Little boxes, crammed together
Like the skinny houses of two decades ago, dense townhouse projects seem to be everywhere, and they look terrible. An architect and former Seattle City Council member says Seattle can do better.
Mayor Greg Nickels' announcement Tuesday, July 10, that that the city will consider new design standards to address unwelcome townhouse development invading the city's neighborhoods was encouraging news. If Seattle is to willingly accept its share of the anticipated 1.7 million more people coming to our region over the next 20 years, we must do a much better job of integrating new, more-compact development with existing neighborhoods — or the neighbor battles will become uglier. But better design aesthetics and architectural detailing alone will not solve the problem.
While many see only the banal ugliness in the townhouses intruding in their neighborhoods, the problem with these so-called "six-packers" is less an issue of ugliness and more about how low-rise multiple family buildings are arranged on a site. As prescribed by the current flawed land-use code, they are typically three stories with the upper floors overhanging extremely tight driveways and garage entrances, and dark, narrow, mostly unusable front and side yards. This ill-conceived configuration is a pattern cropping up throughout the city and region, and while it might harshly accomplish density goals, it is at the expense of livability, efficient utilization of land, and successful neighborhood integration. Homebuilders apparently like it because it's a cheap and permit-ready, off-the-shelf architectural plan that can replicated to fit varying lot sizes, like sections of an egg carton, almost anywhere that's zoned for low-rise, multi-family development.
So what's the solution? First of all, just disallow them! Strike this housing typology from the code altogether, as was done with the objectionable tall-and-skinny houses of the 1970s and '80s. In a beautiful city of great neighborhoods such as Seattle, we cannot achieve urban density goals successfully this way, and the backlash we're beginning to see will only exacerbate the political challenges of accommodating future growth.
Second, rewrite the code to make it less prescriptive and more form- and performance-based. This approach necessarily entails site-specific design review (as the mayor proposed), and greater design flexibility (height, scale, setbacks, open space, etc.) to achieve results more compatible existing neighborhood character.
Third, we have an extraordinarily talented design community in the Seattle metropolitan region. Why can't we enlist them to develop a highly appealing yet affordable "Seattle model" for multi-family housing that, like the six-pack townhouses, could be easily replicated with a few adjustments through design review to fit in happily in most any neighborhood? The ubiquitous craftsman style cottage of the early 1900s, while single-family, is a close analogy of an enduring pattern design and highly popular to this day. Other good examples from the past are the many garden court apartments, such as the Anhalt Cottages, found interspersed throughout the city. They were successful because they provided attractive, affordable multi-family housing while integrating well with surrounding single family neighborhoods.
Once again, we might look to Portland's example, where city planners recently conducted a year-long design competition and a civic engagement process that resulted in the creation of a new garden-apartment style well-received by the broader community. There is no question that Seattle's seriously flawed and outdated multi-family code needs more than a tweak. It needs a serious overhaul. It's been more than 20 years since such major changes were made — let's be bold this time and do it right!
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Comments:
Posted Fri, Jul 11, 8:55 a.m. inappropriate
Townhouse solution more than looking toward Portland: The tyranny of townhomes should be stopped. Peter is right that it is the site configuration that creates a less than pleasant environment.
The first change needed is, of course to halt this kind of development.
Second is to change the short platting regulations that creates this configuration of four-packing (six-packing is not nearly as common, Peter) a standard 50x100 foot Seattle lot. The short platting process allows for a single site to be split without requiring any street frontage for this subdivide. It's not a bad rule, just one that has allowed for thoughtless design practice by architects desiring to ultimately make an additional buck or two. It's not that making money shouldn't be something architects shouldn't strive for but it would be more like your doctor giving you two more sets of eyes because you ask for it and not because you or your family need it.
Portland's courtyard housing competition, although a good exercise, is one that is not feasible in any regular application in either Portland or Seattle. It requires two side-dy-side standard lots (100x100 feet) to make it a useable solution. This is the one time I will side with the nay-sayers who pooh the rest of us for wanting to be like Portland. I attended the forum on this subject last month and was discourage because of it was more an exercise finding a design solution to an irregular condition and seemed to only help define what styles will be coming to Portland soon. It's kind of like the fashion industry's parading of next season's clothing styles.
I do get the sense that Portland does have the design talent to make this happen but what they really have are developers who are savy enough to understand what makes a decent neighborhood and city government with some long term thinking and projecting. It also doesn't hurt to have people who are committed to living and working within city limits. Seattle, Redmond, Bellevue and other subburbs tend to be commuter cities for each other.
Seattle's design talent appears to be feeding off the individual wealth of our citizens. There are many strong designers doing work on single family homes or work in our many super-sized firms. Yes this statement might tick-off those of us working in 20-30 person firms but frankly the middle ground tends to bite off more than we can chew.
All-in-all I feel we do have a promising future but we need to put our effort into the right policy changes and do the things that will set the bar high for design. Since I moved here eight years ago I have seen a lot of changes to the form of townhouses built in Seattle. Yes, there are several big developers repeating the same poor design over and over while being able to sell them to people hastily desiring to be in certain neighborhoods. Yet there are others willing to embrace a better formal design sense while growing their development business thoughtfully. My hope is they take on the leadership and personal conviction to see the larger picture and create the changes our city needs and, from the other side, our city enlists their incredible knowledge about the city's landuse policies that allowed this to happen.
Posted Fri, Jul 11, 9:58 a.m. inappropriate
5000 Foot Lots: The typical 5000 foot lot is smaller than much of typical, post WW2 Suburbia. It's prevalence in Seattle is a bit of a historical artifact, built during the conversion from trolley to car.
It is also an artifact that works very well. Respecting this success is perhaps more of a historical preservation question than one of design review.
I do think that it is possible to densify TRADITIONAL single family neighborhoods, but not by much, and probably not to a margin that does much more than pay for the design staff. Hopefully the other benefits of good design to a smaller project would justify that investment.
Here are some of my thoughts as to what works, or more accurately, COULD work:
1. Clustered town houses - create open space as part of a project. The previous commenters cite of the 100x100 courtyard fourplex is definitely the upper limit of this.
2. Single Family Transition Zones - transitioning from a single family neighborhood to a business district such as a neighborhood arterial is tough, rough transitions at the zone line are bad, IMO, very bad. Upping the density on the neighborhood side and dropping it on the business side is good - and only achievable through a design review process of integrity and competence.
3. Mother in Law and Garage units - Though some might few the presence of renters in single family neighborhoods that is an argument that is specious, at best, discrimination and abuse at worst. Societal differences are a fact of life. FWIW, I'd rather have a social network that deals with these facts of life through the judgement of the individual homeowner. FWIW I think affordable housing in our neighborhoods is much healthier than the public or private corporate housing model, though of course the worst of the former could certainly be much more negative than the best of the latter.
-Douglas Tooley
My Blog
Posted Fri, Jul 11, 10:29 a.m. inappropriate
Where has the Mayor been on this all these years?: Thank you, Peter, for your article.
One has to wonder, however, why it's taken so long for anyone of significance in this community to talk about the ugliness of these units? Doesn't the Mayor drive around town and see this blight being constructed everywhere? What about our city council members? And the DPD managers, themselves? I find it hard to believe any one of them could go two blocks in any direction in this town and NOT run into this stuff....and not be appalled.
Those of us regular folks have been upset about this for years. Our neighborhoods are starting to look so ugly. On top of that, one wonders about the construction quality of these things, as it seems many of the units start looking pretty bad within just a few years.
Posted Fri, Jul 11, 11:28 a.m. inappropriate
Emergency Interim Controls would give us "Time To Get it Right!: Bravo Peter, I knew the old man was in there somewhere!
But its 1.7 million people over 40 years starting from 2000. Already 8 years in and contrary to plan–you are right about backlash. Seattle's on "target" but the costly new oversized housing is for smaller households with much larger resources than those forced or sent elsewhere. Voting with their feet is good–other places are also capable of saving the planet. But displacement can also feed sprawl. Counterintuitive 2nd order changes are necessary: here and now transit, respecting nature's way of handling "runoff," and shifting focus from frenzied upzoning to correcting overzoning.
Think, Peter before buying that abstraction invented to scare pols. Remember Charles Correa and his analogy to food: "On any given evening there is a need for 6 million dinners in Paris. That's the first step: we've aggregated the demand. Now, the next. Staggered by the size of the figure we set up 50 central kitchens, each producing 120,000 dinners. Perhaps they will all be produced by the end of the day, but will they be edible? Fortunately the French do no such thing."
History helps too: OFM's Historical and Projected Table. In the 40 years between 1960 and 2000, our four county region gained 1.8 million people or 58% of the state's population growth. Since OFM goes only to 2030, the 40 years–1990 to 2030 must be used to see that the region's projection is 48% of that projected for the state. Sharing growth, that studiously ignored part of the Growth Management Act, fulfills it's own self.
On to all those good dinners in Paris. Back in Victor's day, Seattle knew an emergency when citizens saw one, shut down planning error with interim controls, then took the time to rethink "long term appeal." Today's use for interim controls: stop ignoring requirements for access easements, backing out of driveways, and thresholds for special review and do whatever else necessary to put townhouses back in a single row. Victor would have seen right through all this aggregated demand. I wish more of his students did.
When we declare the future too different or scary to care about the past anymore, history bites back. History would have recognized the phrase: "flexibility with limits" as a big clue that the Multi-Family "Update" born with a 1998 Council resolution to make the damn thing understandable is none other than the mega-planning error of the 1980s back with the same slogan. 270 pages later we learn it's now on steroids.
Contextual minded architects need to read the whole ordinance and stop leaving planners and futurists to blunder on and on and on. It's hard, I know. Over the last seven months, pages and pages of justification have been added to justify basically the same proposal that was there last December.
Solution's the easiest part: simpler more modest standards that prevent widespread harm from routine projects (e.g. townhouse packs), more concise and focused guidelines that put special situations and superior skills to an effective manners test.
And no more citing recent comprehensive plan amendments to justify their opposite:
Land Use Policy 81:
Limit building heights to establish predictable maximum heights, maintain scale
relationships with adjacent buildings, and limit view blockage...
Land Use Policy 83:
Limit bulk to ensure that buildings contribute to the desired pattern of
development for the applicable multifamily zone, to maintain compatibility with
the surrounding areas, and to encourage infill and single lot development where appropriate.
Thank you Peter, thank you Victor.
Posted Fri, Jul 11, 11:43 a.m. inappropriate
Inspired Urpan Planners Where Are You?: Eastlake Avenue has deteriorated into a pitted street (from being town up for townhouse projects) lined with boxes bringing their mandated 'first floor commercial space' for which no parking has been added. I know there are inspired urban planners out there...where are you?
Posted Fri, Jul 11, 1:19 p.m. inappropriate
Where has the Mayor been on this all these years?: And where was Peter Steinbrueck when this abominable code was written? was he, by any chance, the Land Use Chair for awhile (I honestly do not know the answer to that but I think he was).
Posted Fri, Jul 11, 4:07 p.m. inappropriate
Still getting it wrong: In most other places townhopuses are not permitted in single family detached zones. Accommodating higher density is usually achieved for single family detached by the use of small lots, accessory dwellings or similar types, The functional and aesthetic needs of both types of dwellings cannot be met "side by side". Separate the zones! The "six-pack" design is a suburban response to the dense and continual development of most urban centers. The historical patterns of "row houses" require different street and lot dimensions and the development of "alley" means of access. One way of avoiding this issue is the use of "infill zoning" (used in other venues) that require any new development to be limited in the amount of variation (height, setbacks, coverage and materials) from the existing context. It clearly works when the the community desires to sustain the character of the existing community -apparently not the view of the Seattle planners and administrators where growth mandates dominate the agenda. There are other answers and they don't all reside in Portland.
Posted Fri, Jul 11, 6:27 p.m. inappropriate
RE: Emergency Interim Controls would give us "Time To Get it Right!: Sorry, copied wrong link and didn't test.
OFM's very interesting table that combines actual growth beginning in 1960 with official GMA projections through 2030 is on this page at last listed: 9. County Projections Supplemental Data Tables -Medium Projections Only," download the first selection: "Total Population."
Posted Mon, Jul 14, 8:33 a.m. inappropriate
Convert townhomes into cottage housing adjacent to SF: Peter is right. Toss out the code that allows these townhomes as the transition housing between single family and higher densities on transit corridors, neighborhood business districts, and urban villages.
Substitute a form of cottage housing. Other jurisdictions have managed to create cottage housing guidelines on SF-sizes. These developments are more dense, yet compatible with surrounding neighborhoods. For those who haven't run across these developments outside Seattle, here's one company who does them.
http://www.cottagecompany.com/
The Multi-Family Update is one more giveaway to developers by this Mayor. Decoding this code shows the result will be more flexibility, but only to build taller with less green space on the grounds.
Subjecting these to mandatory design review sounds good, but don't be fooled. It is ADMINISTRATIVE design review conducted by DPD (the Mayor's permit people). This is the fox watching the henhouse in the extreme.
Posted Wed, Jul 16, 1:03 a.m. inappropriate
Open space should get integrated into "living" space: BTW, this past April the city council unanimously approved Council Bill 116010 (with Licata absent) which allows any MF project with 30 units and under (80 units downtown) to be exempt from SEPA review. Because SEPA also considers factors such as traffic and parking impact on its "environment" (our neighborhoods), this important audit on developers has been waived.
Developers are not doing their part to encourage unique and individual-looking projects. They are behind the curve and provide the lowest-hanging fruit product ad nauseum. We need to address in design the assumptions of our high values when creating the guidelines and mandates. Are setbacks a bigger deal than open space? Can open space and healthy living be combined so that floorplans design open space with direct access from its "livable space"?
Should people just walk through their uninteresting tiny setback front yards and shut themselves away in their 3-story townhomes? What if setbacks were sacrificed for the sake of allowing more open space that is used by its occupants (think courtyard and atrium style floorplans)?
We need to be thinking outside the box and breaking our patterns of development. Things such as setbacks can sometimes subvert greater purposes of design and needs of the occupant to engage in the outdoors and bring the outside, in.
If we want to densify our neighborhoods and worry about adequate number of parks and playgrounds, we have to get buildings to respond to our needs to engage the outdoors on an everyday level, and perhaps won't have to compensate in other, more expensive ways by adding more public amenities and infrastructure.
Posted Mon, Jul 21, 1:08 p.m. inappropriate
Marching ahead backwards: I dunno, between the 6pak townhouses, the ugly block condos being built (see Ballard) and the forthcoming streetcars, you can see Seattle developing a whole new urban design classification; Retro 19th Century Slum Tenement Chic.
Is there any one who can fight the developers in this city?