Why Seattle won't grow as fast as planners say

Posted Tue, Aug 11, 7:06 a.m. inappropriate

Thank you for the great article. This should be mandatory reading for every elected official in the state.

Posted Tue, Aug 11, 7:16 a.m. inappropriate

Seattle's population shrank enormously after 1960 before picking up gains in the past couple of decades, so there's no clean compare between 1960 and today. It would be good to look at when it hit its low post-1960, and compare how much it has grown from that.

Posted Tue, Aug 11, 7:54 a.m. inappropriate

Great demographic info, and nice job setting the candidates straight.

However, I'm a bit confused by all of the questions at the end... They make a good list of important factors in making a great city. But are they meant to be purely rhetorical or are you implying that Seattle is failing at them? The end of the article caught me off guard, perhapd because I feel differently than you about the answers to some of those questions.

I can't afford a condo in South Lake Union, but I certainly wouldn't be able to afford a new bungalow built their either. I might be able to afford Northgate, but the decade-long wait for light rail drops the appeal.

Is your point that since we don't need all this housing, we should protect neighborhood character? Does that mean we focus all of our infrastructure on locations with new housing, like MLK and South Lake Union?

Posted Tue, Aug 11, 7:58 a.m. inappropriate

Quantity is good to look at. But it's how Seattle has evolved while attracting growth that is the critical factor.

We WERE a city for all in the 60's and 70's with great attention to the local quality of life.

Then, we got big ideas about being visible and competitive in the Nation in the 80's and began the upward spiral to get what other cities in America had.

Now, we are a city for the wealthy and tourists. No longer for ALL. We are in a mad race to be internationally visible. Quite a different city than we all worked very hard to create in our recent past.

We've lost our local focus on improving schools, attracting families, providing affordable housing for the REAL poor, fixed income seniors and our younger residents.

It's not about numbers, but quality of life for ALL! If we were to get back to our core values as a community and maintain that goal into the future,then let the city grow. It will only result in a larger population that would be committed to a city for ALL.

Art

Posted Tue, Aug 11, 10:48 a.m. inappropriate

Do we have infrastructure that meets Growth Management Act tests for concurrency? No, but we do have Paul Allen's cute little vanity train, and a $500,000,000 SLU makeover project underway (roughly half of which will be spent to beautify 6 blocks of Mercer Street) funded by the kind and generous taxpayers of Seattle.

Do we have the kind of parks and open spaces that provide for trees and views of our natural beauty? In SLU, Belltown, downtown and Pioneer Square--places where massive upzones are making way for enormously tall, mixed use (mostly residential) towers--we have Denny Park, Peter Steinbruik Park and Courthouse Park where new residents can relax and reconnect with with urban wildlife. It's also great that the Seattle Housing Authority beavering away to convert a 38 acre chunk of land that the Army vacated next to Discovery Park into a shiny new housing development, something that is more desirable than adding park land to our flagship park that is only 5 miles from downtown? The best part of all is that the vast majority of the new units will be "market rate"--what could be more needed than up to 125 more units of expensive housing in one of Seattle's most expensive neighborhoods.

Does our criminal justice system work properly? Well, yes it does. In fact Seattle residents will soon get our own shiny new jail--isn't that special?

Do we provide a wide range of transportation choices that includes rail, bus, bikes, and automobiles? Yes, we certainly do, except that only a tiny fraction of one percent is spent on sidewalks and on Seattle Master Bicycle Plan. However, it is truly heartwarming to know that at the current annual rate expenditure rate, these vibrant forms of urban infrastructure will be complete at some point in the 22nd century in plenty of time to be enjoyed by our great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren.

Do we provide places for people to park their cars even when they use public transportation every day? Actually, we don't earn a checkmark on this point since we have banned parking areas near new our new light rail line, unlike our little sister, Portland, which has 18 designated parking areas near the Max lines within the city limits. But no worries, people will gladly walk to these stations no matter how long it takes because we are can-do people here in Seattle.

Seattle used to have a wide range of housing ranging from mansions on Queen Anne to SRO hotels downtown. We seem to have eliminated most of the low-end housing, which was--let's face it--unsightly and did not really suit the types of vibrant young urban professionals and knowledge workers we are trying to attract. But look on the bright side! We do have thousands of vacant, brand-spanking new condos and townhouses and more in the work, just in case large numbers of would be urban dwellers do happen to show up.

Posted Tue, Aug 11, 10:50 a.m. inappropriate

I'd like to make clear that Futurewise has never asserted that Seattle is projected to double in population by 2040. The current population projections for Seattle for 2031 are being negotiated now by the King County Growth Management Policy Council, and will likely be in the 80,000-90,000 new household range. As Futurewise's Urban Policy Director that oversees all our work in the Seattle region, I can attest that I, nor anyone at Futurewise, has ever claimed that Seattle's growth would be or should be anything remotely close to what Ken Krammerer is claiming.

Ken, could you please substantiate your claim? I seem to recall that you have also claimed in previous CrossCut pieces that Futurewise employees all drive cars to work (in fact, none of us do). For someone who has never met any of us, you seem to have a lot to say about us. Perhaps before you write your next piece about us, you could give one of us a call, or maybe meet me for coffee sometime, so that you could base your critiques of our positions on our actual positions?

Other than that, however, this piece does makes some excellent points on how the city of Seattle (and many other cities in the region, for that matter) need to improve in order to be more livable for both current residents and new residents. And Futurewise could not agree more that parks and open space, housing variety and affordability, and real transportation choices are all critical pieces of that formula.

Sara Nikolic, Futurewise
sara@futurewise.org

Posted Tue, Aug 11, 11:54 a.m. inappropriate

Kent: Reading this piece made me think of my days as a college teaching assistant when I had to ask too many students, "what's your thesis?" If your point is to just to prove that Seattle is not going to double in population then, well, Sara just above pulled the rug out from under you, so please take this piece down and rewrite it as something that can offer us some insight and relevancy.

If your point is that Seattle needs better amenities and infrastructure to attract and support growth, well you're not making your point very clearly. but I heartily agree. Regarding schools: there are some great schools in Seattle but the state certainly underinvests in public education and our regressive tax system haunts us with regard to education more than any other area. But, for all but the richest communities (Mercer Island, Lake WA School Dist, etc.) mediocre or worse schools are pretty much a statewide problem. I couldn't agree more about the dearth of parks in our downtown core. Too bad we couldn't have passed the Seattle Commons plan which, in place of all that dense development in SLU, would have provided Seattle with the kind of Central Park that makes high density living so appealing. (I'm sure you supported the Seattle Commons, right Kent?) But our neighborhood park system is the envy of many other parts of the state. Regarding transportation, And, I'm sure we agree on the need to build out a full streetcar network so that "toy train" is no longer an orphaned line and can provide the basis for some serious ridership and the spur for a whole lot more dense development. These sorts of infrastructure investments make Portland and Vancouver wonderful, dense and vibrant places to live but to too many of the anti-growth troglodytes, Seattle is different and could never be as nice a place as these cities unless all growth is magically stopped.

Or, maybe your point was to say, "too bad Seattle changed in spite of everything I tried to do to stop that change. Damn that light rail! Damn those Hope VI projects! Damn the racial, ethnic, geographical and cultural diversification of my beloved old auto-oriented Scandinavian fishing village that used to be the Seattle I loved so much. I hate what Seattle has become and I hope you will too. Please join my futile efforts to keep it from growing anymore because I can barely stand to live here anymore."

Posted Tue, Aug 11, 12:16 p.m. inappropriate

It's typical that representatives of Futurewise and Washington, cry foul.
Whiney, government dependant NGO's who really add nothing to the conversation. Futurewise sided with Chairman Dow in the CAO debacle that has taken years to finally address in the Washington Supreme Court. Where do the private citizens go to get their money back from Futurewise.

Bill Laborde, failed politician,feeds on the public teat and is a shameless hack for the governor. This explains his appointment to various boards and commissions, because he and his organization are professional water carriers for the current administration. Tell us Bill, when you were on the Citizens Oversight board for Sound Transit, how is it you missed the incompetence and abuse going on in that organization? You can't see what you are not looking for.

Two useless organizations, given far too much influence by clueless leadership at the State, County and City levels.

Posted Tue, Aug 11, 12:21 p.m. inappropriate

Sar Fruterwise,
Good that you slowed down there and caught your bearings. I suspect that if you had read a little slower too, the entire comment could have won Futurewise so many friends that you'd no longer be able to speak for all of them.

Alas, I lose my bearings too when a commenter disrupts a good dialogue just getting started. Crosscut's potential stays grossly unused when that happens. Such a sad thing to waste.

Posted Tue, Aug 11, 12:32 p.m. inappropriate

Wow, lots of misinformation in that article. And lots of what some people want to hear.

No serious projection has ever said Seattle would double by 2040.

Kent bases much of his thinking on Seattle's growth being slow and staying that way, then he says "Seattle in just 51 months has reached 60 percent of its 20-year target" pretty much ignoring the fact that those points conflict.

He talks about ancient history as if that's relevant to today's trends. Today we care more about reducing sprawl, we have growth management, we're focusing on transit and replacing roads more than on building new roads, etc.

Seattle bottomed out around 1986. Though Census estimates are typically way off, if you believe them, we had 486,000 people in 1986. That would be growth of about 116,000 in 22 years DESPITE a reduction in people per household since that time.

PS, the reduction in people per household was dramatic from 1960 to today. According to the City website, we had 2.7 people per household in 1960, and 2.08 in 2000 (I think it's fallen slightly since). Even to stay at the same population, our number of housing units increased dramatically during that period.

It's true that there are barriers to growth. If our "capacity" is 800,000 (taking your word for it), then realistic growth will be substantially less, for basic reasons like the fact that many landowners won't build anything.

Posted Tue, Aug 11, 1:54 p.m. inappropriate

Kent Kammerer: sticking his head in the sand and celebrating suburban sprawl, since 1962.

Posted Tue, Aug 11, 2:30 p.m. inappropriate

Madison Ave - churlish punk since Crosscut founded.

Posted Tue, Aug 11, 2:33 p.m. inappropriate

Mhays,

I've heard lots of candidates (for example Jessie Israel) and websites (such as HugeAss Developer) cite the alleged "fact" that Seattle's population is going to double as a rationale for the need to abrogate the neighborhood plans and upzone, upzone, upzone!!!!!

Household size has indeed fallen - mostly because people with kids are moving out of the City (and it isn't just white flight anymore - the Kent and Bellevue School Districts are both very diverse).

Posted Tue, Aug 11, 2:53 p.m. inappropriate

This article seemed to me both well thought out and well researched. And I agree with Kent's conclusion that Seattle may not attract the additional population it seems to want because the city is becoming less appealing to the vast majority of potential new residents and even some old ones-for the reasons Kent lists as well as others he did not.

Mhays: had you read more carefully, you would have noted that Kent's comment on the growth targets in neighborhoods was for housing units, not population. Many neighborhoods, including mine, are over their 2020 built unit targets. We don't have residents to fill them up which is why so many units are now sitting empty-unrented and unsold. That discrepancy was also one of the main points of Mr Kammerer's article. "If you build it, they will come" is not always true. That's one reason builders sometimes go broke, and why condos and townhouses go to auction as they have here in Seattle. In addition, the price of housing is only one variable among the many that people consider when they decide where to move and when. Obviously, our timing has been a bit off in Seattle-among other places. The reasons for housing prices in any given area are also more complex than you sometimes acknowledge.
I agree with your commentary on the reduction in household size per unit, but I really wonder how many people will truly want to live in dense high rises in this city. It has no appeal for me or my husband, and we would be characterized as classic Bobos or Dinks-just the kind of people Seattle is supposedly attracting and wants to attract. I ( born and raised here) find Seattle increasingly repellent now, and we are looking to relocate to places more to our liking. Much of what Seattle promotes as amenities and contributions to city "vibrancy" and vitality are actually disamenities to the people who already live here ( I'll give specific details if you want them).
To SaraN of Futurewise: The writer of the article usually goes by Kent rather than Ken, but you would have no way to know that. He is a very reasonable and kindly man ( and very intelligent), and he probably agrees with many of Futurewise's ideas. His criticisms are meant constructively, not as personal attacks. Still, I must agree that the "density" mantra touted by Futurewise and others may have unintended and unpleasant consequences, and we need writers and researchers, like Kent, who are willing and able to initiate additional thinking about issues such as upzones and density at all costs. As one example, I was present at your and Rachel's presentation at a Community Council Federation meeting on the TOD proposed upzones (50 units/acre), and you made some statements that I later found to be not well researched. Your suggestion that TOD areas would be the preferred and most expensive areas for residents to live in turned out to be false. Those areas, in fact, tend to be the places where the poor, single, and transiest choose to live. They are not attractive to the middle class, upper middle class, or those with children. You may wish otherwise, but TOD density will not make Seattle more livable in the largest sense. As I stated at the time, it looked to me as if the TOD proposal was more an idea to make a specific transportation system more viable than as development that met real human needs and wants. Unfortunately, much of the new housing in Seattle also appears to be built for specifications that have little to do with how most people want to live. And for a real shocker, you might want to check out Jevon's Paradox.
Efficiency of energy use through housing density and mass transportation may lead to actual energy use increases-just what Futurewise claims it wants to avoid. Sometimes reality bites; sometimes the bite is rabid. You need to keep researching before committing to development schemes that may be founded on wishful thinking.

Posted Tue, Aug 11, 3:18 p.m. inappropriate

Walker,

When housing units are built, they'll fill up (if they're in Seattle). It's simply a matter of reducing price until there's a market. Developers are holding out until they have an urgent need for cash-flow -- the high vacancies are mostly the developers who don't have urgency. So yes, units have increased faster than population, but the long-term trend will be higher population.

The 2008 Census estimate was way up. If I recall, one of the major factors was an increase in people taking roommates, or living with their parents. Just like the vacant units, this is temporary. The two trends offset.

Where are you getting your idea about energy use? Density tends to mean shorter commutes, better mode shares, and fewer cars on the transportation side, and shared walls at home. If it means less square footage and no private yard, then it also tends to mean less stuff in general, much better efficiency with building materials, more efficient power transmission, etc.

Posted Tue, Aug 11, 3:20 p.m. inappropriate

bubbleator, I guess I don't consider candidate statements "serious" projections.

Posted Tue, Aug 11, 3:21 p.m. inappropriate

PS, the headline might be the biggest problem. What planners are saying we're going to double?

This sort of statement doesn't pass the BS detector of anyone who pays attention to demographics.

Posted Tue, Aug 11, 4:37 p.m. inappropriate

@walker: When you went home from the meeting, where did you discover that transit oriented development attracts transients? I'd love to see your source. Because it sounds much more fishy to me than the idea that higher end residential would sell at transit stations. All you've stated is opinion, where are the facts?

Posted Tue, Aug 11, 5:08 p.m. inappropriate

Kent, your article entirely misses the point of the whole density conversation. We *want* to have more people here. That's a *good* thing. It's not a question of whether we want quantity or quality, it's a question of how we get more quantity while also improving quality. This is not a zero sum game. So when you say we're only going to get 180K more people here, my response is "how do we get more?" How can we accommodate more of those families that can't find the amenities (or afford them) and so choose to live outside of the city? Your logic (we haven't grown well so far, so we won't grow well) is pure fatalism. Stop looking backwards, start working forwards.

Posted Tue, Aug 11, 5:47 p.m. inappropriate

Gordian might have been kidding...but yes, from an environmental perspective (as well as my city-loving perspective) it's good for Seattle to house a higher percentage of the region's population, thereby reducing the impetus behind sprawl (while also controlling sprawl through growth management).

Posted Tue, Aug 11, 6:29 p.m. inappropriate

Oh, bubbleator, do your ears perk up when the year 1962 is mentioned?

And how nice we have Walker - aka Kris Fuller - who re-defines the hardcore NIMBY image by filing lawsuits to stop the scourge of skateparks from her Green Lake neighborhood.

And my God, Cameron. Decide to take a break from defending Sarah Palin to beat up on Bill? How's the glorious Bush legacy coming along? Still hangin' in the exurbs with Dino Rossi?

I love watching these crank freakshows develop.

Posted Tue, Aug 11, 6:47 p.m. inappropriate

Families can't afford to live there. NOAA can't afford to work there. Boeing wonders whether it can afford to build there.

Much of the money transforming the City came not from within its limits but from sprawling four-story office parks across the lake, clogging your arteries with reverse commutes.

Yet billions are spent to transport workers in to face-to-face employment scenarios all while new technologies make it cheaper and easier to do the opposite. So employment grows...on the periphery. As does traffic.

But what a glorious place to visit! Flying fish, space needles, and electric guitar museums. Caffeine and tattoos. Like San Francisco under a big gray blanket.

Then again, I'm a tourist now. Does this future work for you?

Posted Tue, Aug 11, 6:56 p.m. inappropriate

1962 was before my time, but I would venture to say that from the working-class and/or bohemian standpoint Seattle peaked in about 1992.

In 40 years, Googie architecture from the late 1950's/early 1960's and the other old buildings we are currently in such a rush to demolish (oops - you so-called "New Urbanists" prefer to sanitize that by saying "redevelop") will be missed a whole lot more than the crap buildings Seattle developers are currently being allowed to vomit up now will ever be appreciated.

Posted Tue, Aug 11, 7:08 p.m. inappropriate

...but just to prove I'm not a total gloomy Gus there is one definite improvement I can cite - you can finally get a real taco in Seattle now.

Posted Tue, Aug 11, 7:36 p.m. inappropriate

In spite of the current economic downturn, Seattle's penchant for overbuilding continues strangely unabated, apparently in the expection that economic recovery is right around the corner. What if it is not? What if the good paying jobs that used to be plentiful here don't come back? What if the economic recovery means entering a kind of phase shift because there is no way to reinitiate yet alone sustain the prolonged, fundamentally unsustainable economic bubble that finally burst last year?

Here is an op ed piece in today's New York Times that nicely summarizes why Seattle's vast glut of vacant condos, apartments and office space may not fill up any time soon.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/11/opinion/11herbert.html?hpw

Only a few months ago the Mayor of Seattle said Seattle would likely be relatively immune from the current economic downturn. That prediction has proven to be as accurate as giving himself a "B" for SDOT's response to Snowgeddon.

Posted Tue, Aug 11, 8:33 p.m. inappropriate

Project much MadisonAve? Bill is a useless political hack and everyone knows it. The Futurewises and Washington Environmentals of this area are exactly what is wrong with this area, they complain about everything, sue over nothing and are net "takers" in society. I'll match my years of residency in to yours anytime, Ike was President when I started living around here, how about you?

Posted Tue, Aug 11, 8:40 p.m. inappropriate

Jobs on the periphery? How disconnected from reality. The vast majority of office growth in this region is in/around Downtown Seattle, Downtown Bellevue, or central Redmond. We (and I) think of Redmond as being distant suburbia but even it's actually pretty central compared to much of the metro.

Overbuilding? True. But much less so than many of our peer metros. Growth management has helped limit our excesses. It'll take a while to eat up our excess office space but condos and apartments not so much.

Posted Tue, Aug 11, 8:45 p.m. inappropriate

Cameron -- As a growth management liberal...I was born at Swedish. Anyone born outside the 12th / Mercer / Royal Broughham boundaries is a foreigner to me.

Since I walk everywhere, don't commit crimes, and do my part to punish cars encroaching into crosswalks, I'm a net "giver" not a "taker." You're generalizing.

Posted Tue, Aug 11, 11:31 p.m. inappropriate

Mhays,

In RE your 8:40 post - I'm not trying to be nasty (really!), but I think it is quite telling about your worldview that you cite "office growth" and then apparently conflate that with all regional job growth to defend your opinion about who is and who isn't overbuilding. There are indeed a whole lot of jobs from the periphery, and it is you who is disconnected from reality if you fail to acknowledge it.

A ton of Seattle folks leave town everyday to go work in office and technology jobs in the 3 places you cite, but a whole lot of other people also leave to go to their blue collar, sales, or service jobs in Lynnwood, the Kent Valley, and a lot of other locations that don't fit into "New Urbanist" notions of how all of our local and regional jurisdictions need to grow to address job and residential growth.

Another example would be that even as you correctly cite the fact that regional planners do not project a doubling in Seattle population (and you're right that the headline was misplaced - it should have read armchair planners and lots of New Urbanist folks who have taken it upon themselves to define environmentalism as the unquestioning support for increased urban density), you ignore the fact that those same planners acknowledge the real market for residential growth IS NOT within the Seattle city limits.

Let us assume that Kent's statement that 1.7 million people are expected to move to King/Pierce/Snohomish Counties by 2040, and of that 550,000 people are expected to move to Everett/Seattle/Bellevue/Tacoma/Bremerton in the same period is correct. Let us also assume that Sara and Futurewise get their way and the PSRC agrees to allocate the higher number of 90,000 households to Seattle in the same period.

No matter how you slice it, the real growth is still going to occur outside of Seattle, and tearing down every old affordable apartment building that Madison Ave and his ilk regard as "underutilized", offering developers more subsidies - which are literally paid for by those of us who can still barely afford to live in Seattle because our City won't impose even modest impact fees to ensure that "development pays for itself", and upzoning the City in hopes of creating our own version of Manhattan won't prevent sprawl. Not one iota.

Posted Wed, Aug 12, 2:57 a.m. inappropriate

Rob K, the information on who lives in TODs is available on line-I believe that the most complete study was out of Minneapolis. TOD doesn't attract transients ( bums); but it does attract renters rather than buyers. Renters can have very different effects on a city than homeowners, and many of those effects are not really good.

MadisonAve. Everything we told the city in regard to the skatepark has come to pass-tons of graffiti, drinking, dope smoking and selling, robberies of younger skaters, thefts, broken glass everywhere-wine and beer bottles, and now the boarders are apparently pissing on the hillside behind the skatepark ( park walkers are reporting really nasty urine smell there). Last week police had to be called since some of the frequenters climbed over the construction fences to drive park construction machinery around. The sounds from that skatepark are really obnoxious too-like constant gunshots or continual building construction. Neighborhood amenity? Not by a long shot. Mostly it's another good reason to depart a city that has apparently lost its civic mind. Skateparks belong in the private sector; not in public parks. There was no in depth research done before the City Council voted to support this supposed amenity, and the participation figures used by the skatepark advocates turned out to be entirely bogus. Same goes for a lot of the other lunacy being promoted in this city.

Mhays. I'm not going to bother with commenting on your posts since it is really evident you don't do in depth research of any kind.

Posted Wed, Aug 12, 7:30 a.m. inappropriate

bubbleator, those other types of jobs are relatively concentrated too. Our major shopping malls don't leapfrog out to the hinterlands like they do elsewhere. Our hospitals remain fairly centralized. The two commercial building types that are sprawling heavily are warehouses (which employ very few per square foot) and strip retail.

Lynnwood and the Kent Valley (central Renton, Tukwila, Kent, Auburn, etc.) are both trying hard to go "urban" in certain nodes. In any case, these areas aren't on the periphery. When large office complexes start going up in Enumclaw, we'll be like much of the sunbelt. The economics and market aren't there, largely because of growth management and our transportation priorities.

Posted Wed, Aug 12, 7:35 a.m. inappropriate

walker, since I do in fact research this stuff professionally and have pretty good information, I have to assume you're not confident, and trying to avoid a substantive discussion.

Posted Wed, Aug 12, 9:08 a.m. inappropriate

Crap, I am hurting society by renting. I had no idea. Maybe I'll bow out now.

@walker: If you ask 10 people what "transient" means, they'll say bum. If you mean renters, just say it.

I grew up in a "detatched" single family neighborhood. (Architecturally, detatched just means individual homes. I like it because it sounds isolated as well, a parry to your "transient".) The house next door was a rental. We finally got the cops to bust the drug dealers who were living there. It bothered us every day until they were evicted and the home owner was forced to deal with it. They partied all night long, and my dad would fire up the lawn mower and chain saw and race our car engines right next to their bedroom window for revenge. Luckily it never turned into an actual fight -- they were probably passed out. Bus service was only a car ride away.

I lived in a historic apartment awhile back. I left the building to go to the grocery store once and found HAZMAT suited guys had closed down the street. I felt awkwardly underdressed in my tshirt. They had found a meth lab in the building next to me. I was never bothered before or after that one surreal experience. Bus service was only a hop skip and a jump away.

Which is better? Why are you trying to make apartment renters seem like vile filth who undermine society? How could TOD be different than any other construction -- or are you implying that people who can't afford cars are morally inferior? I would love to see this mysterious study from Minneapolis.

Posted Wed, Aug 12, 12:51 p.m. inappropriate

Wow... hard to dive into all the crossfire here, but... As a fourth generation local (since 1910, thanks) our family has watched growth come and go. The boom of the WW II years, and 707 years also led to "short timers" both owners AND renters. Once Boeing's fortunes declined, they backed up the U-haul and blew town. We saw the same boom and bust many times. The biggest mis-information was late 80's when we blamed all that growth on Californians... The stats showed it was our kids who decided to stick around. I believe the stat was 5 of 6 new households were kids from families already here. Most of the bean counters seemed to not take into account the kids who stay.

Last I read, dogs in the city outnumber kids, but once the couples begin to procreate, the numbers will again surge. To 1.4 million? doubt it. None of the projections take into account reality of downturns, ecomomic or the damage created by earthquakes, volcanos, pandemics and so on.

I still enjoy the life that is here... although the last few years of extreme weather have me questioning that. The biggest issue for my family is cost of housing. We bought a home in 1987, just before the big upswing (when homes AROUND Seattle were still commanding bigger prices than homes IN Seattle).

Now we cannot afford to leave.

Where I work, more than 2/3rds of my coworkers commute to residences outside the city limits (only management can afford to drive and more so, the cost of PARKING). Huge numbers commute out of the county to affordable housing.

And to afford the "affordable housing", they have to expend time and energy to drive to all services.

Just before the downturn, the Median price home was around 425,000, and Median INCOME was 52,000... these stats were debated at length here, but the key issue remained - the Median Salery cannot alone afford the Median home. Now that the downturn has hit, the Median of both has dropped... and in many households, at least one job has been impacted.

The point... In my mind the key reason folks don't live in those spiffy new smaller boxes is they are still too expensive. The were designed and built with a differnt set of ecomomics in mind. Now they either have to eat vacancies or reduce prices... And as I recall basic economics, one can only live beyond one's means for so long.

I would dare say the growth projected in the 1960's was impacted hugely by the Boeing layoffs, unforseen in the projections. I remember when the headlines trumpeted that finally Average Home Prices IN the city were higher than the suburbs, and that the exodus from the city had abated, and like the tide, was now reversing.

Bottom line, the city growth did not meet projections of the 1960s, but I bet the Regional Growth exploded over their stats...

My grandfather was stunned when they built Southcenter. I was amazed to see waterfront expensive condo's in Bremerton. The lack of affordable housing within the city limits drives the extreme crowding of our freeways and arterials. (I kinda wish my we had kept the land my great grandparents had in Bremerton.)

Lastly, housing always costs more if built on land previously develped. The Burbs get artificially lower prices as there was less vaulue attributed to the land costs. And the length of commute time becomes more accepted.

My parents were among the first to live in that new suburb Lake Hills. A commute time of more than 15 minutes was considered long, but as redevoped forested land, they got a lot more "modern home" for less than seattle offered... Today 15 minute commutes occour only between 11 PM and 3 AM... assuming good weather and no construction.

Among newcommers, acceptible commute times are longer, (there are more toys in your car to assist) and Seattle to Snoqualmie is considered OK. So the growth is there, but not for the city of Seattle... and there goes those projections (along with the cost of transportation infrastructure.)

Posted Wed, Aug 12, 3:24 p.m. inappropriate

hacknflack: Your experiences match mine as do your observations. My family has been here since 1907. We bought our home in 1975 when Seattle was emptying; friends all fled Seattle for outlying areas and thought we were nuts for staying. Over the years, I have come to agree with them though we can easily afford to move now since we bought when housing was affordable
-and often run-down ( we renovated slowly over many years). We're long time bus riders too which was one attraction for staying here.
Rob K. I have nothing personal against renters; I was one once myself-four different apts. in Seattle. Some were nice living; some weren't. I live next to one rental now and across the street from another. Our experiences with renters have matched yours. Again some were great people ( latest next door was a great neighbor with 3 kids-she was an asset to the neighborhood); some were awful-partiers, drug dealers, nut cases. Unfortunately, renters ( called transient since they often aren't settled in place) tend to move a lot-again, not all of them, but many. They tend not to have a long term outlook on improving a given neighborhood or even city because they also don't have much "skin in the game" (money). Home owners have self interest at stake and think longer term-this gets them called Nimbys by future slum lords and wannabe rentiers. And note our Mayor has spoken out of both sides of his mouth ( Mr Forked Tongue) on the issue of renters and home owners; not long ago he bragged about Seattle becoming a "big" city since we had so many renters (51%); 6 months later he was bragging about Seattle stability since we had more than 50% home owners. He's very adept at spinning facts to suit his purpose of the moment.
I will try to get the links to the TOD studies although you can probably find them on your own if you are willing to search under the terms TOD, smart growth, urban development, light rail development etc. Happy researching to you. I hope you find a place to buy if that's what you want; if you like TOD areas, buy there when prices drop, as they eventually will.

Posted Wed, Aug 12, 4:01 p.m. inappropriate

Well, I'm sorry to see this has devolved into a shouting match. There is a great conversation to have about expected growth in the city and region.

Personally, I like dense urbanized living--I am professional staff at UW and live in the U-District, where I can walk or bike to all my daily shopping needs such as groceries, drug store, hardware, and farmer's market. I hope in the next 30 years we can transform the parking lots that currently cover much of my neighborhood and other Urban Centers (thanks Safeco) into parks and family-friendly housing. Families in Vancouver's downtown certainly like it (the city required 25% of units to have family-friendly design).

It's also important to have a handle on national population movement, such as the [PDF] Demographic Trends in Rural and Small Town America report from Carsey Institute. The Seattle MSA has actually grown less fast than Sun Belt cities, but Rust Belt cities and rural areas are declining.

By the way, Google did not match any documents at HugeAssCity for "population will double" or "population is going to double." Searches without the quotes turned up some interesting comments from readers suggesting ways to improve regional transit or convert existing housing to duplexes, but no posts from Dan Bertolet.

Posted Wed, Aug 12, 4:14 p.m. inappropriate

Regarding those parking lots in the U-District, the biggest culprit is the business association, whose name I don't recall. They control much of the empty zone north of 45th, and have kept it empty with the idea that it's for customers. Thankfully they have a long-term plan to fill these sites with other things. The plans include replacement parking.

Posted Wed, Aug 12, 4:15 p.m. inappropriate

Hmm. I guess I can't post links. The Vancouver article is called "Downtown residents not pining for suburbs". UW also has Blakeley Village, a housing complex designed for families, but there is a long waiting list.

Posted Wed, Aug 12, 6:56 p.m. inappropriate

@joshuadf: I've just stuck the URL in as text in the past. Ugly, but at least it can be copy/pasted.

@walker: Well, my web searching hasn't revealed your source. Here's what I found about TOD in Minneapolis, my query on Bing was:

minneapolis "transit oriented development" real estate

http://www.nextstep.state.mn.us/res_detail.cfm?id=2217
Real estate sales prices along LRT (exclusive of downtown) rose 83% (2000 - 2004) vs. 61% in Minneapolis as a whole.

--
I hope that Kent might wander by and get the discussion back on track by solidifying the connection between the demographics and how Seattle is shooting itself in the foot. In that hope, I will resist the urge to prove my family's credibility as being ancestrally Seattlite, or provide my story as a homeowner to raise myself from the rank ranks of smelly transients.

Posted Thu, Aug 13, 8:29 a.m. inappropriate

Well, I'll give it a try then:

Carsey Institute for Families and Communities:
http://www.carseyinstitute.unh.edu/

Photo of Safeco (now UW) and UDPA parking lots (much was trees 30 years ago):
http://uwnews.org/photos.asp?articleID=28500&spid;=28501

"Downtown residents not pining for suburbs"
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/westcoastnews/story.html?id=2ccf8cf1-3feb-481c-8edf-0aeea75ac16a&p;=2

Posted Thu, Aug 13, 9:30 p.m. inappropriate

"Jobs on the periphery? How disconnected from reality."

mhays,

I think of 'peripheral' as anyplace where it would take an hour to an hour and a half to visit someone in Seattle. During most waking hours, that would mean any place on the eastside. By your broad definition then all of Los Angeles could be thought of as central to itself. In the context of this article Seattle is being discussed as separate and distinct, and as such...

'...From year 2000 to 2008 Seattle grew by 29,500 people while outside Seattle, King County gained 118,000...'

And just what is Central Redmond? Is it actually a place, a state of mind? I always thought of it as a city of sprawling office parks of no discernable center with lots of traffic and employment growth. Has that changed? It's been a while, not being a typical destination of a tourist.

Posted Thu, Aug 13, 11:09 p.m. inappropriate

Yes, central Redmond is turning into a an actual walkable downtown, similar in scale (though not history obviously) to Downtown Ballard, with quite a bit of six-story mixed use. I'm referring to the older center next to the river.

In terms of job growth, I'm not suggesting the suburbs aren't getting a lot of the new jobs. I'm just contrasting Seattle with many other cities that actually leapfrog jobs into uninhabited areas. The Seattle area does very little of that compared to other cities, referring to office, retail, government (other than military), cultural, hotel, and other uses (again, in relative terms).

Even our outer suburbs and satellite cities to the north and south are craving office space they haven't been getting. Lynnwood and Federal Way have grand plans to become the next Downtown Bellevues. Tacoma has a few million square feet of offices but its population would suggest several times that (same with the South Sound in general). Probably a dozen municipalities have grand plans to either augment their downtowns or build entirely new ones, generally through public-private partnerships of some sort. While these areas have their share of service, factory, and military jobs, they lack regional office jobs, science jobs, and other sectors that tend to pay more and move areas up economically.

Growth management supports the population stats you mention. The line it outside most of our existing suburbia. Growth goes mostly inside the line, to wherever usable/buyable land is available. Most of that land is outside Seattle, particularly the multi-acre sites many developers crave.

Posted Thu, Aug 13, 11:12 p.m. inappropriate

Of all the additional stuff I want to add to my last post, here's one point: Those municipalities all over the region who want to establish or augment little downtowns, public-private partnerships are generally about jump-starting urban districts that would require a lot of private development as well.

Posted Sat, Aug 15, 4:50 a.m. inappropriate

Couple thoughts and links...

@"New Urbanists" - Re-read Jane Jacobs -
"The Death and Life of Great American Cities", wrote in the 60's and still
rings true today. I think many people are missing the point and perverted
Jacobs' work.

How many of you armchair developers or urban planners invested just a
million dollars of your own money to build or to run a business in Seattle?
Or are you great telling how other people should invest their money?

If you are part of the DSA (Downtown Seattle Association) or Seattle Chamber, you know this FACT, but most don't, there will be close to
3 million sqft of unrented office space in downtown Seattle coming on-line and sadly, with no big tenants in sight. 100's of condos unsold and apts
not rented. There is not a lack of office space, but rather the lack of jobs to utilize this space. The FIRE (Finance Insurance Real Estate)
cluster is dead in Seattle with the death of WAMU, leaving the state
by Safeco, and the future of death of OpusNW and many other folks.
Even if Russell comes to Seattle, it doesn't matter.
Microsoft has left Seattle and is entrenching in Redmond/Bellevue.
I could go on and on, but I think that you get my point.
Seattle is facing some hard and lean times for the next 2-3+ years.

Big Question of the day: How can there be growth WITHOUT jobs to support
this growth? Tourism and the consumer city bs don't work. Where are the jobs going?

@mhays - you need to do more research if you do this professionally. Not
to be too snarky, but you are talking out of your other piehole. Do you
even understand how Seattle gets the money for the general fund or how
taxes work in Seattle? Have you built anything besides a big pile of pancakes for breakfast?

Here are some links to chew upon:
TOD - the afterglow wears off
http://onlinepubs.trb.org/onlinepubs/tcrp/tcrp_rpt_128.pdf

Why Seattle is not the place to do business:
http://www.researchcouncil.org/publications_container/Seattles%20Lost%20Decade.pdf

Jane Jacobs - The Death and Life of Great American Cities
- Re-read this book.

Posted Sat, Aug 15, 11:02 a.m. inappropriate

I'm stunned. A realistic view about the real probabilities for growth, which may turn out to be shrinkage instead.

Posted Sat, Aug 15, 12:42 p.m. inappropriate

In 1967 planner and architect Albert Mayer wrote that “Trend is not destiny”. This seemingly simple concept is one which continues to elude a great many people and is in fact the primary rational behind comprehensive planning efforts. That is; to arrest trends deemed socially harmful and promote alternative patterns of development. As a corollary I would add that if “Trend is not destiny”, neither is wishful thinking.

Mr. Kammerer raises some interesting points in his article. While it may well serve the interests of some developers and property owners to fantasize about a Seattle twice as large as it is today, it is difficult to see how such an increase would benefit the existing population. I suspect the source of this doubling claim is likely motivated and perpetuated by real estate interests, and political boosters (as opposed to professional planners) more concerned with “cashing in” on the supposed dire consequences of inaction than with maintaining the city’s quality of life.

While it is certainly true that under most likely scenarios the Puget Sound will continue to grow, and that preventing the premature and inappropriate conversion of rural areas to urban uses will depend on increasing the density of existing urban areas, it is wrong to assume that “urban sprawl” and its attendant environmental degradation can be stopped by effectively over crowding Seattle’s existing neighborhoods. Rather, it will be necessary to reinforce the polycentric nature of the Puget Sound region by strengthening its existing suburban centers, thus ensuring a balanced distribution of goods, services and households.

Posted Sat, Aug 15, 9:25 p.m. inappropriate

jabailo, I'm confused by your reference to taxes. Not recalling where I said anything about that.

When I said I do research professionally, I subjected to criticism. Fair enough. But so far, the only responses have been general, without content. How about someone like you or walker refute something I've said?

Posted Sat, Aug 15, 10:03 p.m. inappropriate

Back to growth. Jabailo, you've made a variety of mistakes. Apparently you aren't a demographer or researcher!

While you're right that we're about to be (and already are) flush with too much office space, surely you don't think DSA or the Chamber are research sources. They're third hand at best. No authority exists for quantifying office space. The brokerages try, so at least you should quote them. But even then, to use this information you need to know their limits. For example, most don't count owner-occupied buildings, goverment buildings, small buildings.... And each does things very differently. That's why one can define our metro as having 80,000,000 sf of offices while another defines it as 140,000,000 sf.

Despite all the fluctuations in our economy, and all the busts WA has been through, the state's population has fallen in only one year since 1960, in 1972. Never since. Since that Boeing bust, individual counties (K, P, S) have dropped in population before, but the three-county area has never dropped overall per the State's annual estimates. So yes, it's possible to have population growth with a bad economy.
http://www.ofm.wa.gov/pop/coseries/default.asp

I'm not demographics expert (just an enthusiast), but anyone who is will tell you population tends to relocate from bad locations to better locations, even when the better location isn't great. In our region, we get a fair number of aspirational or lifestyle relocations. Births over deaths are also a big factor, particularly when people are unable to relocate.

Which brings up a factor not often discussed. Young families often relocate to the suburbs when their kids reach school age, or when they outgrow their bungalows or apartments. But right now many can't. It'll be interesting to see stats about this...but Seattle's kid and family population might rise in the short term due to this. Likewise, in a bad economy, more people tend to take roommates or live with their parents.

The biggest reasons Seattle will grow are that people want to live here, proximity is valued more and more, our region is supporting infill by putting up barriers to sprawl, and we've culturally come to accept density more, to a point. On the policy level, Seattle's political environment is changing -- the number of multifamily units is now higher than the number of houses, and eventually the number of adults potential voters will be higher in multifamily as well.

Posted Sat, Aug 15, 11:18 p.m. inappropriate

Speaking of soliloquies, this one caused me to sit up straight and glue myself to the TV late the other night:

"Population Growth & Political Correctness," a Behind the Headlines segment (as of today) not too far the list at http://www.pbs.org/ttc/headlines_watch.html

To The Contrary, to my complete surprise, occasionally sets aside their shouting matches to do something groundbreaking. For all I know, instigated by a spark in a shouting match. At least I will be more interested in listening to see if their tenor reflects the new insights.

Posted Tue, Aug 18, 1:53 p.m. inappropriate

http://noisetank.com/hugeasscity/2009/08/17/dear-crosscut-please-improve-your-quality-control/