Seattle's policies and laws, its tax breaks and incentives for developers, its frontier city DNA all call for the displacement of the Edith Macefields.
A new report underscores how large the pressure is: Many Seattle neighborhoods have hit their 20-year housing growth targets in only three years (Ballard is at 174 percent of its target). Even so, the city continues to look for ways to speed up the process, and indeed encourages more and faster growth. These targets don't reflect anything so natural as the birth rate of the local population. They are set to meet job and economic targets. They are driven by prosperity goals. Money.
Sadly, we haven't figured out how to live in a denser city well — why do we think growth is going to save us? We can't clean up Puget Sound now — are we really going to be able to clean it up more readily with another one or two million people packed in here? Growth is often what drives our problems, not solutions. But slowing growth? Un-American. You can't deny or defy the all-powerful market that rules American life like a bullying demiurge.
The problems of growth aren't the only ones.
Edith Macefield wanted to be left alone. But that's hard today even if a developer doesn't want your property. Seattle is putting up surveillance cameras in city parks. The Puget Sound region is contemplating widespread road tolling that would allow drivers to be tracked. The state is putting micro-chips in some driver's licenses as part of a larger national pilot program to make sure every American has — and carries — a traceable ID card. The feds are stopping U.S. passengers on the San Juan ferries to look for drugs, terrorists and illegal immigrants — stopping and questioning Washingtonians who have not crossed a border. In Seattle, your garbage is being picked over to make sure you've sorted your recycling properly. If not, you'll be fined.
Edith Macefield may find what she wanted in the afterlife. In Seattle, fat chance.
Comments:
Posted Wed, Jun 18, 7:25 p.m. inappropriate
Changing the things you can: Knute, growth and change and money are just as much a part of Seattle's history and character as Ivar Haglund. Sure, there was a brief period of stagnation during in the 70's and 80's when you were growing up, and that period may seem to represent the "real" Seattle to you. Compared with the rest of Seattle history, however, that period stands out as an anomaly.
Nevertheless, your assertion that "we haven't figured out how to live in a denser city well" is correct and well put. Certainly, a lack of development regulation is part of the problem.
A bigger problem are all the old timers who fantasize about making the city like it was in the 70's and 80's, clinging to small town solutions and politics that simply don't work in the big city that Seattle has become. I don't think your views are quite that simple, but I do think articles like this fan the flames of denial.
By the way, Edith Macefield was by no means the first person in Seattle who's location stood in the way of progress.
Posted Thu, Jun 19, 8:30 a.m. inappropriate
RE: Changing the things you can: "A bigger problem are all the old timers...." Is there anything more infuriating than the attitude expressed in this paragraph? The problem in Seattle is the "old timers," eh? What gives those old timers the right to think that they have a right to inhibit the evolution to the "big city" that Sean deems so desirable? Well, Sean, maybe they have more invested in city than you have. Maybe their desire for the city is as valid as yours. Maybe your studly youth is NOT by definition superior to their decrepitude. Just maybe, they have a right to their opinions without being tossed into the bin as remnants of a lost life. And just maybe, the Seattle they yearn for has some value based on qualities of life that you, perhaps, have not yet come to learn and appreciate. And, well, you might learn it one day, and not be so dismissive of the antiquities stumbling around Ballard and other communities under attack by your youthful points of view.
Posted Thu, Jun 19, 11:27 a.m. inappropriate
Harbinger of what is to come: Edith Macefield - at least we noticed her. How many of "Old Seattle's" whispy, white-haired octogenarians do we run into at Safeway or on our "World Class" downtown sidewalks? Members of the "Greatest Generation," after they have worked a lifetime to pay-off their mortgages, the city and state come in a reassess their home values every year and raise their property taxes to the point where their meager retirement incomes will not let them survive after paying the government "rent" on the property they paid for long ago. So, they are forced to sell to developers who get tax incentives, and the old folks end up being warehoused in "elder care" facilities where they wither away and die alone - then get whisked away in a sterile ambulance or hearse and cremated. All so very neat and tidy. We never have to see them face-to-face. Seattle - the image of a youthful, clean city - gleaming. The old and the infirm are hidden from our sight - as if they do not exist. The ironic reality, however, is that we will all join them one day - and the confiscatory property tax policies which we supported by perenially voting for and supporting the same mayor, city councilmen and state officials year-after-year will rob us of the "golden years" and our homes we so foolishly thought we would one day own if we worked hard and scrimped and saved enough for.
Posted Thu, Jun 19, 12:44 p.m. inappropriate
questions: The are two questions that often get mixed up in the growth debate in Seattle: (1) How much density? (2) How to do density? Both are important and questions.
We may have more control over the second question than the first, at least in the short term. Density can be done well but there are a few key things to get right. With density must be an upgrade and increase in civic infrastructure like parks, libraries, neighborhood centers, improved streets and sidewalks. If we grow without improving civic infrastructure - the existing infrastructure is overtaxed and deteriorates further. So far, infrastructure has in no way kept pace.
Second, elements of historical continuity in the development of the City must be incorporated into new construction and not obliterated. For example, the neighborhood planning process under Mayor Schell, concentrated major density at all the existing neighborhood cores. In generality, this made sense - keep the density near where it already is. In the details, it has been a big mistake because the existing 2-story historical commercial cores of these neighborhoods are zoned for building 7-8 story buildings. If zoning had taken into account protecting these historical street fronts and placing density around them and behind them, the existing neighborhood character would be preserved without being imperiled by the new density. In effect these planning decisions have sharpened the conflict between old and new when more sound planning practices could have created a successful synergy.
Tying into Knute's previous piece, there needs to be a robust conversation on how density can be done well? What creates ugly density? What are good examples of incorporating the old and the new? How can zoning, planning and design be used to keep those things Seattlities treasure most while allowing space for new well-integrated density.
Currently, there is almost no one is the media that are asking and trying to find answers to these questions and HUGE opportunities are being lost to shape the form of new development and it's impacts. If these questions had been asked during the neighborhood planning process over a decade ago then our neighborhood streetfronts would be better protected. Last years missed opportunities become tomorrow's tragedies.
Posted Thu, Jun 19, 7:30 p.m. inappropriate
RE: Changing the things you can: No one who knows me would ever call me "youthful".
"Old-timers" was a poorly chosen phrase. It's not an age I'm talking about, it's the stubborn stuck-in-the-mud attitude exhibited by a those unable or unwilling to accomodate anything that happened in this city after 1989.
The irony is that the real old-timers, those who ran the city in the 50's and 60's, readily embraced progress and change. They erected a world-famous monument to progress, the Space Needle. These were smart, optimistic, can-do people who believed in the city and made things happen.
Then came the doldrums of the 70's and 80's, which spawned an entire generation of belly-achers who have confused arbitrary defiance for real civic discourse and problem solving. Angry, alienated, disengaged, self-righteous, they wish everyone else would just go away and leave them alone with the city they somehow feel entitled to, and they act sullen and surprised when no one complies. If these do-nothings ran the show in the 50's and 60's, there'd be no Seattle Center or Space Needle, just as there is no Commons, Sonics, rapid transit, or meaningful regulations around development and preservation.
Meanwhile, the city continues to grow in spite of their complaining, and the quality of life around here continues to decline because of it.
Posted Thu, Jun 19, 8:22 p.m. inappropriate
Seattle has always had builders and skeptics--the city is the product of both. Even even in the boom years of the 1950s and '60s, there were concerted efforts to save Seattle from Los Angelesization. This place would be far worse if the "can do" attitude of civic boosters was unchecked. What helped to spark that community concern was seeing the impacts of growth and industrialization--the red pollution sunsets of the '70s, the sewage in Lake Washington, the gobbling of the countryside by sprawl.
Along with good ideas and bold visions, Seattle's civic visionaries have also produced fiascos--the seizing of the tidelands and commons, the eco-disaster that was the Denny Regrade, the poisoning and rerouting of the Duwamish, the dividing of the city's core with I-5. There have been projects that were over-priced and under-delivered (Sound Transit), ill-conceived (the Green Line), and bungled (Westlake), to name a few. The running rampant rah-rah crowd brought us money-losers like the Goodwill Games, and a pr and civil liberties catastrophe like WTO.
I have to say that many citizens have come by their skepticism honestly.
Posted Thu, Jun 19, 9:17 p.m. inappropriate
RE: Changing the things you can: Well put KB. I tend to be more personal in my response to the issue. It is amusing that Sean sees people like the elderly woman in Ballard as a "Do Nothing." He should read the long article in the P-I about her amazing life. If memory serves she even lunched with Hitler! She is a do-nothing because she wanted to be left alone in her little house, to die in peace in her eighties. In the process, she stuck a bone in the throat of a developer who had "progress" that included her property.
The tension you mention has indeed always existed in this city. Sean believes it is an intrinsically moral conflict between a good (progress) and an evil (stagnation). I do not agree. The values represented by people who want to maintain their neighborhoods, their homes, their communities, are as valid as the values represented by the developers who want to transform those neighborhoods into an urban future. Moreover, as you imply, the failures of vision by the developers is far more dangerous and drastic than the failures of people who slow the urban growth of Ballard by watering their lawns instead of selling out.
It is also true, that these changes do come in their own time. Look at the blocks in the neighborhood side of Green Lake Way and see how many of the modest bungalows are left, though twenty years ago the streets from 65th St. down to the lake were merely pleasant neighborhood homes. The developers have won the battle, but the neighborhood is not better for it, even if many more people walk around the lake now.
I am most bothered by the open disdain of the values you define and he derides. There is a kind of superior cruelty going on that leaves a bad taste in the mouth.
Posted Thu, Jun 19, 10:04 p.m. inappropriate
RE: Changing the things you can: "It is amusing that Sean sees people like the elderly woman in Ballard as a "Do Nothing."
Spike, you are completely misrepresenting my point of view.
My comments are directed at Knute's (well-established) perspective on growth and change in this city, which as far as I'm concerned have nothing to do with Edith Macefield. The do-nothing crowd that I'm referring to would have taken the million dollars Edith was offered for her house and moved on. Edith Macefield was not a part of that crowd.
By the way, neither was the guy who saved Pioneer Square and the Pike Place Market.
Furthermore, I don't see this as a moral conflict. Growth in this city is happening, like it or not. The best thing we can do is proactively shape that growth so that the city remains a pleasant place to live. I'd like to see the city exercise more control. I'd like to see more neighborhood input into the design process. I'd like to see more historic preservation. I'd like to see better looking highrises. I'd like to see single family homes protected. I'd like an alternative to sitting in traffic. I'd like to see more public green space.
In order to accomplish any of these things, the do-nothings will eventually have to set aside their paranoia, envy, and spite (not to be confused with "skepticism"), and vote "yes" on something.
Posted Thu, Jun 19, 10:34 p.m. inappropriate
RE: Changing the things you can: "Angry, alienated, disengaged, self-righteous, they wish everyone else would just go away and leave them alone with the city they somehow feel entitled to, and they act sullen and surprised when no one complies. If these do-nothings ran the show...."
Hmm. I don't think you are being misread. The above words practically define that poor old lady. She was angry, irritable, resistant and wanted to be left alone. She wanted to be left alone in the little house that she owned. (Why do developers think they have an intrinsic right to take other people's property?) The article is about Edith Macefield, after all. She was 100% do-nothing. You imply that most of the old timers just want more money before selling out. (Less altruistic than your developers, right?) Of course, most people can be bought, and your million to appeal to her greed came up against a brick wall. Some people actually can't be bought. Glory be.
Posted Thu, Jun 19, 11:42 p.m. inappropriate
RE: Changing the things you can: "The article is about Edith Macefield, after all."
Not really. This article is about Edith Macefield. Knute's article, in contrast, trots her across the page as an involuntary symbol of his perspective on what's become of Seattle. Not much if anything is said about Edith the person.
I never met Edith, but her interviews give the impression of someone who is strong-willed, eccentric, and who's led a unique and mysterious life. I didn't catch a whiff of the anger, alienation, self-righteousness, or misanthropy that characterizes populist politics in Seattle.
Posted Fri, Jun 20, 5:49 p.m. inappropriate
Also, I contest your assertion that Seattle always says "no." We approved massive new spending for roads and bridges, for bus expansion, for new libraries and parks, for a palace of a new city hall and a grand library, an opera house, plus Phase I of Sound Transit. The idea we're standing still is, well, I'll be charitable, not supported by the facts.
I also think a missing part of the debate is the inevitability of high growth--that's what all the official plans predict. I have said previously that there are other ways to deal with growth locally--one would be a national strategy that provided incentives for people to move into de-populating areas and less environmentally sensitive areas than the Puget Sound basin. A kind of reverse "Homestead Act," if you will. I think this is a strategy worth exploring that could slow growth in our region until we can learn to better deal with its negative consequences.
Posted Fri, Jun 20, 8:33 p.m. inappropriate
road tolling doesn't require tracking: Knute, you write it frequently, so you must believe it, but it ain't so. Above you wrote, casually, illustrating a larger point, "The Puget Sound region is contemplating widespread road tolling that would allow drivers to be tracked."
Road tolling, even widespread, does not intrinsically require government tracking of drivers' locations. The government officials in this region doing the contemplating of widespread road tolling are very concerned about protecting customer privacy. Myself and many others in the thinktank sector who support paying by the mile for transportation instead of paying by the gallon know that road pricing does not need to "allow drivers to be tracked."
Even when the pricing depends on signals from a GPS box in the car, the design of a system that works to collect money based on where you are does not need to transmit location information to a central government computer.
PSRC's Traffic Choices report on advanced all-roads user fees on pages explains my point on pages 29-30:
"One suggested way to address data security for road tolling applications is to limit the detail of information a road tolling system would retain in its central office. This is the so-called "thick-client" model discussed on page 31. Since information about specific road use is never sent to the central office, two important points of data vulnerability become less critical: data transmission and central data storage."
On page 31, this report explains:
"In the thick client approach, the tolling process takes place in the OBU [On Board Unit, a computer in the car]. After the road section is recognized, the toll rate is processed in the OBU according to the type of the road, time period, and vehicle class. The road use information can be sent to the back office in aggregate form together with the fee. Specific road details are never stored in the toll system back office. If the fee is calculated in the OBU, it is also possible to integrate a card slot (for usage of cash cards) into the OBU in order to achieve maximum privacy for the participants."
Serious technical people who like road pricing often happen to be in an ideological space that hates spying on citizens whether by government agencies or by divorce lawyers. Technicians right now are preparing system designs for road pricing that prevent government agencies from tracking where people are. Please encourage the tolling industry to protect our privacy as more tolling takes hold, and demand governments legislate this kind of design.
Is Washington State off to a good start protecting privacy with the "Good to Go" electronic tags that collect user fees on Tacoma Narrows Bridge and the SR 167 HOT lane? Most definitely not, and that is a design issue to complain about, loudly. The State DOT's first road tolling does encompass a government computerized databank of vehicle location information, protected only by laws and regulation from being turned over to various authorities who may seek it. That's not good enough for either you or me.
Posted Sun, Jun 29, 1:47 p.m. inappropriate
process: What I can't stand about the new Seattle is that you, Knute, and too many just like you, find oh so much meaning in everything. Let's process and make grave, windy (always windy), and ponderous conclusions about anything that sneezes. Seattle sucks, and I never go there.