"Anyone who wants to enter the city must pay a tax, a toll, or a fee."

Not quite. It is free to enter Seattle on foot on the ferries from Bainbridge and Bremerton. However, you do have to pay a toll to get out via those routes.

I have lived in one of those European cities where the old walls still stand. As with most instances where Seattle tries to copy something from other cities, this latest attempt duplicates the wrong elements such that the Seattle implementation does not really work.

Double-dipping, Knute? Oh well-- it's a cute piece and deserves a re-play. But please, how about some more stories about dead people on display. Now THAT's medieval!

Did you think of it before or after you read this?

"There's going to be terrific benefits for everybody, from creating this great
downtown-waterfront park and even more than that, it's going to be a great
benefit to us in our growth-management strategy. Part of our growth-management
strategy to protect the forests and the farms and the wild areas is to make our
urban centers places where people want to live and people want to have jobs. We
expect this is going to create a lot of interest and attention for people who
want to develop new housing downtown, people who want to develop new jobs
downtown, and that's going to be a benefit for everybody."

Knute, this sounds like wishful thinking on your part.

PS, I thought it was the nimbys that wanted to keep everybody out.

I think Knute is dead on. Seattle has a holier than thou attitude about the surrounding area with nothing to back up their claim to superiority - worse infrastructure, schools, crime, and lower business growth rate than the surrounding towns and burbs. You forgot one thing, Knute - they are trying to discourage the breeders and the elderly. Seattle sucks unless you are an adult from age 19 to about 55 with no kids. Not only are they erecting a moat, but it's a community about as sterile as a Shaker commune, and despite the talk about "sustainability" - it ain't.

Knute. I'm just curious but how do you know it's not the rest of us Washingtonians building a moat around Seattle in order to keep the dumb ass Seattle ideas confined to Seattle and not infect the rest of us. As Mark Sidran use to say Seattle is 35 square miles of liberalism surrounded by reality.

Actually, lizard, Seattle is retaining residents under 18 at a higher rate than the rest of Washington State:
http://daily.sightline.org/daily_score/archive/2009/12/01/the-myth-of-the-childless-city

Clever article, Knute, though I think you could push it even further. The reason for the tolls is to pay for the expensive infrastructure, just like the castle walls of long ago. But as the English knew in Wales 800 years ago, it's not actually the castle that conquers the land--it's the markets in the city.

By the way, check out the Novo Nordisk building at 530 Fairview Ave N--it's designed like a castle, I assume to keep the hordes of Mercer away.

Did the Bastile have a moat?

How does someone write a one-page article in which tolling traffic is a "fortress mentality" but- lo and behold- not tolling traffic is also a "fortress mentality" because it would lead to gridlock.

This all reminds me of a joke we told in elementary school about why fire engines are red. It was a Rube Goldberg shaggy-dog explanation that went on for about five minutes and ended with the conclusion that fire engines are red because they're always 'Russian' around.

Still, an insightful look into what passes for wit in Seattle today.

Latest census numbers show that Seattle is now under 10% of the State's population...and going down. Seattle is losing the attention of the Legislature as this diminishment continues to dilute Seattles representation.

When I arrived in Seattle in 1967, this city was 50% of King county's population.

When I worked on the RTP, our studies consistantly indicated that about 70% of the growth in our metropolitan area would occur OUTSIDE of Seattle. And that was before the completion of I-90, 405, etc. that has happened!

In the early 70's, one could buy a famly home in Seattle for $30-$50,000. Todays values, even in this resession, are not affordable for families, elderly and even young persons with single incomes.

The diversity that Seattle used as it's mantra, has gone by the wayside. Families and low income persons are systematically being pushed south and out of the City. Just look at Seattle's school-age population figures compared to earlier times.

Seattle's is now for the wealthy and tourists. Two groups that are highly suseptable to criminal activity. While we have always thought of Downtown as everyone's neighborhood, it isn't.

It is now a stand alone area that has to wrestle for it's existance, compete for priorities deem important, but not necesarily are in anyone elses plan.

Belltowners have drunk the lemonade and now are suffering from food poisening. The developers who have gained political standing amongst our electeds, go their way, take their profits, and have left to find new opportunities such as in South lake Union., leaving the indicvidual home owner associations to fend for their neighborhood.

So, what does this add to this article, only that Seattle has lost it's way and may not find it in time to reverse this dilemma.

It's not in the bricks and mortor that we make the city a wonderful place to live, work and play. It is in the way we treat, educate and help our residents maintain a quality living experience.

Imagine, if Seattle, for 2-3 years, took it's capital improvement budget (except for emergency events) and divereted it to people programs, improved education, worked hard on crime prevention and encouraged diversity, fairness, compassion and trust. The walls would come tumbling down! And quality of life would go up.

Those walls would become bridges that would be seen as welcoming signs to others who would see Seattle as the humaine place it thinks it is.

Such a fortress would be awesome.

The first I remember hearing about making downtown into a European Urban Village was from radio personality Bob Hardwick. That was back in the 80s, and it was obvious then that no one understood that there was more required than just cramming people into warrens of high rise condominiums. Things like corresponding levels of taxation; special service districts, cultural/social issues, community health, public safety, human nature, transportation, etc. It was, and continues to be, defined in simplistic terms of density and infill. Just let speculators jam them in, and somehow the rest will work itself out.

People who yearn to create Paris on Puget Sound should stop daydreaming about creating similarities between that city and Seattle, and start understanding the differences between the U.S. and Europe. Europeans pay significantly more in taxes than we “free market capitalists” would ever tolerate, and thus can allocate more for the infrastructure necessary to make their cities run. They also have a different sense of community than we have here in the land of “greed is good.”

It might also help us avoid these delusional visions for growth and transportation that disproportionately suck the resources out of the entire city for the sake of a few affluent neighborhoods.

To sum up: Mayor Mike opposes the deep bore tunnel to create insufferable traffic gridlock that discourages 'outsider' motorists from visiting, shopping or working in Seattle. Oh, I see. This sly wit has devised a political ploy: opponents of the deep bore tunnel are green snobs. That nonsense will be openly received at country clubs and bowling alleys.