Its called instant gratification. Why should the City of Seattle do the environmentally sound and responsible development when they create all kinds of redundancies and processes to make it virtually impossible to protect anything but a government job?

Perfect example is stormwater pollution. After paying for salaries, benefits, grants, awards, acheivements, manuals and educational pamphlets there is no money left to actually remove pollution at the catch basins where 90% of the pollution goes untreated straight to Puget Sound.

If our government did what we citizens thought they were going to do 20 years ago Puget Sound would be a cash cow. People from around the globe would visit our pristine environment to fish, play and recreate here, instead we have cruise ships passing thru supplying passengers to Port of Seattle/taxpayer owned shops to sustain government employees with nothing left to protect Puget Sound.

Innovation, sustainability and accountability are catch phrases that make you want to open your wallet to more government programs and processes to nowheresville. I hope we wake up soon.

This article seems to recapitulate a vision of urbanism, perhaps best articulated by Jane Jacobs in 1960s, that was thought to describe our built environment prior to World War II. Such traditional urbanism was seen to have three key qualities: (1) demographic diversity and a wide range of activities; (2) pervasive human scale in its buildings, streets, and neighborhoods; and, (3) a rich array of public spaces and institutions. The prominence of these elements led to predictable and generally positive design outcomes that reinforced these key elements. The pervasive suburbanization that followed, characterized as it was by restrictions on use and income and reduced investment in the public realm, resulted in design solutions that were seen as hostile to the urban ideal. While the urban virtues are still relevant, the focus today is on an urbanism responding to climate change and environmental protection. The exciting thing is that the addition of these requirements simply reinforces the same design solutions previously stressed by Jacobs based on social, cultural and aesthetic concerns.

So why are we not getting the development we want and think our neighborhoods deserve? I think the answer to that question resides in a broader structural examination of who benefits from development and why. That’s because, for the most part, citizens and planners have very little to influence on urban planning; instead it is done by a land-based coalition of property owners, developers, realtors, bankers, and their attorneys and architects. Except in those rare cases where a neighborhood coalition can intervene sufficiently to influence development patterns or the measly distribution of benefits that come from intensification, local elites call the shots and planners work at the margins pleading for public benefits like green space, urban infrastructure, and environmental protection. When this land-based coalition decides the “rules” are no longer helpful to promote growth, they are changed peremptorily by their City Hall allies. While planners prepare the ground for a new wave of investment and development, often dispensing substantial entitlements to property owners and developers, they rarely obtain a concomitant basket of benefits for the public. In the rush to riches, the vision of strengthening the overall vitality of the streets and neighborhoods in which new development sits is lost or ignored. In a place like Seattle there is an opportunity to redress the balance but only if, as the Fels suggest, we pay more attention.

It's gratifying to read the word diversity in the context of urban development. Density is not a fair measure for a city's health and quality of life. Density without diversity backfires. Diversity is not measured on buildings alone.

Seattle suffers from a dismal lack of pedestrian-friendly urban settings. Diversity of travel is thus neglected. An architecturally pleasing building is hardly appreciated from a chaotic pedestrian realm. Widened sidewalks with amenities and narrowed crosswalks with safety features improve and increase travel choice. Pedestrian amenities serve bicyclists and transit users who are first walkers.

Hilly downtown Seattle topography requires a transit system configuration of frequent trolleybuses to improve pedestrian access. SDOT, Metro, Sound Transit however only serve automobile-related travel interests. My, what fine parking garages Sound Transit constructs everywhere.

In Seattle, it seems to me, that (city) Planners are bureaucrats and/or admins to the DRB (a mixed bag there, too), and citizens come to the table late, ill-informed and defensive. They are not planners or architects and don't have the tools to be credible influencers. The dynamic is custom-made for worst case, compromise solutions.

I've noticed the criticism that has appeared on these pages of late regarding these huge apartment blocks with street-level retail that appear to be popping up in Seattle these days. And while I'm one of those who is passionate about historic preservation, I have to say I don't regard them as evil as many do. There comes a point, as a city densifies, that those old one-and-two-story "taxpayer" buildings simply aren't the highest and best use of land. Occasionally you might see one with a splendid facade that is worthy of preservation, and I certainly hope that occurs, but the interiors usually have been so modified over the hundred years or so of their existence that there is nothing historic left inside. Therefore, we have to ask whether it is fair to property owners to maintain buildings with low revenue potential, simply because they might provide homes for businesses that can't afford high rents? I think not.

I recently returned to the Puget Sound area after years in Southern California and Eastern Washington, and of course, as I strolled through Seattle, I was struck by the number of parking lots that have been replaced by these five-and-six story apartment blocks. I marveled at the sensitivity to the streetscape that many of these buildings provide, with their articulated facades and street-level retail. It strikes me that this is precisely the way a city ought to be built. These are the kinds of buildings that would have been built 100 years ago, during Seattle's first big building boom, if Seattle had the population at the time to support them.

It strikes me that Seattle has made a decision. It wants to densify. It wants to force people out of cars. It wants the kind of city that makes sense for transit. I might have some problems with the assumption that seems to prevail in the Queen City these days, that the auto is a satanic invention, but if a city is going to become built-up, this is the way to do it. I found myself looking at these new buildings with their street-level retail spaces and apartments up above and thinking, at last, a city has finally seen the light.

Yes, these new buildings charge higher rents than the older buildings they replace. That's the nature of new construction. But the complaints I have been reading lately, that retail spaces are going unfilled because the rents are too high, seem a bit misplaced. That's not really a proper public concern. As long as public authorities require that buildings in shopping areas offer street-level retail, we can count on the market to settle these kinds of problems. If there are too many Starbucks, we'll see landlords drop the rents to the point that the hippy-dippy bong stores and used vinyl shops move in. And once these new buildings reach their 50th birthdays, things will be just as funky as they ever were. Except that the buildings will be more likely to meet the fire codes.

Just because an ugly building is built to last 50 to 100 years or more, doesn't mean that anyone would want to rent the storefront retail spaces at street side, at any price. If there are no pedestrians wandering around, and no places to park the devil autos, businesses wills starve.

And that my friends, is the City of Seattle in many once vibrant neighborhoods. Planners and City Councils have damaged this City beyond recognition in many places.

The article asks the question: What is needed to improve the urban ecosystem. The answer: The ecosystem. Simply pass a law prohibiting removal of trees, and require setbacks that contain enough soil for tree roots to grow.

City Councilmember Richard Conlin's April 13, 2012 letter to the Seattle Urban Forestry Commission says just the opposite. http://www.seattle.gov/urbanforestrycommission/docs/2012/2012%20docs/Richard%20Conlin%20Letter%20to%20UFC%20041312.pdf He describes an environmental ethic that leaves trees to the wolves and inexplicably frees up developers to bulldoze their way to 100% lot coverage, if the 'market demands it.

www.SaveSeattlesTrees.com

Downtown trees, and trees in Nortgate would be lovely to see more of.

Thank you for publishing this story! And not a minute too soon! Maybe we can still salvage a bit of the Thornton Creek watershed where Sound Transit is planning to build FOUR stations.

Seattle Public Utilities, Seattle Parks, and hundreds, or even thousands, of volunteers have been working for 20 years to restore what I-5 and other development have left of this watershed. (How many of you know that the original name of Northgate Way was 'Mineral Springs Road'?)

Yet, when Sound Transit presenters spoke to the Thornton Creek Watershed Oversight Council about the Northgate station they distributed maps that identified the creek as a "ditch". At a public presentation a couple of weeks ago I asked one of the ST reps about the creek. She replied that they wouldn't be touching it. How do you answer that one??

Please help sound the alarm and save this designated salmon-bearing stream! The greenbelts that have been created are already providing lovely open space for residents, and the creek system is the only thing that breaks the corporate monotony of the mall.

We need to put the 'sound' back into Sound Transit!!

Downtown, Capitol Hill and QA is a completely different animal than places like Magnolia, Ballard, and West Seattle, where the changes are zoning driven and not so much character driven. Speaking of the GMA, Ballard has already exceeded it's density targets. The author only touched on the Zoning that was changed, and continues to allow runaway development.

Quads are still being built in former single family lots in Ballard. Why? More density with a duplex too, but more profit on a quad for the developer. And yes, the quality of those and other's mentioned in the article is very suspect. Nobody expects Craftsmans, but these are not designed to last more than 15-20 years without some major work to the structures, outside of normal maintainence. And people are paying a premium for the locations. Suckers.

This is the second column written by the Fels that fails to recognize the degree to which the city's approach to land use and building regulation is legally constrained by the decisions of Washington Courts.

The Fells wrote: "The city’s strict reliance on its ever-thickening land use code makes it very difficult for a property owner to respond to unique conditions and/or come up with a looser, more creative approach." Unfortunately, the Washington State Supreme Court, since the 1980s, has essentially ruled out a "looser ... approach." Presumably a looser approach would allow more discretion on the part of the city, but Courts in Washington have essentially ruled out just this kind of discretion in favor of strict enforceability through precisely defined measures.

The Fels wrote, "If, on the other hand, the developers follow the book, the city gets out of the way, believing that they’ll naturally come up with what’s best." Frankly, I doubt that the City or anyone believes that developers will "naturally come up with what's best." In fact, what faculty of planning will tell you is that regulations exist to prevent "the worst"; it is not possible to require what's best through regulations; the most regulations can do is prevent negative practices.

Finally, the Fels wrote, "Having left these decisions to the building department for decades, who have in turn bequeathed them to the developers, the present approach has a decidedly mixed record." The Fels seem to imply that someone else should be making these decisions--but they do not make clear who that might actually be.

Seattle does have "Design Review" for many of the urban projects the Fels critique. Of course, what design review can address is limited--the underlying zoning, parking, etc., that are established by the Land Use Code cannot be altered through design review--again, the decisions of the Courts mean that these items are set by the Code and not negotiable through design review.

One argument the Fels seem to be making is that a single developer should not be allowed to acquire and develop an entire block, or an entire block face. This is an interesting proposition, but I cannot imagine how the city can legally prevent a developer from purchasing a property if it comes on the market.

The one argument the Fels propose that might be made into legally enforceable ordinances that would not run afoul of Washington's Courts has to do with the energy consumption of new construction as compared to rehabilitation of existing structures. Developing an ordinance that would take the comparable energy performance of old vs. new into account should be feasible. Because this kind of thing is measurable and or numerically predictable, an ordinance could be written with the kind of objective measures Washington Courts require to make rules enforceable.

Excellent idea (energy standards for new construction). How about we take this idea one step further: Require all construction projects to calculate and display their energy/resource/GHG statistics. Knowledge is the first step toward injecting some sensible decision making criteria into the development/redevelopment process.

No one will care. Remember: This is Seattle, where the pose of "environmentalism," and/or "progressivism," is all that actually counts.

The article proceeds from a false premise: that "Seattleites score high when it comes to environmental awareness."

That's not even remotely true. Seattle overflows with environmental posing. It's just one facet of this city's major political and social impulse, which is that "progressives" are desperately insecure and therefore have an insatiable need to be flattered about their moral and intellectual fitness.

That is what's going on here, not "environmentalism" or "progressivism." It'd be nothing more than amusing if this rampant neurosis didn't produce such terrible, expensive decisions that continually degrade the quality of life here.

I'm late to this discussion, but it is a very important one. Most US cities suffer from a lack of Imagination on how to make a city artful and environmentally connected to its context. It's not just the architecture it's the landscape as well.

This has been a concern for me for a long time. What I am proposing is a vision that I call Emo Urbanism, not the ilk of the music genera but of ecological modernism. This must see the landscape in 4D, in other words, combine past present future and time into the design equation. Context, wether an old tree air a single family cottage or even a ruin must have equal value to the product (leased or sold square footage), it must create landscapes that bring nature back into the city and the historic can never be conveniently removed like filled wetlands were.

This creates a rich and diverse fabric that will enrich or everyday urban existence that reminds us always that we are part of the bigger living system of Cascadia. I currently teach Emo Urbanism as visiting professor at Arizona State University...(google it)

Hasn't anyone ever told you just how special you are? If they'd only done so, your students wouldn't have to suffer "emo urbanism."

In your diversity concept it seem more about the buildings than the total urban landscape viewed from an ecosystem perspective. Diversity also needs to encompass the natural element, not just the built environment.
Nature, trees, plants, wildlife, open space are all diminishing as profit drives development. One DPD planner recently described their decisions to protect trees as driven solely by development when he said they will save trees except when it limits the development potential of a lot. that pretty much explains DPD's priorities.
And that basically describes why last year they defied the City Council and with Mayor McGinn's blessing put forward a proposed tree ordinance that removed protections for large and exceptional trees and tree groves.
They have been asked to come up with a new proposal after the City Council and the Urban Forestry Commission made it known that this step backwards for protecting our urban forest was unacceptable.
The problem remains that the Department of Planning and Development is the wrong City Department to craft an ordinance to write a new tree protection law.
DPD has a conflict of interest. Their mission is to help developers build and building permits are a source of revenue to the department. They get no revenue from saving trees. A tree ordinance would better be done by a Department with a reason and interest in protecting trees like the Office of Sustainabilty and the Environment or Seattle Public Utilities which is involved with storm water runoff which trees reduce.
So there is a lot more to talk about the urban environment than just buildings. As density increases Seattle is losing trees and its natural environment. While the goal is to reduce urban sprawl, the reality is that growth is occurring in the outlying areas as well as the city. And those of us who see the loss of our urban forest and its benefits to those living in the city, see the loss of part of what makes Seattle a great city.
Adding second homes to existing lots increases density but removes more and more of our natural environment. The issues are more complex that just whether a building looks interesting or adds more housing capacity. It is also a question of what the city will be like in 25 or 50 years and whether it will be someplace people want to live or just a hodgepodge of concrete and apartments and buildings with a few small trees for decoration in the planting strips in front.
These are also issues that need to be talked about.

NotFan not funny! This is "I wish my lawn were EMO so it would cut itself" Now google it...try to enjoy the Olympic Sculpture Park, one of my projects.

Steve, thanks for your views on nature in the city and the powers that hinder and expunge it!

When you call the Olympic Sculpture Park "one of my projects," does that mean you designed that hideous spot? By the way, before you call my a philistine, I'm going to pre-plead not guilty. I am a big fan of modern art, including a fair amount of modern sculpture.

But the Olympic Sculpture Park is just awful. The best thing that could happen there is a team of bulldozers in the middle of the night. Turn it into an off-leash dog park, to remind our pets that Cascadia loves them, too. Seriously, that is one truly ugly place. If I were you, I wouldn't be bragging on it.

I find this article refreshingly sophisticated. it is nice to think that we can do better.

I'm surprised at the defeatist attitude in some of the comments here. Some people say the system is rigged, others that the populace is apathetic, still others that it's illegal to do more.

A person has only to go to great places like Mill Valley and Santa Fe and Santa Barbara to see that people find a way of preserving their place if there is enough political will. One person here argued that there is no way to stop someone from assembling an entire block and building at a large scale. It may be true that there is a right to assembly, but nothing in the law says that the city could not limit the scale of a given project and instead require two, just as some municipalities rule against big box stores.

The challenge is coming up with a definition of urbanity that can be applied. We haven't tried, so we don't have one. That doesn't mean we can't try and succeed.