Growth and density: Let's do the numbers
An expert on urban demographics argues that there's not a lot Seattle can do to change growth patterns and prevent sprawl. But some modest accommodations can be made.
Solutions seemingly abound for three key problems in Seattle: rapid growth, traffic congestion, and the need for more (or less) density. Time for a dose of reality, neighbors. There are no "solutions." Here as in Iraq, there are only some tolerable accommodations.
Let me start with growth. First, there's no real way to stop or slow it, because the U.S. Supreme Court ruled (when Los Angeles tried to stop the influx of Okies in the 1930s) that the Constitution protects freedom of movement. We might stop stimulating economic development, but that will have little effect. If a place looks attractive to people and businesses, they can and will come.
But the growth is not flooding back into the central cities. Ninety percent of metropolitan growth is in the suburbs, which are gaining higher shares of less affluent families, singles, couples, and empty-nesters. Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels' goal of 350,000 more people in Seattle is not supported by demography or economic demand.
Given this growth, what can we do about housing price inflation and other affordability issues? The key factor is supply and demand economics. Metropolitan Seattle has compounded the constraints on land caused by our geography by implementing urban growth boundaries. If we had not used urban growth boaundaries as part of growth management, housing supply would be somewhat greater and prices still fairly expensive but perhaps 15 percent lower (comparing Seattle to less restrictive but also professional cities such as Denver, Minneapolis, and Dallas).
There are other factors besides the shortage of developable land driving up Seattle prices. Seattle is a high-cost metropolis in such factors as labor, materials, and levels of public services and amenities. Washington's nation-leading level of minimum wage is a good thing, but it does help drive up housing prices. Also, there are lots of people in Seattle (as in Boston, Washington, San Francisco, San Diego, and Los Angeles) willing and able to pay a premium for high-quality housing, and many of these people migrate here from other areas with even higher prices. Finally, local zoning and permitting tend to favor higher-revenue-generating housing and business.
So what could we do to put some downward pressure on housing prices? I have long advocated relaxing or abolishing urban growth boundaries and substituting subdivision performance standards that require moderately high densities. Another approach would be direct public construction of "social housing," as is done in Europe on a large scale. Requirements for inclusion of more affordable units in private developments, the current preferred strategy, are too insignificant to affect housing supply and prices. Some jurisdictions, normally pretty long commutes from the central city, may accept fairly high shares of lower-cost housing, as is happening in California's Central Valley, and this can make an important contribution.
Doubling up, often sub rosa, in the existing housing supply is the dominant "solution" to unaffordable housing in Los Angeles and San Diego, to give two examples. Especially for families, who prefer a patch of yard and homes rather than apartments, this is a reasonable course to follow. This informal utilization of existing housing stock, rather than more disruptive levels of apartment construction, may be the best way to minimize the pace of urban fringe expansion. It can keep families in the inner parts of the metropolis. If families are driven from the core, they will go to the edges and beyond.
Now, let's look dispassionately at the heated debate over density. Density is driven by demand and affluence, and it affects cities all over the world and all through history. Governments, through fiat or planning, have long tinkered with densities, but in the long run, the preferences of households and of businesses rule.
Nor is there a level of density that is somehow "better." We have areas of very high densities, of low densities, and of all levels in between, simply because there is sufficient demand for those densities, driven by differing needs and preferences.
But, you counter, what about the costs of sprawl and lamentable suburban monotony? Studies of the costs of infrastructure and public services show only slight variation with density, with moderately higher costs at very low densities (under 1,500 people per square mile) and at very high densities (over 100,000 per square mile). Lower utilization drives up costs at the low density end, while high costs of construction and maintenance affect highly dense areas. The most effective densities are in the middle range, 5,000 to 15,000 people per square mile, which happens to be where probably more than 90 percent of urban dwellers live. Impacts of cities on the environment are mostly a function of the sheer population size of the metropolis, not its density or urban form.
What about the impacts of sprawl or compactness on quality of life? There turn out to be no meaningful differences in quality of family life, health or exercise, diet, intellectual curiosity, and neighborhood sociability all across the spectrum from rural farm life to urban high rises, if you control for age, family status, education, job location, and so forth. There may be a slight edge for overall urban livability in the traditional urban family neighborhoods of 5,000 to 12,000 per square mile. That would describe the actual urban and suburban neighborhoods of the Seattle region, with apartments mainly along arterials and single-family houses in between.
This is not to deny that political conflict, often of an intense sort, happens as cities grow and market forces move urban development both up and out. At the urban edge, those enjoying a quasi-rural life will resist the tide of urbanity, and environmentalists will fight the conversion of resource land to urban use. In older, developed areas, the growing share of the population that is childless, single, or with empty nests creates a market for apartment rentals and condominiums, changing older neighborhoods and driving up prices.
Lastly, there is the conflict caused by gentrification, the replacement of the less affluent by the more affluent. This is not usually redevelopment or even densification, since most gentrifiers want older single-family houses. Sadly for the non-rich, the gentrifiers arrive with a potent combination of higher education, professional occupations, and financial assets. The only hope for the average household being pushed out is to live in areas not targeted by the gentrifiers, or to meet their bids by combining numbers.
Comments:
Posted Mon, May 21, 9:39 a.m. inappropriate
Density is a byproduct of creating interesting places: You don't start with density but with creating great neighborhoods which allow density. Then people will compete to be there and buiklders will respond.
The emphasis on density as a means of avoiding sprawl is well-intentioned but misplaced. Dense, vibrant neighborhoods don't appeal to everyone and, more importantly, should be valued for their own characteristics not because they are a way to avoid something else i.e sprawl.
It's a tribute to fundamentally suburban nature of our thinking that we see "density" as a means to an end rather than an end in itself.
If you create places to live which are interesting then some parts of the market will compete to live there producing density.
You don't start with density but with creating high-amenity places; once you build it they will come, if it's a pleasant place to live.
Posted Mon, May 21, 2:26 p.m. inappropriate
Density solves WHAT problem?: Traffic congestion and affordability are symptoms of growth as well as metro Seattle's geography, neither of which we can do anything about. Density (at least planned density) is a way to deal with with something else altogether.
Think of it this way: Mayor Greg Nickels wants Seattle to grow by 350,000 and he intends a good portion of that growth to be downtown. Why?
Because he thinks the greater Seattle metro area isn't growing fast enough? No, he knows he can't do squat about growth. Because he thinks it will be greener to box up the yuppies in condos? It will be, but no. Because he thinks centralizing them within walking distance of their work will reduce traffic congestion? It will help congestion a little, but no. Because if they live downtown they are likely to spend their money (and pay their sales taxes and surcharges) downtown and act as an effective, invested stakeholder in downtown's viability? Bingo.
I don't think density has anything at all do to with curtailing growth. Growth is going to occur in any event. I don't think sprawl can be curtailed by growth either. You are always going to have people trying to escape the diverse and intense core of a city for the homogenous comfort of the suburbs. Sprawl is more certain than growth.
Density is a means by which a city can be spared the urban core decay that has rotted cities all over the world, including Seattle at one time no long ago. It's especially bad in car-happy, mall-loving America. That decay is caused by an erosion of the sales tax base and by a powerful electorate that perceives no self interest in protecting the city's downtown core (see also Knute B).
The City of Seattle's costs of infrasture and social problems will continue to skyrocket whether Seattle's population (and tax revenues) increase or not. Urban core density, which supports a thriving urban economy, is the only option the city has to protect itself from the usual pattern of domineering suburban mall economies. Decentralizing density to the city's neighborhoods does not produce a retail/restaurant core that can compete effectively with the suburban malls. A residential-dense downtown certainly does create one as we can see right now.
That is what will guarantee the City of Seattle's health. And unlike growth, that is something we can do something about.
Posted Mon, May 21, 3:44 p.m. inappropriate
RE: Density solves WHAT problem?: I'm not sure I agree, but it's nice to hear an argument that's less "what we have to do," and more "why we have to do it." A lot of the time advocates have great plans and schemes only to stumble when aske, "We must do this because???"
Interesting thoughts...
The Piper
Posted Mon, May 21, 9:58 p.m. inappropriate
Dense is Good, BUT No Free Lunch: The downtown development worries me for four reasons:
1. Taxes. I have not seen any estimates that this free for all of apartment building is not going to raise my taxes. Developers ought to pay the real costs of adding to Seattle's population by subsidizing the infrastructure costs.
2. Services. One reason to have more folks in Seattle is to imporve the city's cultural richness. To achieve this we need to plan for parks, local attractions, raison d'etre for neighborhoods. Not all destination/attractions need to be publicly financed, developers can be told that if they want to build god awful high rise condoes, then they need to create a retail environment worthy of the new occupants. Some call it zoning.
3. Seattle as a suburb. Has anyone thought about the cost of gas? Urban density will work in the Seattle of 2050 just as it has for a long time in Europe. For the last 60 years, European cities have grown with little spread because fuel costs a lot in Europe. The Flatland of LA is dependent on the car. If Seattle is to support density, Seattle also needs ot support jobs, jobs here not $20 gasoline/day away by freeway.
4. Seattle for Kids. The local inventor of the Urban Village, Norm Rice, also campaigned on Seattle as a Place for Kids. But most of the new houseing going is is intentionally kid unfriendly. Like the Shakers, the Yuppies can not last very long uless they make kids. If they do that in Issaquah, Seattle will wither. We need a good central school system.
SeattleJew
Posted Tue, May 22, 6:49 a.m. inappropriate
RE: Dense is Good, BUT No Free Lunch: OK....
1. Taxes will increase certainly if you have fewer people carrying the same increasing load. The costs of growth will be borne disproportionately by the City of Seattle. The homeless will always migrate downtown. Crime will always be a problem downtown. That is a function of regional growth. Residential construction, even "subsidized" residential construction, increases the tax paying base and spreads it out, both in sales taxes and property taxes.
2. This is already happening. But again, I'd reverse your argument. Downtown cultural richness is a result of those "godawful highrises." Right now, the shopping is best downtown, the nightlife is best downtown, the diversity of shops is best downtown because of the affluent residential customer base that is concentrated there.
3. You have a point on this one, I think, because a lot of the employers that require large flat space, like manufacturers, assemblers and warehousers/wholesalers will be forced to the burbs, but the "smart" jobs will continue to be concentrated downtown as well as Redmond.
4. I tend to agree with you on this one, too, but how many fine Americans have been raised in the densely populated downtowns of America's eastern cities? Lots. You're making the assumption that kids have to have a big backyard, their own swing set and only two hours a day with daddy because he has a one hour commute in from the suburbs. I don't think downtown urban living is for everybody, but again, it's great for lots of people and that's great for Seattle.
Posted Tue, May 22, 8:42 a.m. inappropriate
Response: 1. Taxes will increase certainly if you have fewer people carrying the same increasing load ......
I think you have old ideas. If services are constant and numbers are constant, taxes should be too. Moreover, a lot of poorer folk are now moving to the burbs because of the housing costs. If you wanna beg, why wouldn't you choose Bellevue?
One answer is Bellevue Mall, a truly walled public place where the poor can be kept out. But in downtown Seattle, unless someone figures out the need to have urban planning, will not be able to do the same. Imagine Western Avenue becoming a "fifth avenue". Scary.
The important point in all this is that Vulcan SHOULD be paying the full costs of creating a city in SLU. I should not be subsidizing their efforts.
2. ...Downtown cultural richness is a result of those "godawful highrises." Right now, the shopping is best downtown, the nightlife is best downtown, the diversity of shops is best downtown because of the affluent residential customer base.....
Pahdon meeee! I am not as impressed with downtown as you are. Yes there are a lot of restaurants there but an awful lot are of the overpriced Californique style ... chains. My own fave restaurants are much more spread out ... Rover's, Ray's, Nobel Court, Sea Garden, Malay Satay, Percheno, Kingfish, Vios, Monsoon ... what do these have in common? STYLE. They are not interchangeable clones.
What about art galleries? These are mainly in Pioneer Square, an area that is doing poorly. The Capital Arts district and Fremont Arts Districts are not dying. The arts community is poofing.
To succeed Downtown it needs to be more than a transplant of Bellevue's suburban culture to high rises. Take the 2200 megalopolis as an example? Can you spell "walled community?" Hell they even have a military style commissary!
Look at what is planned for SLU. The missing "feature" is ANY effort (parks, museums, shopping district) that would make SLU a magnet for folks rather than another bedroom community.
3. ... employers that require large flat space, like manufacturers, ... will be forced to the burbs, but the "smart" jobs will continue to be concentrated downtown as well as Redmond.
Again, I wish this were true but I see little evidence of it. Let me focus on something I know a LOT about ... Biotech. Despite the hype, despite the huge leveraged investment by the UW and the fund raising by Childrens's, there has been "0" in-movement of small biotech. Why? Biotech needs incubator spaces and Vulcan, tiself a biotech invester, has invested zero dollars in incubators.
Is there any real interest of information folks in downtown? Hint, why did MSOFT just buy a lot of space in downtown Bellevue? Also, do NOTE this ... the Gates foundation, Childrens, and the UW presence in SLU mean TAX FREE tenanats. This is good for the tax base iff and only if something is done to build on these resources. One possibility would be for Vulcan to develop housing communities that would attract the intelligentsia from these companies. There is no such effort. Noe ffort to create housing faculty and fellows can afford, no effort to attract intellectualistic amenities (book stores, movie theaters, a gallery district?).
4. I tend to agree with you on this one, too, but how many fine Americans have been raised in the densely populated downtowns of America's eastern cities? Lots. You're making the assumption that kids have to ... their own swing set .......
Of course kids can grow up in the city. But is that happening? How would a family locate in SLU or Belltown? Where would the kids go to school? Where would they find a basketball hoop or playground?
SeattleJew
Posted Tue, May 22, 9:01 a.m. inappropriate
Contributor Comment: No time this A.M. to even read the article, but I do know the author fairly well.
Not sure if I agree with him or not, but one thing for sure, this guy is a four suite Ace.
And that is a level of 'quality' sorely missing on this topic.
It is good to hear from you again, Professor Morrill.
-Douglas Tooley
Posted Tue, May 22, 9:08 a.m. inappropriate
SLU: South Lake Union has a private school (First Hill has two). Also, two of SLU's parks have basketball hoops. As for public schools, one would be nice, but existing schools are reasonably close with buses. Regardless, Downtown is doing fine in its role of being home to singles and couples, without many kids.
Re: density's relation to sprawl: Density doesn't stop sprawl, only growth management can. Density does help make growth management and sprawl reduction easier, by reducing demand pressure.
Posted Tue, May 22, 5:08 p.m. inappropriate
An Eastside High-Tech Perspective on Seattle: The high-tech affluent are now quite well served in Bellevue, thank you. Some may be attracted to live in Seattle by its cultural vibrancy, but this is mainly true for singles. To the Eastsider, Seattle is best thought of as a cultural service provider (e.g., opera, symphony, alternate art museum, zoo, aquarium). Other obvious examples include Seattle's major league sports infrastructure and the UW, which are just Eastside amenities connected by I-90 and 520. For the most part, your average Eastsider benefits from these amenities without dirtying hands in Seattle proper, unless the Eastsider wants to go local with the natives.
The stereotypical Eastside high-tech employee views Downtown Seattle through an amalgamation of Old Ugly Seattle stereotypes, with drunks, super-toilets, and shootings in Pioneer Square; WTO riots by anarchists in downtown streets; a begging, homeless population congregating at various inchoate downtown locations; a bunch of old hippies out in Fremont; aggressive beggars lining the streets of the U district; ancient, irrelevant Seattleites living along the water of Lake Washington; old Scandinavians living in Ballard as shown in Almost Live reruns; a dwindling seldom-seen black population hidden in the Rainier District; cancer hospitals up on a hill; heroin addicts and gay people on Capitol Hill; an Arboretum (is that what you call a wetland?) under a freeway; TV towers on top of Queen Ann Hill (the one by the Space Needle); a West Seattle that might as well be one of the San Juan Islands; fun-to-ride ferry boats that can get you to those islands; and an ugly I-5 freeway that meat cleavers the City in two (why is that Convention Center thing on top of the freeway?)
Oh, and by the way, there are lots of lawyers and bankers downtown in those towers downtown, but don't get near the public schools, they're broke and broken and they're closing them down because no self-respecting family would send their kids there, and families don't live in Seattle anyway, because the City has a do-nothing attitude they call the "Seattle Way," which just means decline and decay forever, although there's a Seattle Mayor who's going to fix everything by digging a tunnel (remember the Big Dig in Boston?) that will help people drive by the beautiful waterfront underground. What's with the monorail anyway? Why is it so short? They built that in 1962? You'd think by now they would've lengthened it so that it went somewhere...
The point here is that Seattle has a real competitive public perception problem with its Eastside doppleganger, which is now full of hundreds of thousands of smart, young, rich high-tech folk. The old Seattle-centrism is a broken model for the region; the growth of Microsoft (and now Google) on the Eastside has been met by stagnation in Seattle. That's reality. The high-tech sector jobs are spread out over several Eastside cities. If Seattle worked at it harder it could provide a home for many of those jobs. But it's got a very real image problem, and unfortunately, your average Seattle politician would call this an imaginary real problem.
Seattle's answer to all problems seems to be "Sound Transit and Density! That's the Ticket!" A better answer is creating great neighborhoods where people want to raise their families. To families, density is a negative. Sound Transit means something to families only if people can get from their homes to work and back. It means spending more big time dollars to improve the public school system, the park system, and investing in maintaining and upgrading the existing housing stock. It means trying to be more like the Eastside and being a suburb to the Eastside than it does trying to be another high-density Manhattan or multicultural haven for rich expatriates like Vancouver, or a Portland clone ("Portland is what Seattle used to be.") Life style for families is what counts.
Posted Tue, May 22, 5:14 p.m. inappropriate
The Great Nearbyhood = Great Neighborhoods: My weird Seattle critique above reinforces the points made by SeattleJew:
1. Taxes. ... Developers ought to pay the real costs of adding to Seattle's population by subsidizing the infrastructure costs.
This is precisely what all the Eastside cities do.
2. Services. One reason to have more folks in Seattle is to imporve the city's cultural richness. To achieve this we need to plan for parks, local attractions, raison d'etre for neighborhoods. Not all destination/attractions need to be publicly financed, developers can be told that if they want to build god awful high rise condoes, then they need to create a retail environment worthy of the new occupants. Some call it zoning.
Absolutely right on.
3. Seattle as a suburb. Has anyone thought about the cost of gas? Urban density will work in the Seattle of 2050 just as it has for a long time in Europe. For the last 60 years, European cities have grown with little spread because fuel costs a lot in Europe. The Flatland of LA is dependent on the car. If Seattle is to support density, Seattle also needs ot support jobs, jobs here not $20 gasoline/day away by freeway.
Not quite the same emphasis as mine where Seattleites may live here and work on the Eastside, but the idea that job AND home are ideally nearby (in the Great Nearby) is central to reducing congestion, increasing quality of life, and lowering the average human energy footprint.
4. Seattle for Kids. The local inventor of the Urban Village, Norm Rice, also campaigned on Seattle as a Place for Kids. ... Like the Shakers, the Yuppies can not last very long uless they make kids. If they do that in Issaquah, Seattle will wither. We need a good central school system.
Boy, Oh, Boy is this right!
Posted Wed, May 23, 9:03 a.m. inappropriate
jobs: Stuka, I'm mystified by your last post.
Seattle is adding jobs at a good rate. We have about 14 commercial buildings going up in Greater Downtown right now as institutions grow and the office market tightens.
Big companies are moving into town from the suburbs (Safeco, Corbis, etc.) and most existing ones are staying in town.
In particular, these companies are saying many of their employees, particularly young ones, prefer to work in Seattle, and a Seattle location helps recruitment.
Downtown Bellevue is getting more attractive too, at a remarkable pace. But that doesn't seem to be happening at Seattle's expense.
Posted Wed, May 23, 2:16 p.m. inappropriate
RE: esponse: 1. Services won't be constant. Services will increase to keep pace with increasing problems. Urban problems always centralize. That's why sprawl sprawls. If you live within Seattle city limits you pay. Do you want help paying or not?
2. Can't argue with your taste. So what do you care if the people buying all these $500,000 condos share yours? Don't worry, they're happy.
3. I think you should walk around SoLU again. Start at Zimo, go through Fred Hutch, beeline for the cranes and traffic snarls halfway between there and 2200. Only half of that is condos, the rest is biotechs. I think you're wrong about the incubators down there. None of those were down there when all this started. Not all the info people want to mow grass and prune shrubs. Several of the people who ran for the board at 2200 work for Microsoft.
4. Yes there are kids downtown. I don't see many in Pioneer Square or Belltown, but they're at 2200, and I suspect they'll be more in the other projects. But I think more of the people in PS, lower QA, Eastlake-ish and SoLU, Market and Financial are done with their kids, while Belltown and lower Capitol Hill haven't had them yet.
Posted Thu, May 24, 11:03 a.m. inappropriate
RE: jobs: As you point out, Seattle is attractive to young employees. The growth you mention is good and a sign that MAYBE Seattle can pull itself out of its 25 yrs of doldrums. But two caveats: young employees and Bellevue.
1. Living in the suburbs is boring if you're not married with children. But when the employees you mention marry and have kids, everything changes. Then you need to create a City good for families, and families need great neighborhoods and especially great schools. Schools are chicken-and-egg with the neighborhoods. Seattle has a number of good neighborhoods, but some are declining, and few that I'm aware of are expanding. I don't think I need to tell you about the decline of the schools. Overall, this is a horrendous downward trend., Yet, what does the city emphasize? Viaducts, tunnels, glass libraries downtown, art parks on the waterfront, and Sound Transit. Give me a break!
A smart growth and survival strategy for Seattle is making sure that now-young employees will someday settle down with their families in homes and neighborhoods INSIDE the City. And high-rise condos for kids won't cut it. Without creating real homes with backyards, eventually, most of the employees you mention will flee to the burbs.
Downtown Bellevue's growth is interesting. It's the home to lots of wealth because of Microsoft's billionaires and multi-millionaires. Microsoft now has a significant office presence downtown, creating healthy competition between Seattle and Bellevue for office space, all of it pretty expensive.
Micorosft aside, Bellevue has seen a HUGE boom in the building of office space, equivalent to or greater than, I'm guessing, the 14 commercial bldgs you mention in Seattle. About a year ago I recall hearing that 50% of the tall construction cranes used in high-rise construction on the West Coast were in use on the Eastside. (This is just word-of-mouth, but the point is that Bellevue is growing FAST!)
Also from a Sound Transit perspective, Bellevue is dictating how transit on the Eastside will be laid out. My understanding is that Bellevue has bumped Redmond off the road and down a cliff by insisting that Sound Transit come over I-90 and then use downtown Bellevue as a transit hub. From there, somehow light rail gets to Overlake and Microsoft. At this point, funding peters out and Redmond is left with nothing but crumbs and a 30yr desire to bring light rail to that City if funding is available. I mention this, partly because the politics is interesting, but also because it shows how Bellevue, as the Capital of the Eastside, is becoming equivalent to Seattle and may someday in the not too distant future surpass it in significance.
I've heard third hand that the area added 40,000 jobs last year, and that is why housing prices remain high here, while they're falling in the rest of the country. The real challenge is how to sustain (or weather) such growth without degrading the region. I don't really think it can be done. We've roped off most of the developable land for environmental reasons, and existing neighborhoods fight to the death to maintain the character of their neighborhoods, so the "solution" is either to build high-rise condos in down-town areas, or fill in the urban interstices with town-homes and the like. In this respect, the GMA is anti-family, anti-homes with backyards, anti-worker because affordable homes don't exist, and anti-economic sustainability because families will move OUT and AWAY if they can't find decent homes. In this sense, Growth Management means life-style degradation. (Don't worry, I'm aware of all the counter arguments about density and preserving the environment and salmon and mass transit and carbon footprints and carbon sequestration and how Seattle someday will be like Oz. Although I don't recall any neighborhoods in Oz except the Wicked Witch's Castle ...)
Posted Thu, May 24, 12:32 p.m. inappropriate
RE: jobs: I don't have time to hit everything but here are two small points:
Many if not most Seattle neighborhoods are expanding. I base this on reading the DPD notices every Monday and Thursday, and the DJC every day, plus working for a general contractor. Townhouses are booming, condos are booming but tailing off, and rental apartments are slow but gaining speed as rents rise enough to justify construction prices. Some of the boom is hidden -- simply a dramatic decline in rental vacancy rates in the past few years. This should more than counteract the population reduction that happens when areas become prosperous, and lower-income families are replaced by well-off couples.
The townhouse boom (it's ok, we don't build them) is great news for keeping families.
Bellevue had 50% of all cranes? Well, maybe 5%. We have other boomtowns on the West Coast. Bellevue has never had 50% even in just our region.
At the moment Downtown Bellevue has more office construction than Downtown Seattle. But Downtown Seattle has built more if you go back a few years and include projects like IDX Tower and NuWaMu. We also have a lot more institutional construction, always, despite the hospital projects underway in Bellevue. My 14 counts projects for King County, Harborview, and the UW as well as leased, speculative, and owner-occupied office space.
Regardless, Seattle ought to have more office projects break ground in the next year or two.
It's remarkable that most of our region's office development is in the two downtowns, where it can be efficiently served by transit and where at least some people can walk or bike.
Posted Thu, May 24, 3:09 p.m. inappropriate
RE: jobs: Good info. I stand corrected on a lot of stuff. The rumor about the cranes is clearly exaggerated, although it may have referred to the Seattle area and not just Bellevue.. If neighborhoods are expanding, as I think you make clear they are, then that's good. And townhomes & condos aren't all bad, so long as parks and greenspace are nearby. I'm a big fan of starting with great homes to create great neighborhoods that then demand great schools. Once people love their homes they will want to work close to home. Enter transportation infrastructure and jobs. From one perspective, it's clear that jobs drive growth, but the reverse is also true. The reverse connection is home-->neighborhood-->school-->smart workforce-->business startup-->profit-->hiring. Obviously business success and market demand drive the growth of a business, but where a business chooses to locate is vitally dependent on homes, neighborhoods, and schools.
And your last comment is certainly true. The intense downtown office development in Seattle and Bellevue does allow light rail to be effective and gives it a chance to succeed, although a Seattle downtown-to-Bellevue downtown link doesn't seem to serve the need you'd want if you're trying to build a comprehensive transportation system. Much better would be to saturate neighborhoods and suburbs with frequent bus routes and feed those into downtown and back. Much cheaper, much more flexible, and much more consistent with getting people to walk and getting them out of cars.
The people who really need SoundTransit are the owners of the office and residential towers and their occupants. They should subsidize the thing 100% because their densities are the only things that can justify the ridiculous expenditures we're making on light rail. Your average Joe or Jane living in a Seattle neighborhood or suburb and commuting to work shouldn't have to pay for overbuilt infrastructure that is irrelvant to their commute and that INCREASES congestion by taking up traffic lanes on the freeway and siphoning off road monies into the Sound Transit chest of lucre. (Why is it that I think Sound Transit represents greed and EVERYTHING that is bad about local government? I don't know. I don't know.)
Posted Thu, May 24, 5:58 p.m. inappropriate
RE: jobs: You make a lot of good points though I disagree on Sound Transit.
Definitely we need good schools and good neighborhoods, and there's no doubt that both support job growth. (Oh to have $20 billion and donate to stuff like school endowments!)
I also agree about buses. They're the workhorses of our transit system and might always be. That's why I cringe when people say Portland has better transit, despite much lower per-capita ridership (Census 2000 and estimates through 2005 or so, regarding cities and metros). At the same time, rail transit serves a purpose -- faster service on major corridors, and service that can bypass inconvenient valleys, hills, downtown streets, etc.
Light rail is worth questioning for its ridership and cost in 2009. But where rail lines really shine is their expandability. Doesn't take much, just add more trains! If once every 10 minutes gets full, you can do one every 8, or 5, or 2. I don't know what the limit is for our system, but it's probably 2 or 3 based on other systems I've ridden.
I'm excited about the Bellevue route. When you get a second line, it's less important that the line itself be a self-contained system -- all those stops are easy to reach from the first line also. You're making the first line much more successful by adding a second line.
Posted Fri, May 25, 1:31 a.m. inappropriate
RE: jobs: MHays,
We're more or less on the same wavelength, although there seem to be interference patterns generated when we think about Sound Transit:
re $20B to schools to create endowments - A great iidea! The City should raise money to donate to the school district. I'm sure this violates some sort of law about providing equal education to everyone, but go ahead and let'em sue.
Better funding of schools should be a HUGE emphasis of ther Seattle City Council, but because the School District is separate, the Council doesn't think its their problem. The Mayor does, which is to his credit, and why he wants to take control.
re rail serving a purpose.r I agree that an INTEGRATED transportation system is the key, which is why its so sad to see roads and light rail and buses more or less independent fiefdoms (even though buses and light rail are under Sound Transit). Instead of thinking of transportation as a bunch of capital projects we should be thinking of it more as a total system. Right now its like we have independently operated legs that aren't coordinated so we keep falling down and it takes us forever to get anywhere.
re rail line expandability. I have serious doubts about the way Sound Transit is planning to funnel its routes through the downtown tunnel which will be a big bottleneck and prevent ST from running at capacity and taking advantage of the expandability you mention. When the trains come from Bellevue and from the UW and from the Airport the Tunnel will be stuffed and too slow. Guess what, that's called TRAFFIC!
re the Bellevue line. I agree that providing the Bellevue line and all the other lines so that eventually we have a network available is the right way to go. Too band it's going to cost $10.8B to build. Wait that's in 2006 dollars, so it's really more like $11B, but don't forget the $1.5B in operations and maintenance so make it $12.5B. Oh, and don't forget they'll bond all this money so we'll have about double that in finance costs, so $25B for the 72 miles, or $347M/mile or $65K per linear foot, or $5,480 per inch. You can buy a lot of buses and pay a lot of bus drivers with $25B. Nevertheless, what do you want ot bet that ST tries to put $10.8B on the ballot?
I 'd also bet that a bus rapid transit system (BRT) would cost about 2/3 the cost of light rail, and be much more flexible. It's hard to understand how light rail can even compete with BRT in either cost or flexibility. I guess because they didn't really even try to evaluate BRT seriously, they can feign ignorance.
And what about the ridership revenue? Isn't anyone paying to ride this thing? What's the subsidy per trip? I hope it isn't $100 per round trip again...
Posted Sun, May 27, 11:02 a.m. inappropriate
SLU and Schools: Errr ahhh ..
waht sort of city do you have in mind if you think the presence of two basketball hoops for ~100,000 popele and one private school ina ll of the new city are eant to suffice??
Sounds like Hunt's Point Downtown.
Posted Mon, May 28, 4:37 p.m. inappropriate
RE: SLU and Schools: I said SLU, not all of Downtown.
We need more parks in all areas of Greater Downtown, including free basketball hoops. In terms of basketball, SLU is covered pretty well already. The rest of Greater Downtown is pretty sparse for free basketball but hoops do exist at schools and colleges for example. Plus, many people belong to gyms. Mine has a full basketball court.
Greater Downtown has other schools. I agree that mainstream public K-12 is missing. For high schools there's the arts-focused public school at Seattle Center, O'Dea, and The Northwest School, which is also a middle school. For grade schools there's Spruce Street and a public school (limited access?) just east of Yesler Terrace, as well as a private(?) school in the ID.
You have some right ideas, but I wish you'd look into your facts before posting nonsense.