Emmett Watson warned you
to avoid this trap,
but you did succumb.
Now you have the city
you think you wanted.
Older and wiser and
less than you were,
reality returns your
thoughts to days gone by.
With each passing year,
ideas of old lore set sail
and in their place are
open young minds not
cloistered by the past.

http://vanishingnewyork.blogspot.com/

A good read, inspiration for similar poems, and a source of amusement whenever Jeramiah, despite his subtitle— A.K.A. THE BOOK OF LAMENTATIONS: A BITTERLY NOSTALGIC LOOK AT A CITY IN THE PROCESS OF GOING EXTINCT protests an accusation of being "judgmental."

In short, few answers to Mossback's lament are to be found in the usual source of our inspiration and refugees.

Good post Mossback. I hope otherwise sterile places like SLU and Bellevue (Boxview?) can cultivate the diverse urban flavors which make places like Columbia City and Pike Place so rich.

Too bad we can't loan our neo-urbanists to Bellevue.

We used to talk about neighborhoods evolving, but this has become more difficult with the large scale of projects, since their character is literally set in concrete. Every place evolves a building at a time, but when there are fewer bigger buildings, this evolution is less "granular" and the buildings themselves are far more like giant erratic boulders that have been left behind by the events of an age. What will people think 30 years from now about the age of Amazons and Vulcans?

Sears Roebuck.

Soul? Stop building codes from being so horribly boring, stultifying and negative. Most of what we adore from the past could not be built today.

I also realize that a many storied tower has life in a different way than in the past, but please. We've been homogenized by our own quest for code perfection, which is actually code hell.

Well spoken.

Thanks D.

No possibilities for soul in the current popular dense designs. All they do is block light and blight the landscape. Maybe they're great inside the individual pods, but I don't intend to enter one so I'll never know. I've been thinking a great photographic project would be to place photos of these buildings, and those horrendous 4-pack or 8-pack "townhomes" right next to pictures of the jails/prisons they most closely resemble. Maybe that would be entertaining. But to speak of soulfulness and what's happening to Seattle in the same breath is sacrilege. As the writer said, that which we see as soulful has nothing of what they're building these days. I've been in SLU at lunch time and would not choose to go there and mingle in those crowds. I've been there after 5 and it's all closed up--or at least everything I passed was. UGH! No soul there.

They could park those dinky $24/hour rental cars in those tight little townhouse garages easily. A bonus round for horrible uban lifestyle.

Fine. Mention Jeff Speck "Walkable City" then follow with zero perspective on how to make Seattle walkable other than what to buy where, the commercial perspective typical of Seattlers who by all appearances don't understand how safe crosswalks are built nor convenient transit arranged nor bicycling around town done and who can't see the traffic nightmare emerging with all the street reconfigurations associated with the deep bore tunnel travesty. And the seawall plan as proposed will fail, historic buildings will be razed, the Underground lost. Seattle has a generally abhorant culture.

Wow. This certainly must be the end of the world as we know it. I guess I'll just go get a Dick's Special, fries, and a small coke.

The bore tunnel will destabilize building foundations above and nearby. Many historic and modern buildings will soon develop unrepairable cracks along their facades thus forcing their demolishment. Many buildings won't show such wear but in a major earthquake those whose structural integrity is compromised could collapse. Odds are much of The Underground will be lost.

Meanwhile, up to 20,000 cars AND 100's of big rig trucks will be diverted from 'commercial' Elliott/Western (SR99 access in Lower Belltown) along the steep hillclimb of Mercer Place through high-density 'residential' Queen Anne (new SR99 access) and further to I-5 thus making the Mercer Mess worse.

The Alaskan Way boulevard design is for 13 stoplights between King and Pike streets where daily traffic is expected to triple from 12,000 to 36,000. Those 13 stoplights will jam traffic to a halt, intimidate pedestrians in crosswalks and lead to a high accident rate, including fatalities.

The proposed cheap & dirty semi-seawall of cast concrete pilings will be damaged in a major earthquake and set up new water flows below that further degrades bore tunnel integrity. The proposed 'stabilization' of waterfront soils will not prevent damage.

The current FEIS Cut/cover tunnel proposal (stacked 6-lanes) makes the strongest seawall, the most stabilized waterfront soils, the best utility relocation, displaces the least traffic onto surface streets. Seattle environmentalists are simply too stupid to realize leaders are lying. Even the habitat restoration proposed is less ideal with the bore tunnel travesty. Not the end of the world, but possibly the end of Seattle and State of Washington villianous corruption.
Boycott Ivar's.

.... ditto, ditto, ditto: ... who can't see the traffic nightmare emerging with all the street reconfigurations associated with the deep bore tunnel travesty. And the seawall plan as proposed will fail, historic buildings will be razed, the Underground lost. Seattle has a generally abhorant culture

Good discussion on soul. Since I have a 37 year old business in a neighborhood with lots, the Pike Place Market, and a much newer shop in a neighborhood with little SLU (notice I did not say none because there are pockets. In fact my shop is named Soul Wine). There is little said about those that can most directly affect the soul of the neighborhood, the developers, in the case of SLU, but also landlords in general. There are those like Mike Malone and Ted Schroth on Capitol hill that make a conscious effort to make it possible for unique, local businesses to thrive in their spaces. Many others simply don't care. I could not be in my (privately owned) building if the owner had wanted to "maximize" his earnings and put a corporate store or business. Instead our building (including Serious Pie and Serious Biscuit, with which I am not involved, is open from early morning to late in the evening (check it out mspat).

Soul is a complex thing and now having seen both ends of the spectrum I will always opt for soul. But it doesn't come fast and it doesn't come easy and it really can't be created. Ultimately it comes not from the buildings but the people that make up.

Mteer

I've been spending a lot of time in Portland in the past few years. A good friend is an Oregon native and a former city planner. He has made me aware of the differences between Portland and Seattle to a degree that I wouldn't have otherwise noticed so quickly, if at all.

Not to join the Portland worshippers. They do a lot of things wrong. Tragically, Seattle seems to want to import only their mistakes, like fixed rail transit, anti-automobile radicalism, fake environmentalism, outrageous kowtowing to 20-something bicyclists, disregard for economic sustainability, and the celebration of dereliction on the streets.

What Seattle lacks is Portland's respect for its architectural heritage, and for the integrity of its neighborhoods. Who hit Seattle's architects with the ugly stick, anyway? Their buildings are eyesores with all the appeal and authenticity of a 1984 Cadillac Cimarron. What made arrogant, insufferable, smug, aggressively stupid jerks like Michael McGinn, Tim Burgess, Mike O'Brien, and the rest of the city's thoroughly corrupt city council so despise Seattle's neighborhoods?

What's really remarkable is that they even hate downtown! Just walk around. Compared with Portland's downtown, Seattle's downtown has no soul at all. Portland has a major problem with rampant dirtbaggery on its streets, but its downtown and nearby districts remain head, shoulders, kneecaps, and toenails more attractive than Seattle's sterile canyons. All Portland needs is a weekend sweep with some water cannons, and they'll be pretty much okay. Seattle, on the other hand, has cast its ugliness in steel, too much glass, and concrete, not to be undone in our lifetimes, or those of our children or grandchildren.

Soon enough, their "vision" will be completed on the waterfront, later to be mocked and then studied as a world-class example of a once-promising city's suicide by design. An uneducared, lottery-winning accidental software billionaire e-Clampett's money can buy plenty of weak people and strong materials, but it cannot purchase class, heart, soul, or artistic coherence. If you doubt me, just look at his vacant sci-fi palace, for God's sakes. No Branson, Missouri temple to one of yesterday's manufactured country music stars has anything on Paul Allen's laughably crass "Experiece Music Project," or his forthcoming South Lake Union viewscreen.

I look around Seattle, and see a city disrespected to the point of apparent hatred by the pathetics who run it. As a cityspace, the only redeeming features are natural: Lake Washington, Puget Sound, the Cascade and Olympic mountains in the distance, Lake Union. But even those are being auctioned, one by one, to the highest bidders.

It's sad and worrisome to think of what will become of our city in the next 50 years. It will have all the charm and mystery of a shopping mall -- financed by hollow-brained tycoons; built by well-connected developers; CAD-CAM drafted by "educated," "progressive." frightened architects who have no feel or regard for design; and blessed by politicians who never had any integrity to sell. To those who pretend to be flummoxed by how the New York bankers and Red State oil barons can be so selfish and morally insensitive, I suggest looking closer to home at Seattle's developers and the usual architects and other toadies and hangers-on who suckle at their teats. Take a good, long, fearless look at the ugliness they are inflicting on the next generations -- this in return for custom bicycles, shopping sprees at Whole Foods, Montessori schools for their privileged children, and all the iPods and Kindles they can break.

Is it worth it? What are we worth if we can be bought this cheap?

Thank you.

In West Seattle, which has several, very vibrant, walkable shopping districts, we're facing Ballardization. A 340-unit apartment building is proposed for the old Huling Brothers block at Alaska and Fauntleroy, one of the major gateways into West Seattle. How anyone thinks adding 340 households and their cars to that corner can enhance a neighborhood, I don't know. Maybe the current administration thinks it'll be completely populated by bike riders. But if this is the City's revenge for Greg Nickels, that's just mean.