Why do people treat this like a true/false question? A writer named Aesop wrote a relevant piece on this issue a while back, entitled "The City Mouse and the Country Mouse." Everyone should read it.

This mouse reference also brings to mind those great old 16mm films we slept through in high school biology class. I recall one about population density where a Brilliantined guy in a lab coat kept adding mice to a little plywood “mouse community” until the increasingly agitated residents began fighting, running around in circles and pulling out their own fur.

There you go.

Case closed.

Since 1960, Seattle has gained 50,000 in population while the 4 county region surely has added 1,500,000 plus. Case double closed; studio apartments and waterclosets with a view are not for everyone. Light rail station forced density ushers in 21st century ghetto style projects that will decay and resemble awful housing clusters of urban renewals past.

Some people like the city, others the country. That's fine. The problem is when we spend the amount of money we currently spend taxing the other two to create suburbia. What makes the most sense are some places that are trullt cities, and some places that are trully rural.

I think another argument we need to rebut is one about crime and irritation. The most densely packed neighborhood in north America is in Vancouver bc. Not nyc, not any other typical, for many people stifeling neighborhood, but Vancouver, which actually has lower crime rates than we do.

You can see the same things in our region. Capitol hill doesn't have the highest crime rates, southpark, Georgetown, and the rainer valley do.

Seattle doesn't have the high crime rates, kent and centralia do.

Density doesn't cause crime, and density doesn't have to look like manhatten, it can look like Vancouver bc.

Roger- I am one of the evil ones who you treated very nicely in this piece, thanks.

That said, what is the problem with BOTH, and letting folks vote with their personal preference. My tussle with you is not about you incessant drum-beating for the mouse experiment in an above comment, it is about your FORCING me to do it Roger's way.

I perfer the sound of the rooster, the greenery out the window, the quiet of living in a (still, but with zoning not for long) rural island just north of Lynnwood. I LIKE it here in the unincorporated area, unfettered by the know-it-all city council and their evil taxes and fees, particularly the regressive ones like utility taxes.

So, you keep beating your drum, and me mine, but I like the America of choice, not the Amerika of elite planning my life, and how I live.

The Geezer

@animalal. So light rail creates forced density, but neglecting public transit while subsidising highways doesn't create forced sprawl?

Also, an extra fact for you to consider, over the last ten years, Seattle has accounted for a third of that growth, and in the current boom cycle that is beginning Seattle counts for 80% of developement. The trend is changing.

I have lived in Ballard since 1986. I have not seen "pockets of development", rather I live in one of the corridors of large scale multifamily housing that has recently assailed this area. These huge developments take away from the nature/culture of the community. They cause endless traffic problems in an area that has had absolutely no change in the roads in spite of massive development...other than adding bike lanes, further reducing the traffic flow. The parking is difficult because developers do not have to build as much parking as their buildings need. As one building is finished, another is granted a permit or begins construction. How many people can you pack into a small space and keep a quality of life that is enjoyable?

Some development is good and keeps the community vibrant, but having massive buildings of varied quality thrown in building after building, without some concern is probably not a good long term vision for sustaining the community or the quality of life of the long term residents.

O.K I'll take the bait. Mr. Valdez says that the abundant space available for residential development as indicated in the city's numbers is "scattered across Ballard". Wrong. The numbers are for the designated Ballard Urban Center that is centered at Market Street and 22nd NW, and that runs about one-half mile in four directions, a very walkable distance. The urban center is about one-sixth of the Greater Ballard neighborhood. Urban centers are designed to concentrate residential density around commercial zones. The city's map of all urban centers is instructive in this regard: http://www.seattle.gov/dpd/cms/groups/pan/@pan/documents/web_informational/dpds_008063.pdf

I agree with the author that we should be developing around the rail we have invested in; however, he has his data backwards. The fact that apartment rents are relatively cheap, and housing prices are relatively high, indicates that in our area there is more demand than is typical for housing, and less for rentals. Not the opposite. This data weakens the authors argument; it doesn't strengthen it. And misinterpreting it like that makes him sound irrational. We need a much better spokesperson for the important point that needs to be made.

I think that David Smith points to something important as we think of how to develop our built environments, which we're doing everywhere. For me, it all dials back to my first read of "Break Through", where an essential premise is that environmental arguements aren't going to sufficiently drive consumer choices. Rather, new ways of doing things must have economic and sociological value. It's all about moving toward what we want, rather than away from what we don't want.

In the current case, let's uncover how more dense communities generate more jobs, create more social opportunities, can lead to less crime, etc. Regardless of our political bent or anything else about our social values and preconceptions, these are the kind of things that everyone wants in their lives. Let's focus on our common desires.

We’ve known for thirty years that putting in new high-rise housing developments because there's a nearby train station is a huge mistake:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/07/world/europe/07banlieues.html?pagewanted=all

The urban theorists try to justify those projects on economic, social welfare, and environmental grounds. The fact remains though that when large-scale apartments/condos go in next to rail stations these days ostensibly because there will be “access to jobs down the train line” it will turn out poorly, quickly.

The political leadership around here played stupid when greenlighting the kinds of rail they planned. In particular, they played stupid by ignoring how it could have been financed at little or no cost to the people of this region (as is done in all the peer regions), and they played stupid about the lessons from Paris (and in other first-world metro areas) that station siting can not be an excuse for large housing projects.

There is plenty of new apartment building going on in this city now – the public certainly does not need massive upzoning next to Roosevelt High School just because “there’s going to be a light rail station there”.

Mr. Valdez seems to be an elitest that knows whats best for everyone. However, in America, we have what is called Democracy ( what the Democratic party is named for). In Democracy, each person gets to vote for themselves. Apparently Mr. Valdez does not like that.

The part about density creating jobs is a bit puzzling. It seems to me the jobs created in the infill developments so beloved by Mr. Valdez and his friends are low-paying service jobs. Quizno's, H&R; Block, convenience stores are what fill the mandatory street-level retail spaces. However, the housing is always very expensive... too expensive, in fact, for any of these service employees to afford. Am I missing something? Would anyone care to explain?

Density is great if the area is filled with people who have lots of disposable income to support the local businesses in the area. If you have density along with check cashing stores, bodegas and bars than it isn't so great. It's downright dangerous, actually.

I think people are afraid of density bringing with it higher levels of criminal activity, and in Seattle the police report stats show a higher incidence of crime in the densest neighborhoods and in the neighborhoods with the highest percentage of renters.

Unfortunately there seems to be a lot of empty retail space in many of buildings that have ground floor retail and upper floor housing. There's a point of market saturation for a neighborhood, where more units do not necessarily generate enough demand to fill additional retail/restaurant space. If the space can only be built if it has the retail/restaurant on the street level buildings, developers may not build at all because the risk is too high.

The stereotypical "dense" developments rarely seem aimed at families with younger children. Are there any examples in the Seattle area or elsewhere that rebut the stereotype?

Roger's premise for density is a typical inner-city Seattle perspective. Seattle as a metropolitian area is left out of the equation. New Urbanism's basic philosophic principal of mixed-use development highlights 'economic diversity' more than density. For Seattle's psuedo new urbanists, the highlight only shines on the inner-city even though hyper-densifying the inner city restricts its diversity. Outside of Seattle, economic diversity is woefully pathetic, yet Seattle urbanistas wrongly perceive development of their immediate environs more important even as density backfires. The only ones 'bashing' a square peg into a round hole are people like Roger Valdez and the know-it-alls who don't comprehend these principals nor the risks associated with getting it wrong. Seattlers are far too comfortable with delusional notions of urban planning such as how a giant concrete tube through watery unstable soils beneath a hundred vulnerable building foundations somehow isn't insanely risky, Lah-dee-dah.

All these arguments, pro and con, contain a hidden premise: that it is wise to conserve fossil fuels. Why? How did this become an inviolable part of our collective consciousness? These resources are finite, no matter how many previously undiscovered oil fields in the North Sea enrich smug Norwegians. Forget bike lanes, horrendously expensive mass transit, van pooling, home insulation scammers, and glass recyclers. Love the Browners, not the Greeners. Celebrate freeways, Dodge Rams, Hummers, and Lamborghinis. Burn up the oil as quickly as we can until there is no more remaining. Then see what happens. Don't job this hairshirt guilt and shame onto future generations. We'll see what's smart, what makes sense, what to do, in the unvarnished new reality.

Roger,
Please before you do anything else take a course in Argumentation (Great Courses has a great one). Beyond that, it's probably all independent study, at least I am unaware of any inexpensive, readily available course that bridges the strange chasm between urban design (originally, architecture) and urban planning.

Please also see if the county and city planners who write the King County Buildable Lands Report and Comprehensive Plans required by the state will explain to you why a shortage of buildable land is not the problem. Then compare that to what lowrise and highrise developers will share about their shopping practices for buildable land.

"Zoning"— your choice of entry—shares the same dyadic roots as divides urban design and urban planning. Restrictions on building form came first, together with the early success of cities. When success turned to hazardous over-crowding, people began to invent escape mechanisms and, for immediate relief, to separate and restrict land uses.

Urbanists now come dyadic too. Those who brand themselves "new urbanists" focus upon that first root of form and effect. Those whose convictions outweigh their design interest focus instead upon classifications and abstractions of numbers, the run-away favorite being "density"—the ratio of either bodies or abodes to the acre or square feet of land. Some calculations include streets, parks, etc., some not.

Escape mechanisms based on resource exploitation became so successful that city-living became such a bargain that fashion turned back toward cities and people started measuring the "jobs/housing balance." One little problem—density ratios address only residential density—so the category-slaying term "mixed-use" patches the production lexicon.

Chas Correa uses the analogy of food to explain the basic flaw with production abstractions. Paris produces X million dinners on any given evening, the efficient way to produce them would be to set up 50 central kitchens. "But will the food be edible? Fortunately for the French, no such thing happens."

Correa also explains the crucial advantages of low-rise housing, the classic form of concentrated urban housing: it is incremental, improvable and renewable over time (resilient); speedier to provide; uses less resource depletive, environmentally destructive materials; and is less costly to sell, maintain, and deconstruct.

FWIW, in all my long days of wage work (now over), I never drove to work and never lived above the third (top) floor here and the fifth (top) floor on the east coast. A web of transit serves the city-form that already exists. Adaptation to the coming economic reality suggests web-improvement not continuing old-hat resource exploitation via linear rail as justification for extensive upzones for costly high-rise redevelopment.

"Yes, we are social engineers..."
Actually, Roger, your resume says you studied philosophy and religion.
Oh, wait....

I'm sure those against social engineering are fighting against parking requirements, single-use zoning, and lot size requirements? Or is only social engineering if it's stuff you don't like?

sjenner, yes this city requires WAY too much retail. Those empty spaces (even in busy economies) are a burden subsidized with higher rents upstairs.

Orino, the point about jobs isn't that they're located in mixed-use developments necessarily. It's more about proximity between jobs and housing, as even being a few miles apart is far more efficient transportationwise than being 20 miles apart.

What people generally want, whether dense or not, is a community that's easy to live in. A dense community can work as well as a rural one. However, in a fairly free society, governments can't really legislate communities into existence. Even with all the "right" incentives and regulations, it's not so easy to make a complex community work out. With so much left up to the will of developers, who are generally more interested in making profits than in making communities, it's even less likely that things will work out.

A car-based society can deal with inconvenient cities fairly easily, up to a certain point. There's a threshold where too many cars create a big problem, but there typically aren't yet decent enough communities in the city where people can get by without cars. I think that crossing that threshold well will require a lot more than new zoning regulations, but also the will of many large investors who are not just investing for profits, but rather investing for the future of their city.

@jmrolls

Except for the fact that cities have been inhabited for thousands of years, and I have not seen city dwellers "fighting, running around in circles and pulling out their own fur" in our densest cities any more than has happened elsewhere.

@orino

You make two false assumptions, one that there is no employment diversity in dense cities, and two that housing in cities is inherently costly. I'll respond to the first by saying that your exact claim can be made about suburban strip malls, with which NO housing or office space goes along. Second, housing costs in the city have been artificially driven up by land use restrictions, not because density is naturally expensive. Much has been written on this topic.

I'll say this: the practical arguments behind density are quite clear and objective. That's fine if you reject density for cultural attitudes or ideological beliefs, but don't pretend that the facts presented here are lies. Roger's comments about change not being easy are spot on, as clearly reflected by the comments to this article.

Sherwin, try to argue fairly. Rolls overlooked the test for figurative analogy and asked for your response, but that is not the case with orino's polite request for the standard testing expected of all informal argumentation. That comment does not say or imply that "housing in cities is inherently costly." It refers to redevelopment in the immediate past in the USA, if not Seattle, not through all time and in all cities everywhere.

Your comment: "housing costs in the city have been artificially driven up by land use restrictions, not because density is naturally expensive" is nonsensical, needs referencing as to where and when, and is unsupported by your dismissals: "much has been written on this topic" and "fine if you reject density for cultural attitudes or ideological beliefs, but don't pretend that the facts presented here are lies." For starters, exactly what "ratio" "where" are you talking about and how to you know either of those is the same as what others have in mind? You are not going to get anywhere by calling the kettle black.

Name ONE high-density city in the US that is affordable.

To ask related questions to Bubbleator's: what is the best example of density? What models should we try to emulate? What is at least ok for many ages and stages and financial resources: from first time home buyers to empty nesters or retirees, from singles to families, etc. Much of this discussion is too theoretical.

-SherwinLee

You should spend a week in East Vancouver…enjoy that raw density sweetened with the edginess of marginal infrastructure. What, you mean like we’re promoting here? There’s 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. We still continue to promote it in simplistic developer's terms of densification and infill. Just let speculators jam them in, and somehow the rest will work itself out. That’s why even one of the world’s favorite cities has problems with unsupported density.

People who yearn for 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 cities work as I guess you imagine they should. They also have a different sense of community than we have here in the land of “greed is good” and “I’ve got mine, now you get yours.”

When you’re done with East Van…we can hook you up somewhere else…maybe East St. Louis.

Most people moved here to get away from density.

That is the argument against density.

Someone please explain to me how relaxing height and parking requirements around a train station are FORCING anyone to do anything. Won't this just allow market forces to determine what will be built?

It seem like CONFISCATING my hard earned money to build freeways and other suburban infrastructure that I will never use is social engineering. Why should I pay for that? I live in the city.