Seattle land use: Throw out the book and start fresh

Or will we let pro-development flaks abrogate the agreements made through extensive and broad-based neighborhood planning efforts that are now incorporated in the Land Use Code?

Oh yeah, and that "force of law" you so detest is called democracy.

The code does need to be revised, shortened, and simplified, absolutely and amen, but that endeavor should not necessarily make things easier for developers. That is about the craziest thing I've ever read. Even though most developers are decent and fair, the code exists in part to protect the city from sleezy, exploitive developers who are focused only on money and not on *living* in the city. It also exists to protect people in residential neighborhoods from crazy and unsafe practices by neighbors (every street has its land use loon).

The words of Steve E. from @ http://crosscut.com/2011/08/17/climate/21211/Letter-to-the-Editor:-Climate-change-is-unlikely-to-be-cause-of-a-heat-wave-/ are applicable here as well:

"Pay particular attention to the core "science" in this propaganda piece...

Note that he supplies absolutely no reference to anything supporting this thesis. Nary a single peer reviewed article. No synthesis reports by any respected scientific body. Nada, Zip. Zilch."

That royal "we" and the focus on the next 100 years are suspect too. No matter how much it would make certain individuals and powers happy, presenting fiction as the real thing does not substitute for coming to public judgment and, in fact, slows it down. Speeding it up takes genuine interest is all the pieces of the puzzle, not just pushing one's own.

For the record, every architect who designs projects in Seattle and more than a few developers read all the words in the code too, and not just the current one, but all the ones that have rolled off the screen. That last is quite unfortunate because as time passes they also disappear from the public's access and we wind up with neophytes proposing the tried as the untried.

For example, Seattle's first zoning code was to house and employ 1 million people. The supply of single family zoned houses and sites has shrunk in every overhaul since, while the demand has moved in the opposite direction. One answer just after mid-century was to encourage highrises in the Regrade with some of the first Bonuses for Benefits. After about twenty years, developers recognized a case of prescribing the disease—aka zoning too far ahead of the market causing property to be held off market—and the moderations they and the Planning Commission won produced exactly the results intended—in politics, somewhat of a rarity.

If Valdez so loves code reading, he could do a great service by picking up where Roger Sales left off and focusing on the intentions and the results.

This article, with an amazingly one-sided perspective, lays out Seattle citizens' desire to protect their neighborhood and quality of life as solely "a financial interest in limiting the supply of new housing". I suggest that the citizens in Seattle wish to live in a manner consistent with their values and priorities. I know I do.

I couldn't agree more that the land use code is a morass. However, I'm wondering if the author actually lives in one of the condo or apartment pigeon-hole units he seems to be promoting? I've heard more than enough blabbering from people who advocate more density, often those with a financial stake in the game. But if you ask them where they live, it's "Mountlake Terrace" or "Madison Park"... The pendulum evidently has to swing back toward the type of housing the previous generation wanted to clear out after WWII. Single-family homeowners (emphasis on "family" and "owners") seek to preserve some degree of personal privacy, their own outdoor space/gardens, general upkeep, and overall civility in their neighborhoods, which are threatened by large-scale dense developments, often rentals, with their increase in noise, traffic, crime, etc. I'll bet if you talked to thse people, you would find that preserving equity is a second tier concern.

Mr. Valdez,

Land use Codes do not make land use decisions. People do. And the decisions, interpretations, and enforcement, are only as good, and only last as long, as the last election.

Ross Kane
Warm BEach

"Earlier this year I decided that I would read the entirety of Seattle’s land use code from beginning to end..."

Good for you. Put it on a resume. And get a job.

I don't agree with Roger on some things, but do agree on density.

Of course, since I work for a general contractor who builds dense stuff, that will sound self-serving. But frankly, we contractors (i.e. our developer clients) will build in whatever places/formats we're asked to, be it sprawl, infill, etc.

Personally I love urbanity, and, Stan, live in a condo in one of our densest neighborhoods. I'd rather grow up/in rather than out -- not just to reduce sprawl but because I like where Seattle is going.

I've only read little bits of the land use code. But definitely Seattle's process, on every project, costs a lot of money for anything that's built, which is passed to the occupants. And the scarcity point is right on.

I do think Stan is right about the thinking of many single-family house owners.

PS, single-family homes were recently overtaken by multifamily homes in Seattle. Most land use is SFRs, and so is most population due to the higher pop/unit numbers for houses vs. multifamily. But if you count number of adults in these units, the multifamily residences are catching up quickly.

Of course that illustrates a point. They're catching up because a lot of apartments are getting built right now. That seems to argue against the point that it's tough to build things. But it's still true -- those apartments are substantially more expensive than they ought to because of the uncertainty, duration, confusion, and volume of work required by our process, and some of the questionable limits on what can be built. Thankfully we've made the parking portion more in line with what residents will use, saving significant cost and helping trigger some of the housing currently getting built...

I like this article. Something is very wrong with the code, and I will give my own personal example.

We bought a disused corner store to live in and possibly open a coffee shop or store of some kind. I went down to the county and they told me it is not zoned for that. I could try to get a variance, but if one neighbor did not want it, the variance would be rejected. If I got the variance, I would need to put in three off-street parking spaces (there is no room for those).

Who decided to eliminate the neighborhood corner store? Is this our "values and priorities", @psj?

Norman Rockwell is rolling over in his grave.

andy,
1) the county code and the city code are NOT one and the same,
2) variance rules vary, but I have little doubt you were grossly misinformed,
3) check before you leap.

Oh, it was the city I went to, sorry.

What are the variance rules then?

What do you mean by 3?

@3,

I suspect he meant that you totally fell down on your due diligence in buying the property if you did so with the intent to live there and also put a business there when that particular use that was no longer permitted.

@bubbleator, Well we are happy living there, so the store idea is no big loss. It just seems strange the zoning would prohibit a corner store. Who does not want a corner store? This seems un-American.

The thing that really gets me is the minimum parking requirements:

B.2.
Eating and drinking establishments
1 space for each 250 square feet

http://clerk.ci.seattle.wa.us/~scripts/nph-brs.exe?d=CODE&s1;=23.54.015.snum.&Sect5;=CODE1&Sect6;=HITOFF&l;=20&p;=1&u;=/~public/code1.htm&r;=1&f;=G

Why should we be forced to provide off-street parking for a small corner store?

And for a bar? Do we really want to encourage drinking and driving? That is insane.

AUTHOR I think you made a mistake. I will quote whole paragraph to stay fair then quote the one sentance that could use uhhh "refining"
Whether new development is “just right” depends on who is making the decisions. Today, Seattle is dominated politically and geographically by single-family homeowners. More than 60 percent of Seattle is zoned single-family. Those homeowners have a financial interest in limiting the supply of new housing (less supply means high prices), which protects their equity from the effects of new development. The Seattle City Council tends to act in a way that protects those established interests at the expense of new growth. Strangely, single-family advocates are aided by advocates for the poor who, in their focus on greed, forget that scarcity drives up price, an outcome antithetical to their goals. Advocates for the poor should welcome the development of more housing, keeping in mind that more supply on the market means better selection and lower prices.

PROBLEM SENTANCE
Strangely, single-family advocates are aided by advocates for the poor who, in their focus on greed, forget that scarcity drives up price, an outcome antithetical to their goals.
QUESTION do advocates for the poor really focus on their greed? Think merely an honest mistake.

More density is probably useful to a point. Do we want to be like the Upper East Side? Or more like San Francisco or London. The latter are mostly single family homes or duplexes, etc, but with ground entrances and small yards. That level of density provides enough concentration of people and activites to support excellent transit.

It isn't necessary to be denser from a transit point of view. Otherwise it depends on your take of whether higher density will reduce suburban sprawl and whether that's worth it. I don't think we need to address that yet - that's zoning 50 years ahead.

I want to see housing that attracts blue collar workers. But also families with children and people and others who may want at least a small yard.

Roger reads the land use code and concludes we need more density?

News alert: Dog bites man.

DPD needs to be reformed to provide more certainty that the code interpretation they chose yesterday will be the same one they choose tomorrow.

The problem isn't the code. The problem isn't neighborhood advocates. The problem isn't existing residents who have the right to enjoy their property as newcomers.

The problem is DPD.

And let's dispose of this density=affordability thing, too.

First define "affordability" as a house that sells below market average price for it's type.

(Numbers are illustrative, not intended to represent current market conditions.)

Example A
Developer buys LR2 lot for $650,000
Developer builds townhome six pack for $900,000
Developer sells townhomes for market rate of $325,000 each or $1.95MM
Developer profits $400,000

Example 'Roger'
Developer buys SF lot for $350,000
Developer gets an upzone to LR2
Developer builds townhome six pack for $900,000M
Developer sells townhomes for market rate of $325,000 each or $1.95M
Developer profits $700,000

The myth of upzones is that they lower prices. This is not accurate except at the tail of the time/price/demand curve. New construction is priced at the market rate for that housing. To do otherwise is contrary to the profit motive of developers.

One could argue that more supply would make the prices come down. Perhaps, but we don't make more land. That means the core input price of the land purchase is a fixed commodity.

A developer will look at the market. If the prices of the new units are coming down, they will not build unless they can also get a lower price for the land. Lower land prices only arrive when there is reduce demand for housing (the tails of the time/price/demand curve). So let's say there is a glut of housing and the developer gets a lower price for the land. He gets that lower price because overall housing prices are lower. The end result is still a unit priced at market -- which might be lower than during a hot market, but it is still not "affordable" compared to other prices.

There are some economies of scale for building more units in one space. This is why a condo or a townhome can be less expensive than a SF house. But it is the rare housing buyer who doesn't care whether they buy a SF home, a condo, or a townhome. There are townhome buyers who are different than condo buyers who are different than SF buyers -- and the primary motivation is rarely price.

That's why "affordability" can only accurately be defined as within a class of housing type.

Sprawl is not solely caused by not enough units in our urban areas. We could eliminate all SF and cover Seattle in condos and townhomes and we would still have sprawl since those buyers who want SF homes would move outside the city to acquire one.

The upzones we used to hand out like candy do not, in fact, decrease housing prices. There do, perversely, increase housing prices. If a developer thinks that SF lot in the "Roger" example is likely to be upzoned, he/she will bid more. That $350,000 lot becomes a $400,000 lot. That feeds back into comparables used by the real estate industry. "If that dumpy tear down sold for $400,000," the selling homeowner reasons, "then MY house should be worth $450,000!" And so goes the cycle...

The best example of this ocurred in our industrial districts where land speculators expecting upzones to office uses were bidding up land prices so high, manufacturing jobs were pushed out of the area due to higher lease rates. After a great deal of work by Labor and Industry, Seattle **downzoned** these industrial areas to preserve affordability. There is a lesson there.

With the help of neighborhood types and low income housing advocates, City Council has started to understand these economics. Instead of handing upzones for free, we extract public value from them in the form of "affordable" housing or other public benefits. And while the current standards for what is "affordable" are flawed, at least we're on the right track.

No rational neighborhood advocate is against upzones. Upzones in our urban villages are necessary to accomodate expected increases in employee and resident headcounts. Fortunately, our current zoning is more than adequate for this at zoning capacity of 3x the expected number of residents and 2.5x the expected number of employees for 2020. There is no need to upzone to accomodate future resident or employee headcount growth. We do not have a shortage of adequate zoning in Seattle.

Readers should not be surprised when development industry folks advocate for more density -- or, in the case of Roger, policy advocates whose work is largely funded by the development industry. They are advocating for their business just like I advocate for my business and just like I advocate for my quality of life as a SF homeowner. As consumers of that advocacy, however, we have to consider the sources.

Density is not automatically green.
Density is not automatically affordable.
Density is not automatically bad.
Density does not automatically increase or decrease our quality of life in Seattle.

What Roger SHOULD have learned by reading the land use code is things are WAY more complicated than black and white, and the land use code's complexity reflects that.

New construction is priced by market rates, and will get built if market rates are high enough.

But existing units will be priced according to supply and demand. That's where an undersupply can lead to much higher prices in a growing city. And that's why prices can fall by 3/4 in a shrinking city.

One of the first SANE non sierra club reviews of the Seattle land use code I have read. It is supply and demand, simple as that. Make a product scarce and the price goes up.

To ddmiller's thesis on up additional profit from upzoing- you totally ignore a couple factors- first it takes more than a year to rezone anything in Seattle and you need to account for the cost associated with the rezone which can be more than 100k in your example plus the carrying costs for your parcel. You wouldnt rent it out unless you want to deal with morass of tenant relocation rules and expenses. Second it is not a slam dunk you will get the rezone and could spend the time and $$$ and have nothing at the end. You would need additional profit to take the RISK. It is pretty basic economics. I have news for you- people are motivated by greed. you will not get rid of it with a clever code.

Enjoy the sunshine!

Also- Great piece Roger- well reasoned. Thanks for injecting some sanity here.

Roger,

Our zoning code may be thick, but its not bad when compared to others. It is clear, has few gray areas, and is generally fairly applied. Compared with other cities in western Washington, its one of the easiest codes to work with.
Try Bellingham: Each of the 26 neighborhoods essentially gets to write their own density and use requirements.
Bellevue: Build anything you want downtown (as long as it is gray or brushed nickel); Build nothing over 30% site coverage outside of downtown and require 4/1,000sf parking for everything.
Redmond: Pay us gobs for impact fees and then we will dictate everything down to the color of the door knobs.
Tacoma: Please build something...Anything!

I can almost see my house in the Ballard picture at top. Every day I see and hear the Sounder fly by the end of my street, and it doesn't stop. My work colleagues in Sodo get from their homes in Everett and Edmonds to work in an hour or less. When I take the bus during rush hour it's 1 1/4 to 2 hours to go 8 miles. I want a Sounder stop in Ballard.

How does Seattle code compare with Vancouver, BC? I am always impressed with the way they have built their city. Seems there is a good combination of houses and tall towers with lots of green space and pedestrian amenities. Also, they have many medium sized grocery stores that were not required to build parking.

I know that housing prices are quite high up there, but that may be due to rich emigration from the east, not zoning.

You zoning nerds: is there anything we can learn from up north?

I agree with the article that the code could be rewritten for brevity and clarity. I've never read any ordinance, rule, or statute that I didn't think I could rewrite for brevity and clarity without changing the meaning or affect, to great improvement for all concerned. Than we could get down to the real business of arguing over what it does. However, in a democratic (or even sem-democratic) society this is an impossibility. You see, its true: laws are made like sausage.

Grind up the matrix
add a pinch of this
a lump of that
a gollup of yuck
a dab of drat.

We all know how well writing by committee works. And ultimately, laws are something written by the committee from hell.

@fosterkelly - I'm aware of the added carrying costs that may or may not be implied as well as the costs of advocacy for upzones. I was trying to make a simple point for people who are reading this who think housing prices are simple economics 101.

Either way, rezoning doesn't increase affordability.

Now that the author has finished his reading, he might want to go outside and look around his city. He could start with downtown Ballard near Market Street which has seen phenomenal growth and densification in the last decade in what was formerly a commercial area filled largely with new and used car lots. Yet in spite of the multifamily residential growth, the Ballard "urban center" with 6,824 existing units has room for an additional 5,674, according to the last official city Development Capacity Report. The data suggests that similar amounts of unused capacity exist across the city. In total, for every two existing residential units there is one available still to be developed. It does not seem that single-family zoning per se is limiting development.

Yes, agree that this writer, up front about being a fan of density, certainly didn't support his piece with any reasonable balance. What I can't understand is why some are so driven to return us to the days when people lived in tenements over the store. What's so romantic about that? Seems to me it would be smelly and noisy just to start. And if people loved it so much, why did we get suburbs and single family homes? Is it just history repeating itself? Are the folks advocating for this kind of development so young and incurious that they've never consulted old pictures and newspapers and books to see how the tenements looked and why people wanted to leave them?

Personally, I prefer to live my life decidedly out of the box. I don't want to be crammed in like a lab rate in my cage in a lab full of other cages with similar lab rats stacked up in every direction. I want my own house, my own yard, my own freedom to do what I wish with them within reason and the law. I don't want to live above businesses and have to travel distances however short in order to enjoy some fresh air and green space. I want to enjoy my morning tea in my backyard in my nighty on the rare days when that's possible given our weather. I want my basement, not a remote storage unit for which I must pay extra. I want to be able to see and speak to my neighbors out my back door, not hear them next door through the paper thin walls.

Seattle has reached its carrying capacity and then some. I already don't do so many things I used to enjoy because of the crowds and the impossible transportation, i.e., awful Metro and/or no or very expensive parking if in fact I could even reach a space in a timely manner after navigating horrendous traffic. What difference does it make to have a "world class city" if one can't even enjoy it? And why should we accept streets like 3rd Avenue downtown, all dark and cold even on the sunniest days thanks to big buildings looming ominously over all? This is what I see density creating and it doesn't look good to me.

I would like to know how many affordable, not market rate, but affordable (for the lower income percentile in this city), high rise condos would be built along the Gold Coast of Shilshole and Sunset Hill if Mr. Valdez and his developers could get their upzones? Anyone want to wager? My guess is none. The upzoning arguments are a further gentrification of this City, removing far away from it's blue collar/industrial roots. @mspat is right, who wants to live in a tenement...oh, I know, blue collar workers...along with upzones come homeowners associations or landlords who can dictate what plants you have on your balcony, what animals you have, how many cars can park, the color of the exterior of your condo...totally gentrified. I prefer the lovely mix of historic, mid-century, modern, and just plain eclectic SF homes that still manage to survive in Seattle's neighborhoods. At the risk of sounding 1960s, if Seattle's new urbanists so loathe Seattle's unique housing and want us to be like NYC, then why not move back there? I used to live there and couldn't wait to come home to Seattle. Please Mr.Valdez, stop trying to make Seattle a homogenous mini-me of east coast cities. Your high handedness is beginning to remind me of another "remaker" of great cities, Robert Moses.

@mspat

"And if people loved it so much, why did we get suburbs and single family homes?"

Don't be fooled into thinking it was the invisible hand of the market at work.

Federal Housing Act of 1934 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Housing_Act_of_1934

Federal Housing Act of 1949 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_Act_of_1949

Federal Highway Act of 1956 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Aid_Highway_Act_of_1956

Basically, federal subsidies to encourage families to buy homes and federal subsidies, again, to build freeways to get to those homes (well, that wasn't the aim of the highways, but that's what the Act did). Unfortunately, those ownership subsidies were red-lined out of most urban areas. Instead, under the same act (1949), federal monies were spent on "urban renewal", which tore down thriving neighborhoods, and replaced them with housing projects. Just that one Act destroyed our cities and gave our suburbs an unfair advantage. Our American cities have been trying to recover ever since.

Oh, well done, wes kirkman! Nice to see some actual facts and documentation here to counter the usual sprawl boosting FUD.

This is interesting:

http://boingboing.net/2011/08/25/popsicle-test-evaluating-a-neighborhoods-livability-with-frozen-treats.html

How many Seattle neighborhoods pass "the Popsicle Test" ?

@ddmiller Your outlook is common, but wrong. Don't look at the individual unit, look at the city as a whole. If we go from 400k housing units to 500k housing units, prices will go down. That's because the 500,000th family that wants to live in the city has less money than the 400,000th family. That's an extra 100k families that will be able to afford to live in Seattle that couldn't before. It's really basic economics.

But let's look at your specific example. The difference between the two cases is that land in single family areas is cheaper than multifamily areas, and the developer gambles that it will go up. Sure. There are lots of ways of gambling with real estate, and this is one. But that misses the point. Every time a new unit is built it drops the price of all units in the city. Sure, other upzoned single family homes become worth more, but that's because they've become attractive to developers. As they're replaced with multifamily homes the average home price drops further.

"define "affordability" as a house that sells below market average price for it's type" No. Affordability is a percentage of housing, food, and transportation costs compared to wages. This number is irrespective of average market prices.

"There are townhome buyers who are different than condo buyers who are different than SF buyers" Yes and no. There are vast numbers of single family home owners that don't have kids. I'd argue many/most are in single family homes because condos are too expensive in the city (thanks to limited supply). A Seattle condo is nearly the price of a single family home, and you get far less land. The markets for the two housing types therefore are strongly interchangable - build more condos and SF home prices drop in price as well.

"We do not have a shortage of adequate zoning in Seattle." Absolutely and deomonstrably false. Actual number of units will never match the zoned number of units. A developer will only build when the value of the new number of units is greater than the value of construction plus the demolished old structure plus profit. That leaves a whole lot of structures that won't be profitably torn down and rebuilt until they crumble or are significantly upzoned.

Here's the evidence for you. This is a chart of sprawl in Washington state. In order to slow down sprawl we need the slope of urban areas like the Seattle line or even the semi-urban areas like the King county line to approach the slope of the WA line. But we're comparatively flat in Seattle. Is this because nobody wants to live in the city? Housing prices per square foot compared to the suburbs will tell you that theory is ridiculous. The answer is that our zoning has placed an invisible ceiling on Seattle, keeping people out.

(link here: http://www.orphanroad.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/pop.png)

Matt,

Actually, your simplistic view of supply and demand is wrong. Try getting past Econ 101. New upscale units DO NOT drop the prices of units at the bottom of the market - PERIOD.

@Matt:

That so-called invisible ceiling is assuming a lot of things. That people all want to live in high density, that their jobs are located within Seattle (hmmm, the bulk of Microsoft and Boeing jobs are located where?), that Seattle has a transit system that is nimble and moves people to and from the places they need to be (not just jobs, but groceries, Costco, soccer fields, kids schools), that local (within walking distance) schools provide K-12 education/sports/after school care....I can go on and on. The reality is not everyone, in fact most people don't move to Seattle to live in a downtown condo or a cookie-cutter townhouse in Ballard. People move here because they love the life style. And part of the historic cultural life style of Seattle has been a home, a yard, a driveway with a basketball hoop....And the reality is we don't and won't in the next twenty years have a transit system that gets people from work to school to play to shop (and if you want to ignore buying huge things from Costco, a local company, be my guest). We don't have local K-12 schools, where kids can and do walk, we don't have jobs solely concentrated in downtown (rather, the largest Seattle employer is the U Dub) making transit options easier.

On a purely empirical level, what I see are pretty well-off families moving to this neck of the woods for work in tech jobs who don't want to raise their kids (and they are having kids) in high rises or high density like what they grew up in in the east coast. What attracts them to Seattle and environs is the ability to afford a nice house with a yard and driveway for that basketball hoop.

If the invisible ceiling exists, why is it that there still is a glut in the condo market in this city?

Perhaps, really, we need some "old school" environmental thought, which is, is this area becoming too dense? Maybe we need to think about what sustainability really means? Limiting growth and therefore limiting density. We don't have the infrastructure for the numbers of people. We need to live within our infrastructure "means." Truly hydro power is finite, water is finite, we already can't handle the sewer/stormwater run-off....How about we have a discussion about whether we want more and more people packed into this neck of the woods? Let's begin with Mr. Valdez's premise that more people are coming. Is that what we all want? And can we "afford" it given our limited resources?

@KAM:

If no-one wants to live in high density, why have zoning limits prohibiting high density? That makes no sense.

@KAM:

Also, if you find a way to keep people from moving here, let Emmitt Watson and "Lesser Seattle" know.

I don't like it when east-coast transplants complain about not being able to find a good pastrami on rye in Seattle. I tell them to eat their king salmon and shut up ;-) Dungeness crab is way, way better than Maine lobster anyway.

[bubble] My claim is based on fundamental economics of supply and demand. Since your claim is the one that goes against fundamental economics, care to expand on your reasoning or some study to support your viewpoint?

[KAM] I relied on none of your assumptions. Prices are a proxy for desire, and prices of downtown condos show that people want to live there. Note I'm not claiming that everyone wants to live there. Just more people than live there now. But our region has endless options for single family homes, and makes more every day. It's our invisible ceiling that keeps us from building many more condos, but nothing keeps us from building more sprawl.

"why is it that there still is a glut in the condo market in this city" There isn't. Housing rates have dropped with our economy, and owners don't want to sell for the rates the market wants to pay. They're gambling that the market will recover soon. This is a short-term issue, and a much smaller one in the city than the suburbs. But empty homes are an ongoing financial loss, and eventually they'll either lower their prices to meet the market demand or go out of business.

Your environmental thought is flawed. Unless you want to lock our borders and disallow people from moving to WA, our population will grow. And our simple choice is whether we put these people in the sprawling exurbs or in the city - up or out. And out is an environmental disaster - each new exurban home displaces forest and farmland. They require new roads, parking lots, sewage systems, water supplies, electical grids, natural gas pipelines, etc. And not only is moving people around to these places terribly inefficient, but their homes are larger and inefficient.

Your way of life is killing our planet. But I'm not telling you how to live. Buy a single family home in the city, or the suburbs, or the exurbs. I won't say you can't. But stop telling people they can't make another choice. Let them build the condos they absolutely want.

Here's a fundamental rule of supply and demand as it applies to affordable housing - you tear down old apartment buildings that are currently affordable and those units become more scarce - so unless you're willing to wait 30+ years for those new upscale units that replaced them to become rundown, they do NOT make existing cheaper units more affordable. Period.

You can keep repeating yourself like a right-wing/libertarian Laffer Curve advocate for unfettered free markets until you're blue in the face, but that doesn't change the reality for Seattle renters who can't afford the $1100/month studios the City Government likes to call "affordable housing"

...and yes, there is indeed still a major league upscale condo glut in Seattle. To assert otherwise makes me question your grasp on reality.

@Matt:

Condos and apartments use concrete, electricity (to also make the concrete...much less concrete is one of the great contributors to GHG), water, timber, and land. The high density folks seem to think this is an either/or argument (remember, there are no polarities). The current zoning, albeit rather obtuse to read, have provided this city with a healthy variety (although stylistically, those cookie-cutter townhomes which couldn't even last 15 years much less the 30 years on most mortgages, are really ugly) of housing. Why not spread the density out? Edmonds, Everett, Bellevue, Kent, Federal Way, Tacoma, Bothell, Mountlake Terrace, Shoreline all can contribute to the alleged population boom about to descend on Seattle. It's probably easier to get to the Microsoft campus from Bothell than it is Ballard.

I'm an ecologist by training, so trust me when I say, I probably care about the last remaining lowland timberlands in the Puget Sound region for more reasons than you may understand. Much of it is in private ownership, much of it owned by companies drooling to expand growth boundaries. I also grew up on a farm here in the Puget Sound region. My roots are deep in protection open space soil. I get these issues. But just as we seem to be willing to throw away our urban industrial base for "high density housing" we threw away our timber and farmland base years ago. There are not enough "new foodies" to bring back the Green River Valley into production. Until we realize that sustainability means having the means of production kept locally, that our urban areas must have food and, yes, timber sources close by, the density = sustainability argument is flawed. But until we change culturally, so that people "want" to live in a high density rather than have their own yard where they can grow food, play with the dog, watch the kids on the swing-set, we won't be saving the forests or farms, because, frankly, the timber companies (or in King County's case, the pension funds) and the small remnants of farms will find greater capital in selling rather than trying to eek out an income.

And, indeed, there are laws in place to keep us from "creating" more sprawl. Minimum lot sizes, critical area ordinances, GMA, flood plains (the new FEMA regulations are pretty nice. You should look them over), ESA, stormwater retention, water issues (remember the moratorium in North Bend?)....and, as a realtor said to me during the height of the market: "Prices in Seattle will only go up because you can't build west and the mountains confine you to the east!"

A hint, though, I highly doubt after the last two decades of watching developer/bank/mortgage broker/realtor greed, the gobbling up of every lot to build mini-me density housing, you're going to convince too many voters that going through that kind of meat-grinder again is good for them. Remember, the older woman in Ballard who became a folk hero for refusing to sell her home to a developer. Thank goodness for this depression. I've enjoyed looking at all the empty holes in Seattle!

Thanks Matt for explaining how pigs fly

This may be a little over your head, but give it a try. Note, this is big bad DPD making the Seattle evaluation, surely they would not over estimate!
http://your.kingcounty.gov/budget/buildland/bldlnd07.htm

And after you have got that straightened out in your head, then spend some time with economist Thomas Sowell, a prolific author of books and columns. Until the housing bubble, he was not especially up on the subject, e.g., "Basic Economics" (a good read, none the less) but most definitely is now.

Oh, and one more thing about density. For many years one of the unique things about Seattle is that there actually was a middle class, made up of blue collar Boeing machinists and Boeing part supplier-workers. And they bought houses, so that they could have a little bit of "luxury" close to work. They barbecued in their yards, taught kids sports, shoveled the neighbor's snow...Please note that even in the underserved neighborhoods in south and central Seattle, the housing stock was mostly single family dwellings.

In NYC, Boston, etc. there are few and far between middle class. It's mostly rich, richer, and really rich or the poor. Watch all the Lincoln Town Cars go up and down Park, Third, Madison, Broadway in NY. The rich in NY insulate and isolate themselves from the "intensity" of density. They summer in Litchfield or Kent CT, the Hamptons, Putnam County, or their camps in the Adirondacks. They can buy and do buy many acres of grass. They play golf in their exclusive clubs. But the other folks in NYC or Boston, they suffer through the hot Augusts, hoping there is one blade of grass left in the few and far between parks. They cram themselves into the subways. They pay more for groceries because they can't buy in bulk (who can carry more than three bags on the subway?) They can not insulate themselves from the intensity of density.

Seattle, unfortunately, is becoming like those cities. Not because of high rises, but because we happen to be one of the epicenters of vast dot.com wealth and the blue collar union wage jobs are evaporating as we off-shore or outsource our "messy" work. So, the sprawl that you will see as we increase density will not be in the last remaining forests and farms, because, let's be honest here, they are protected, but in the Methow Valley, the San Juans, Westport, Suncadia, Yakima Canyon, Skagit Valley as the rich escape from the intensity of density.

Re: Growth management. It's a great idea. But it has failed(1). We've protected bits and pieces, as massive land areas that used to be farms, forests, and fields are eaten up by sprawl. We should keep moving with growth management at full force and speed, but we also need to look at the other side of the equation. Our laws against building up are much, much stronger than our laws against building out.

Re: Tearing down affordable apartments. When you tear down a 10 unit apartment and replace it with a 30 unit condo (note: not all new construction is high end condos, but I'll go with the argument for now), the net new housing in Seattle is 20 units. There are now 20 more units of housing in the city. This very, very slightly moves the market along the supply and demand curve, and the average home becomes more affordable. Look at it another way: there used to be 400,000 families that could afford to live in Seattle, now ther eare 400,020 families that can afford to live here. Unless you're proposing that buyers of new housing always come from somewhere else, it doesn't matter who buys what home - in the end 20 more families can afford to live here.

Re: Why not spread density out? I'm in favor of increasing housing density (NOT commercial density - those workers will just commute from farther away and increase sprawl) in nearby towns and cities. But these areas are generally built in very a very car-centric manner (wide roads, large property sizes, lots of parking lots, etc. have you tried to walk around in Bellevue?), and aren't terribly walkable. Seattle, on the other hand, was laid out before cars were a driving (ha!) force and is much more ready to be a dense, walkable city. We have reasonably good transit here, and a large portion of our region's jobs.

Re: Concrete. The amount of concrete used in a single family home in the exurbs is far larger. Start with the foundation, add the driveway, sidewalks, streets, parking lots, freeways, sewer systems, drainage systems...

[KAM] "Until we realize that sustainability means having the means of production kept locally, that our urban areas must have food and, yes, timber sources close by, the density = sustainability argument is flawed." You have this exactly backward. Take two visions of the Seattle metro area, both with 5 million people. Vision one has little new dense construction - most of it is in single family homes. Those homes each take up land that was used for farming or left for nature. How are the means of production kept locally under this scenario? You've plowed it all over. Back yard farms can not come close to matching farmland capacity - by several orders of magnitude. Now take another vision - where many of these homes are built in the city. We keep our local farmland, we reduce the amount of pavement dramatically, we reduce the number of cars dramatically, we reduce the water and electricity consumed dramatically.

Don't you see that buying up farms to build houses is the exact opposite of your goal?

(1)http://www.orphanroad.com/blog/2010/10/growth-management-isnt-working

Oh, and Re: NYC. Yes, the rich buy large plots of land far away. And they do that here too. And around the world. How exactly does keeping a ceiling on Seattle affect that issue in the slightest? Has that kept Bill Gates in a single family home?

Picture the 19 million people of NYC metro area each with single family homes. That would cover a significant portion of the east coast, and wouldn't be much of a city. The fact is that people move to NYC because of density. Because of the exciting and interesting jobs and connections that comes with a dense city. Otherwise they'd all move to Iowa. Maybe a city lifestyle isn't what you want. But by limiting building heights you're telling other people what have to have, not asking them what they want.

Sorry Matt. Been there, done that. Lived in NYC and wouldn't ever want to have that same experience. It's why I moved home. Looks like if Mr. Valdez and his "change the zoning code" committee are the loudest voices in this discussion (I don't have time to sit down at City Hall), I'll be making the move...I, like so many others, prefer a sense of place that allows me to have nature outside my backdoor, the chance to sit in a yard on a sunny day, to shovel snow, to worry about my leaky basement. I don't want a tower or even cookie-cutter condos next door to me, or towering over Sunset Hill or creeping down Perkins Lane or for that matter lording over the proposed waterfront park.

I actually find Edmonds, Everett, Tacoma, Bothell far more walkable than Seattle. They need to absorb this density, too. But then, you're still avoiding the population discussion. Too many people no matter how you house them ain't a good thing on the environment. Read some Herman Daly. Good stuff.

But, Seattle is changing. To paraphrase Ronald Reagan: I didn't leave Seattle, Seattle left me.

Sigh.

..."slightly moves the market along the supply and demand curve, and the average home becomes more affordable.

Matt: Where exactly is the USA is the theory of densifying for affordability getting that result?

It may surprise you that in the not too distant past, a Seattle house zoned MF sold generally for less than a SF zoned house of equal location, quality and lot size. This is because the desire for SF remains unending as the urban supply diminishes. Desire is not demand. It took over-deflating mortgage requirements to convert desire into what you refer to as a "demand "(the ability to fulfill the desire). In Seattle, the result was crammed-on versions of SF at densities far less than zoned. Condos not apartments were considered the only other alternative. Non-profit apartment builders, the only exception, were increasingly priced out by the strangely inflated land prices. Market and policy are not necessarily one and the same.

Those who wish to argue about zoning need to distinguish between zoning's three separate sets of historical objectives. The muddling through that is the human condition takes far longer and wastes many lives when separate objectives are haphazardly argued as one.

1. The social and equity objectives of US zoning adhere to our principles of equal protection and due process. Specifically, that the highest use, may not always be the socially and economically just use.

2. Back when there was little choice but to live in a heap all a-top of one another, the elite decided to at least separate uses and saw to it that transport advances took it from there. "Zoning" gets its peculiar name from this objective.

3. Before cities grew to the point of needing detangling, people operated under primarily form-based rules so that what was built over time added up to something.

[KAM] Again, you're welcome to live in a SF home in the city, in the suburbs, in the exurbs, or in Kansas if you want. I won't stop you - on the contrary, I value the happiness that comes with choice. But you're arguing that your desire for everyone to live in SF homes trumps the desire of others to live in smaller units. Some people don't want the joy of shovelling snow or repairing a leaky basement, and I find it strange for you to force them into this so you don't have to see their buildings in the sky.

"you're still avoiding the population discussion" I don't have to ignore the population argument. Maybe you can start. Do you prefer forced sterilization, or maximum age based euthanasia?

I see it is rather pointless to intrude on a degenerating, enoline private dispute, and I doubt this additional report of policy and market not necessarily being one and the same will change any line-in-the-sand, but for what it is worth:

http://www.theroot.com/views/chicagos-shrinking-black-community

[afree] I didn't respond to you before because I mostly agreed with your comment and there wasn't much to discuss. And, honestly, it was a bit off topic to my thread though relevant to the original story. But your link is confusing. Perhaps I'm missing the point, but you're comparing a city that's been shrinking for 60 years to one that has seemed to be growing for several decades. Are you saying that if we demolish our projects our minorities will move to the south? I'm not sure we have many Chicago style project, and I'm not sure upzoning will touch what we do have. Are you going back to your previous point and claiming that Chicago's densification made it unaffordable? I'm fairly sure Chicago densified long, long ago and it's fairly affordable right now (it has shrank by a million people in the past 60 years, so I would expect housing to be quite cheap). My point is that your point went over my head. Please expand.

@ Matt re: population issues. Wow! You went from Herman Daly to "forced sterilization or euthanasia?" How about we just begin a discussion in America about the effects of population growth and the environment. Sierra Club, National Audubon Society, Wilderness Society, NRDC, etc all have had and some still do have population programs that link population issues with land, water, air, climate change (those green groups are not exactly outside the mainstream). Your response on the population issue is naive and reactionary.

As I said, good luck with changing Seattle. It really hasn't grown in 20 or 30 years, it's the Puget Sound region that has grown. Change the culture, my friend, and you'll get density. But until people stop moving to this region seeking the kinds of housing they can not afford elsewhere, high density development will continue to be one option of many, even within Seattle's boundaries.

"high density [re]development will continue to be one option of many, even within Seattle's boundaries"

A hopeful place upon which to stop and do what wise experts do when they disagree: get more information.

Try that link to the King County Buildable Lands Report (a required update is due next year). Very interesting.

And here's a link to a free download of probably the most humane, expansive little book ever written on all the subjects we have touched upon, Charles Correa's The New Landscape: very plain English text and graphics out-of-print; but will download in in its entirety:

http://www.4shared.com/document/pSFTsB9Z/charles_correa_-_the_new_lands.html

Not clear if one has to download the 4shared toolbar to do so, but it is easy to uninstall thereafter at the help arrow. If you first need a taste, google book it and enter words like "demand, supply, afford."

[KAM] Yes, I was being more than a little flippant with your close-to-non-sequitur about population (if you really think you're going to solve sprawl in our region within a lifetime or two with population alone, those are your two of the three options that would come close, the third being locking our borders). I absolutely agree the quantity and growth of human population is the largest problem. But it seems wildly optimistic to think our region can fix this problem in a time scale of several generations. Our population growth comes from outside, not so much from within.

"It really hasn't grown in 20 or 30 years, it's the Puget Sound region that has grown." Exactly my point. We have an invisible ceiling that doesn't allow for much growth. "Change the culture, my friend, and you'll get density." The culture is changing. Enough that you're considering a move. Adults living in multifamily homes are right at the point of outnumbering adults living in single family homes. When those numbers cross, a majority change of opinion will likely follow.

For the record, the city of Seattle was up 25% from the Census estimate of 1986 to the count of 2010. The number of households probably grew by (guessing) 30%, given that household sizes were falling.

Meanwhile, many of our suburbs have become "urbs," as older town centers (Edmonds, Kirkand, Bellevue, Renton, Redmond, and so on) and second-generation infill have gotten denser.

It's odd that density critics often mix "people aren't moving into denser areas" with "much of the city is hurting because of new density."

"Density" is not the operative element nor term for urbanist progress. That operative word is "Diversity".
The article shouldn't have presumed analytical urban progress is determined by issues & matters regarding Density. Therefore its premise is incomplete.

Diversity, OTOH, incompasses 'economic diversity' 'biodiversity' 'socio-diversity' 'class diversity' ethnic, cultural, intellectual, professional, blue collar diversity. Transport-system Diversity -elementally & inextricably related to land-use- is evidently, historically & unbelievably ABSENT in Seattler-o-dite HWY & Rail projects & proposals, I must regrettfully inform more reasonable citizenry.

MayorMcginn's gut instinct to stop this wrongheaded, unacceptably risky tunnel proposal is a wisely heroic act to be defended. The DOTs are wrong again this time; the 'well-heeled' stepping over the line.
Don't stop fighting to stop this incredibly risky act of ignorance AND wrongdoing.

@ Andy, who does not want a corner store? Me. In my residential neighborhood of single family homes, a handful of duplexes, I certainly do not want a corner store that sells cigarettes, beer/wine or even has a wine bar. Put that same store on a street of other shops and businesses, and I'll walk right on over. But not in the middle of my neighborhood, or worse, next door to my house.

Matt said "it seems wildly optimistic to think our region can fix this problem in a time scale of several generations. Our population growth comes from outside, not so much from within."

There are three or four generations per century (25 - 33 years or so), depending on who's doing the defining. Five (or six) generations ago, the population of Washington was in the thousands (75,000 in 1880). You are assuming that the population curve you posted above (http://www.orphanroad.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/pop.png) is likely to continue for another "several generations." That would mean 14 or 15 million by early in the 22nd Century. Probably supportable, but with what quality of life? Any non fish tank salmon left?

In recent decades much of the growth here comes from outside, but not all or most by a long shot. http://data.wa.gov/Demographics/Population-Change-Over-Time/wn5v-372e

Regardless, KAM is right that "a discussion in America about the effects of population growth and the environment" is needed and sorely absent from forums like this. The fact that there are limits to growth is still largely a taboo subject. Roger Valdez, along with the Seattle City Council, the King County Council, and every other elected official I'm aware of, has not come close to addressing the issue. The opposite is the case, discussions are all about growth--where and how, not whether or how much.

[loup] That's a great visualization. But I disagree with "not all or most by a long shot." Certainly not all, but the difference between birth and death is roughly 35/yr, where it looks like the average from migration is around 40/yr. However, I hadn't realized our population has been growing so quickly internally. The global trend has been that well-educated and wealthy countries see a drop in number of children per family even to the point of negative population growth, but I'm certainly not seeing that in your data. Maybe we could use some population control.

I'm not sure the trend will continue. It will probably level off at some point on its own, though it could certainly increase. Putting a rock-solid ceiling over our densest city at a time like this seems crazy.

Deciding whether Irene recovery will be an economic stimulus or not reminded people of the dead Englishmen who coined the broken window theory—the shopkeeper repairing his window merely redistributes existing funds to a "less productive use." We have yet to apply the theory to GDP so it is no wonder we don't yet apply the redistribution theory to over-production and consumption of commodities like housing and to the re-distribution of population as population growth slowly winds down, developed countries first.

This makes it all the more amazing that the basis of the original Growth Management Act of Wa. state was shared growth, which calls upon quite a different mindset than hegemonies hogging growth, and which explains why it has been interpreted and changed otherwise. Sad that cooperation is such an odd concept even at this late date in human existence.

Ladies and gentlemen, it is really this simple: more density = fewer families with children. That is what you are guaranteed to get with high-density zoning.

This is interesting:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2016016390_bullitt28.html

Governments must be part of the industry's transformation, too, the Bullitt Center's developers say: "This building was illegal to build in Seattle three years ago," says Hayes.

In 2009 the Seattle City Council agreed to let planners waive some regulations for projects like the Bullitt Center. For instance, the building needed to be taller than zoning allowed so each floor could have higher ceilings to admit more daylight and reduce power needs.

"The challenge for us as a city is to be flexible," Councilwoman Sally Clark said at a public meeting on the Bullitt Center this spring. "That's not something we do well."

@John Carlson Where is the data to support this statement? Have you been to Manhattan lately? It is overun with rug-rats!

How about we re-think Dryvit?

20 years of Pro-Density advocates in office has just about destroyed the quality of life in Western Washington.