There is a very liberal use of "We" in this article.

We= The Seven Party of the Future members meeting at a Starbucks.

Hell must have frozen over, this morning, because I agree with Cameron. Crosscut must be hard up for copy to publish this drivel. Here's a clue for you Roger: Pompous, presumptuous, and pontificating is not sustainable.

How about a flea for your symbol, Roger? Or some other parasite.

I'll go with Sartre. "l'enfer, c'est les autres"

I don't want to live next to anyone with just a thin wall, ceiling or floor separating us

Good thought provoker Roger.

The basics are spot on -- many things about society work better with proximity, from reduced pollution due to less travel and more efficient travel modes, to businesses (like mine) that thrive via proximity to other businesses.

The two things I'd add: (1) while cities are good for human connections, I also love them for fostering anonymity. (2) cities are inherently full of differing opinions...majorities can find common ground but any "tribe" that thinks alike on multiple topics is bound to be a minority.

One problem with this essay is the lack of any concrete details or clear definitions. For example, what (exactly) does the following sentence mean? "We believe that the division between public and private realms is conceptual not physical, and that we can build cities that allow every resident or visitor to move between these realms at will, affordably, and with ease."

I am all for densification of suburbs, however, we can't just cram more single family residences on smaller and smaller lots. We need codes to allow for more multi-family dwellings integrated into these Single Family wastelands. Inclusion of some basic shopping and commercial space couldn't hurt either. As schools move to two story designs, why not include some of these items on these sites, and include local workforce housing for teachers. Additionally, the ideas of bio-phelia need to be brought back to urban design. Siting developments so that green public areas are abundant & integral to the project. People enjoy looking out on natural spaces, they want privacy both perceived and actual. In short it's not just about more density, but better density. Density for density sake just enriches the developers and provides a reduced quality living experience for the folks who live there.

The problem in defining "urbanism" is where to draw a line. In Seattle, we did that 30 years ago by creating the urban village system. We decided to plan for our growth by creating dense, walkable, and livable populations centers within our boundaries. These population centers would be where we concentrate services and infrastructure to handle the increased density, perhaps the most important service being adequate bus service.

This approach was something approaching visionary given the creators had very little data to go on when creating our city's growth pattern. Now most of 30 years down the road the vision still holds factually accurate as Seattle has 3x the housing zoned capacity and 2.5x the business zoned capacity we need to handle our 2024 population and employment targets.

Those who created this vision are true urbanists. I consider myself an eager urbanist who believes Seattle should focus on the deal struck 30 years ago and continue building out the promise and opportunity of our urban villages, upzoning in these concentrated areas to meet the population goals of the future.

Roger is talking about something else. From almost the moment Seattle's urban center plan was created, some people started working to tear it down. You see, it pays a great deal to buy land on speculation and petition the City council to upzone it. It's money for nothing. Only in the last 5 years has Council started to extract some of that value (outside of the downtown core and high-profile projects) by asking those who get the free money from upzones to share by creating affordable housing and doing other things to make the incresed density more urbanist.

These folks' desire to tear apart the urban village strategy didn't get very far for two decades until the developers and architects got together and decided to rebrand density as green. Don't get me wrong, sprawl is bad whether it happens out in in the ex-urbs (the traditional definition) or whether it happens inside our city boundaries, what I call intra-urban sprawl. But density is NOT inherently green. The worst part of this rebranding effort is anyone who disagrees with Roger's version of urbanism is painted as an anti-planet NIMBY. Ironically, many of the architects and environmentalists who created the Seattle urbanist village strategy are now regularly branded as NIMBYs.

Another irony of Roger's approach is the less we concentrate Seattle's growth in our urban villages, the less chance we have to show that density can work. Our urban villages are much less dense than they should be, and not because the zoning isn't available. It's because we continue to allow the density to creep. Because we allow density to creep, we have a hard time funding the infrastructure necessary to support it.

This all gives density a bad name.

I'm all for urbanism. I'm a cheerleader for the concept because density done correctly allows us to preserve neighborhoods and the environment inside and outside Seattle.

Perhaps Roger needs to work less on a "creed" and more on a new name for what he's talking about. It can't be "urbanism" because it is not good for the environment, it is not good for affordability, and it isn't good for Seattle.

David Miller

It first I thought this column was satire. Sort of an urbanist take off on a Tea Party pledge.

Wow, crazy stuff.

I have friends, too.

We believe self-appointed social engineers like Roger Valdez have driven state and local governments to the brink of bankruptcy.

We believe our elected officials should stop listening to these squeaky wheel missionaries, get back to core business, and balance the budget.

We believe Congress should revise the tax code, severely restrict exemptions claimed under 501(c)(3) and force people like Roger to go out and find honest work.

"We need backyard cottages, corner stores..."

Yes!
But with the punitive city and state tax and regulatory structure, it ain't gonna happen.

The social engineers are the OPPONENTS of cottages, and the people who want our transportation system to be dominated by the last century's dominant mode. Standard suburban zoning and traffic engineering are the very definition of social engineering, with very little human choice allowed. It's odd that some people equate the addition of choices as social engineering.

BlueLight, etc... It is amazing to me when proposals to reduce subsidies for auto travel and reduce zoning restrictions are branded as "social engineering". Do you really believe this?

Many popular neighborhoods in Seattle would be illegal to build today by today's nanny-state zoning laws.

We are spending so much property tax money subsidizing auto travel and storage it is making us go bankrupt.

At the federal level we are spending billions (trillions?) on expeditionary wars to secure "our" oil supplies.

How can you libertarian, small government people tolerate this?

"Urbanists", are those the people who have built all that "ground-related housing" perched on top of garages all over Seattle?

Great comment David! Incredibly informative. The one problem I have with it is that growth goals for Seattle are somewhat meaningless because they won't necessarily stop sprawl. Getting a potential suburbanite to live in the city is obviously a boon, but if sprawl isn't stopped, the environmental and land use problems that Valdez alludes to will continue to deteriorate.

I think that Valdez's main point is that people in the region ought to mobilize behind stopping sprawl through the promotion of (according to him) superior and more sustainable urban living patterns. I don't think his vision, without knowing him personally, conflicts with the urban village plan, but rather simply states a generalized desire to stop sprawl, and fight against a suburban culture, that exults that way of life.

Valdez does make a few suggestions for specific policy solutions to address the density problem, notably a desire to significantly reduce zoning codes. On this, I think Valdez identifies a significant problem, but his solution simply creates different problems and is definitely not an improvement.

Zoning laws are put in place because (safety codes aside) of the fact that the architecture of a building has considerable influence on the surrounding neighborhood and its livability. A variety of architectural and use elements impact the ability of building to aid good urban living. In Seattle, many dense buildings fail architecturally to meet the demands of good urban living. In this regard zoning laws are too lenient. On the other hand zoning laws often hinder the creative use of housing. A good solution would probably be to change the zoning laws to place stricter and smarter codes on new construction, while allowing more freedom in the use of existing structures.

The larger issue, of course, is dealing with sprawl. The primary regional and possibly statewide policy needs to be one that prevents any additional suburban or urban growth on current farmland or undeveloped land. It is only after this essential step is taken that addressing the densification of urban areas is meaningful. In the long run I hope that Seattle's urban footprint (in sq miles) can eventually be reduced with some of it returning to agricultural or more environmentally friendly uses, but for now I accept that as a pipe dream.

It's really about good urban design, not just density. For example, suburban sprawl is just poor design because it depends too much on the automobile. We need to develop indicators for quality of life and measure our communities by them. For instance, do you live within walking distance of a coffee shop or a bookstore? Is your house in a vibrant neighborhood with civic opportunities and social interactions? Rather than quality of life, most Americans are focused on quantity of life (i.e. money and status) - fancy car, big house, luxury vacations. This lifestyle means we don't have any money left to invest in our communities because we dump it all into our over-sized mortgages, consumer goods, and car payments. The American dream of get rich quick is over. It's time to adopt a European qualify of life standard instead. Cafe society, good public institutions, great museums, world class libraries, and outstanding public places. It's not how big your house is, rather how big your opera house is. Some will call this dream "socialism" - I call it progress.

The main New Urbanism measurement is mixed-use development; diversity, not density. Complete and complementing mixed-uses require undeveloped space for parks, fields, small farms and gardens, formal walkways and bikeways, primitive trails in preserved natural areas, etc. And the mixed-use measurement includes all travel modes must function adequately.

Single-family neighborhoods are a basic, essential land-use development pattern. Their problem is when they go on and on for miles with no complementing uses nearby to serve their population which then has no choice but to drive.

Thus, Roger's sole focus on central city density is wrong. The far greater need for development is in suburbs which have innumerable acreage of poorly developed commercial property, parking lots (and some housing) that should be raized and redeveloped with complementing uses. Suburban communities have an impossibly imbalanced mixed-use development pattern that requires driving which overloads streets, highways and central cities with traffic and undermines these principles of mixed-use.

Link LRT should extend south to Federal Way and a spur to Southcenter and then Renton should be a high priority. There is undeniably much more need and redevelopment potential along these extensions than north to UW and east to Bellevue. Let's hope the Link tunnel boring machine doesn't get stuck. It should be okay. Ridership figures to UW are high, but redevelopment to higher density isn't necessary.

Hank Williams and his country folk in his song would roll over in their graves if they read this article, and saw that somehow you twisted their beliefs into being anything like yours, Roger.

Plus, they were singing about making moonshine, not sissified city wine.

Density done correctly conflicts with the word village.

Village is a marketing word meant to reassure people into thinking they don't really live in an urban setting.

Like Hanks' country folk, let's just call a spade a spade: density can be a lot of fun when it is done correctly, and when it is simply called a city or an urban neighborhood. Leave the word village for the rural areas and quit stealing their brand.

A freestanding house with a well and septic system uses far less water than a house on a water main and sewage system, something on the order of 1/2. Sorry I don't have the exact figure handy, but I'm sure any septic system installer would have a reference.

"Urbanist creed"? Please don't make me laugh.

Were "we the people" not already disenfranchised – and now facing methodical reduction to an inescapably wretched neo-serfdom – the points raised by Mr. Valdez would be relevant.

Particularly since the Klanish coterie of local xenophobes and bigots – mostly in Seattle and Tacoma – continues its relentless war against the increasingly urban reality of Pugetopolis.

That said, this entire thread is a damning demonstration of denial and even dementia.

The notion we are still allowed to "determine what kind of lives we want" is as big a Big Lie as "change we can believe in."

Two pretty young women I overheard on the bus a several weeks ago understand our plight perfectly.

(I was not eavesdropping but had been forced to the bench seat that spans the very back of the bus because a gaggle of grossly obese breeders with their perambulators and squalling infants and clusters of Wal-Mart bags had seized all the front seats theoretically reserved for aged cripples like myself. The two young women were already in the two-person seat immediately ahead of and below the bench seat; unless I had stuck my fingers in my ears there was no way I could have avoided hearing their conversation.)

One young woman, a blonde with long straight hair pinned up beneath a gray wool stocking cap embroidered with maroon reindeer, said she was terribly worried about her older brother, an honor student who had expected to go to college but – because of huge cuts in financial aid – had realized his only options were to join the military or suffer a lifetime of chronic unemployment because there will never again be any public money for education.

“He's all if he has to face death he wants the best training there is and he joins the Marines. I so have nightmares he gets killed but he goes 'there's no jobs never again I'm dead anyway.'”

The other woman shook her copper-colored curls and said she felt sorry for boys because they have no other choices but “at least if we look hot enough maybe we can marry rich men.”

That sort of cynicism amongst people so young – earlier conversation had made it clear both women are high-school seniors – used to be unheard of outside the ghettos. But now even the middle class understands hope is not “audacity” but imbecility.

Such is the new American truth.

Wake up, people. Capitalism allows self-determination only to its ruling elite. The rest of us, whether urban or rural, are allowed no meaningful choices at all.

The American Dream is dead beyond resuscitation. The American Experiment in constitutional democracy has been betrayed beyond restoration.

And though it pains me to say it (not the least because I am in part an unabashed urbanist myself), Mr. Valdez's discussion of an “urbanist creed” is thus reduced to the usefulness of a pipe organ on a sinking ship.

Many people I know move to the suburbs to live in a better school district. They would rather live downtown in an urban environment, but the schools are not well funded. Currently, Seattle taxpayers are subsidizing some suburban and most rural school districts. This problem needs to be solved before urbanism will take hold.

lorenbliss, perhaps the two fatties and their babies might not be so embroiled in such a hopeless sounding life if they were not always handed things without a requirement of reciprocation of some kind. Too many generations have missed out on education from a young age on how to stand on their own two feet. Why these girls have a brother who is an honor student with enough drive to go sign up for military service is both an amazement and a reflective statement that drive does come from within.

We've created some seemingly lazy people through decades of setting the bar of expectations far too low. Yet we truly cannot call them lazy if we have not pushed them enough to know they could, and must, exceed their own low standards for themselves.

andy: Could you offer some support for this outlandish statement?

"Currently, Seattle taxpayers are subsidizing some suburban and most rural school districts."

Good work, Roger. We need to develop a consensus in this town about those who prefer Seattle over the surrounding suburbs, to drive policy that accentuates Seattle's unique advantages. I wrote a version of an urbanist creed on my blog's about page in January: BuildtheCity.wordpress.com/about. I listed five significant reasons I love cities and write about them: architecture, community, innovation and influence, sustainability, and because, seen in the sweep of history, cities are our future.

Well-intentioned, Roger, but I couldn't disagree with you more.

I live in a city (Seattle) because it pleases me not because it is good for me. I happen to eat spinach but I would spit it out if I didn't like it. My motivation for living in a city is totally selfish. And I suspect that I am in the vast majority.

bigyaz, google levy equalization

also, look at this graph:

http://www.thestranger.com/binary/ea57/CityLead-CLICK.jpg

Wow, an urbanist creed. Really? How sweetly romantic. Why am I reminded of sophomore English class, bands of earnest young boarding school students gazing longingly at each other after a rousing reading of Catcher in the Rye?

Creeds, like fads, come and go faster than hemlines rise and fall. People make life choices based on their own needs and desires, culture and upbringings. A lot of people like suburbs, and would live no other way. A lot of people like cities. Cool. Let government do its jobs— providing safety, decent transit (roads and mass), reasonably dependable infrastructure, dependable trash collection, and some form of safety net for the less fortunate. The government doesn’t need to either listen to or try to impose ideological dogma on a population that is increasingly consumed with just getting by.