The Rise of Pugetopolis
Our population has quadrupled since 1950. Where are all those people going?
Mason Steinbrueck
As the U.S. government gears up for a new census and the Puget Sound region faces economic uncertainties, what do the patterns of regional growth tell us about where we've been headed? How much has been sprawl? Where are we becoming denser? I short, how has the region been shaped or re-shaped in the last 50 years?
The term "megalopolis" was coined to describe the world’s largest continuous urban region, now extending from Fredericksburg, VA to Portsmouth, NH, with around 40 million people. The Seattle urban area isn’t in that league yet, to be sure, but what some call Pugetopolis has grown from a population of 789,000 in 1950 to 3,148,000 in 2000, a growth of 2,259,000, or 300 percent! This growth has certainly been amazing to those of us who lived through it (I missed the start, arriving in 1955). Considering the sheer magnitude of change, almost a quadrupling, I don’t think the region has done too badly at accommodating all those added people.
Our urban complex is overwhelmingly linear, north to south, growing along SR 99 (now called the I-5 corridor), as it is hemmed in on the east by the Cascades and by our attempt to contain urban expansion through the Growth Management Act, and it is hindered to the west by Puget Sound. In 1950 and 1960 there were only two cores: Seattle and Tacoma and they were still separate! The 1950 urban area included the cities of Seattle and Tacoma, Lakewood, most of Shoreline and Renton, and part of Highline, with a toehold to the east on Mercer Island, Kirkland, and what would become Bellevue. The urban boom of the 1950s extended the Seattle area up to Edmonds, Lynwood and Bothell, and east through Bellevue, and south to the rest of Highline in to Kent; Tacoma added more of Lakewood and Parkland.
The 1960s boom brought dramatic expansion, so that by 1970, the urbanized areas had merged, extending now from Fort Lewis all the way through Everett, with the inclusion of formerly independent Puyallup, Auburn, Issaquah, Redmond and Everett. Urban growth didn’t slow in the 1970s. By 1980, two new separate urbanized areas appeared: Bremerton and Olympia, with the urban core extending ever farther, now to Spanaway, Gig Harbor and Bonney Lake, Soos Creek, Mill Creek and Marysville.
In the 1980s suburban expansion was still dominant: Bremerton added Silverdale and Port Orchard, Tacoma spread southeast, and the Seattle imprint spread almost to Maple Valley, adding the Sammamish plateau and Woodinville, North Creek and Silver Firs.
All this growth led by 1990 to a consensus to try to curb rampant urban spread via growth management. Yet the 2000 map reveals continuing geographic expansion, very dramatically around Bremerton, amazingly south and east from Tacoma, reaching Buckley and even Enumclaw; reaching east from Seattle to even Mirrormont and Lake Ames and Duvall; and northeasterly to Monroe, Lake Stevens, Granite Falls and Arlington. Admittedly the census bureau used heroic measures to connect some of these outlying communities into the official urbanized area, I think in error. Many remain physically separate, although they have certainly become bedroom suburbs.
The current urban realm is coming up against the urban growth boundary in many areas. Still, the pattern of growth 2000-2009 is the same as from 1990-2000, overwhelmingly suburban, but there has been some growth in downtown Seattle, Tacoma and Bellevue. Much of the growth in the main cities has been in housing units, as the population grew only modestly, because of smaller household size and the suburbanization of families.
These 50 years of urban expansion are viewed by critics as classic "urban sprawl," but this is not mainly true. Rather it has mostly been urban growth necessary to accommodate a population four times as large, another 2.3 million people. Perhaps surprising to some, the average density, which did decline from 1950 to 1970, in the postwar suburban boom, has risen over the last 30 years.
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Comments:
Posted Fri, Feb 13, 1:40 p.m. Inappropriate
"urban sprawl" is an oxymoron; if it is urban, it is not sprawl; if it is sprawl, it is not urban. Urban areas have street and sidewalk grids, making them walkable. Sprawl areas have incomplete street grids and sidewalks are scarce. For the most part, urban areas were developed before WWII, while sprawl developed after the limited access highway system was developed in the 1960s and 1970s. Consider the great small towns that are walkable like Enumclaw or Port Townsend. Many urban areas have sprawl around them; Morrill provides several examples. With global warming and higher fuel prices, look for urban areas to grow more. Government could help that with investments in sidewalks and by zoning changes that allow larger building envelopes in areas with good walkability. TOD = POD = GOD (e.g., transit, pedestrian, and green oriented development, respectively) are inter related. The central Puget Sound area has developed or sprawled along the transport investments, the limited access highways: north and south between Marysville and Tumwater; east to North Bend along I-90. The next savvy governments will encourage both electric transit (bus and rail, when rights of way can be afforded) and green electric generation: tide, wind, solar panels. Dynamic tolls will be imposed on all the limited access highways. urban living is planet friendly. but it need not be forced; it is by choice. each household may make their jobs and housing location decisions after assessing the changing price vectors. sprawl areas will become increasingly costly places to live if petro prices increase.
Posted Fri, Feb 13, 6:17 p.m. Inappropriate
It's true that most of the growth has been suburban and continues to be suburban. After all, that's where most of the easy sites have been. But what is sometimes called suburbia is in some cases turning into real city.
The line between city and suburb is fuzzy and certainly a semantics argument. The Seattle city limits are a convenient point for discussion, but don't define the urban form or function at all. In fact, the Seattle of 1950 included large areas that were very suburban, and many other municipalities today are either just as urban as some of Seattle's outer neighborhoods or have dense pockets that are urban. We're seeing significant growth of the area that can be called truly urban.
The trend goes beyond broad statistics. The TYPE of infill, as well as greenfield development, is also getting more urban in many cases. It used to be that suburban apartment construction was dominated by lowrises, perhaps 3-4 stories, with surface parking and carports, with terrible pedestrian and transit connections. Today a significant percentage is in urban villages or downtowns of whatever sort, built on small sites right to the sidewalk, sometimes with retail. Several dozen of these nodes have multiplied their populations several times over in this decade alone, or gone from strip malls to mixed-use in that period.
Posted Sun, Feb 15, 8:42 a.m. Inappropriate
I'd be interested in some charts or tables comparing growth rates of different factors. For example, I assume by "overwhelmingly suburban" growth you mean new population. Is that in raw numbers or percentages?
Job growth is a different category, but is surely what is bringing people to Seattle. Jobs are "overwhelmingly urban": Seattle downtown and other areas with "dense" office space like the U-District, First Hill, Redmond, and Bellevue.
Posted Mon, Feb 16, 6:54 p.m. Inappropriate
What Morrill fails to note is that much of the suburban / exurban infrastructure of the last half century will likely be rendered, if not useless, at least undesirable in future. Will the U.S. be able to continue using 25 to 30 percent of the world's oil for much longer? I wouldn't bet on it. Will electric cars or alternative fuels allow the same kind of Happy Motoring culture to continue here? I doubt it. Will we always be able to count on foods of every kind to keep coming here cheaply from far away? Again, I wouldn't wager on it. The era of happily extrapolating the future from the present is over, dead, finished. The future of the McMansions will likely be, as one observer points out, "slums, salvage and ruins." And probably darn little real salvage even.
Posted Tue, Feb 17, 3:26 p.m. Inappropriate
Regions that can grow or fish their own food will have an advantage.
Regions than can bring in food through efficient tranport (ships) will have an advantage.
The former is another good reason to slow sprawl. Let's keep our river valleys in Western Wash, as well as the Yakima Valley and so on.
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