There’s a 3-story, 1,200 sq ft, 275-year-old charmer for sale on Philadelphia’s Elfreth’s Alley, the oldest continuously inhabited residential street in America.
Every time I return to my native Philadelphia I’m reminded of how small Seattle is, and I don’t just mean square miles or population.
With about 65 percent of its land devoted to single-family detached housing, most of Seattle doesn’t feel like a city at all, but rather a mature inner ring suburb. The remainder of Seattle is actually pretty dense—probably denser than most of Philadelphia—but the housing choices are limited: mostly high-rise apartments and condos or those non-descript 5-story blocks that are busy making every urban neighborhood in Seattle look like every other. Missing are the brownstones and row houses and mixed-use neighborhoods that give older cities—from Umbrian hill towns to megalopolises like Philadelphia and New York City—so much of their livability and charm.
What really makes Seattle feel small to me is the lack of choice.
I’m not one of those free-market extremists who wants to do away with single-family detached zoning entirely; the Seattle bungalow is an integral part of the city’s character. And that’s a character worth preserving (even if we’re only preserving it for the relatively well off). But we do need to be more open to different kinds of housing, and that will require being more open to rezoning at least some single-family land. We need to be open to experimentation. We even need to be willing to make mistakes.
And we need to acknowledge that some of the most desirable urban settings in the world were built long before the arrival of the automobile, and have refused to fully accommodate it to this day.
To be clear, I don’t want to turn Seattle into New York or Philadelphia. There’s a lot that’s gone terribly wrong with these cities. But there’s also a lot that Seattle could learn from the things that these older, denser, bigger cities do right.
If Seattle had significant tracts of undeveloped residential land, then yes, row houses would be a great addition to the city. But we don’t; Seattle is already developed, mostly with SF homes, and transforming any neighborhood into row housing would require demolition of SF homes on a scale not seen since Urban Renewal. I politely suggest that ain’t going to happen.
It’s time for urbanists to accept that Seattle is what it is and stop wishing that it becomes more like your hometown. Or maybe the Great Earthquake will come, or another Great Fire, and forcibly open up neighborhoods to the redevelopment you dream about.
As always, the key to willingness to err is ensuring that there will be someone else to blame when the shit hits the fan.
@1 “Or maybe the Great Earthquake will come, or another Great Fire”
Or, far more predictably, another financial meltdown.
If we don’t have great schools in density areas it’s going to be hard to attract families. When they get kids they will move away.
It’s a matter of geography. Seattle is perched on a series of ridges that dictate traffic flows and property values. Because there is a limit to the amount of property available, it is rarely amenable to the row houses Goldy favors. If it is near a traffic corridor, it is higher demand (price) so it is a candidate for the high density housing we see sprouting up. And putting higher density housing where there isn’t access to traffic corridors is a non-starter.
Emmett Watson must be rolling in his grave.
@4, great point. Good schools for dense areas, and in the areas where row houses can be built, let’s build them for families with children! That means a back yard big enough for a swing set and picnic table. Now what should be a small back yard is another row house separated by an unusable driveway. Time for a zoning code update, one not driven by developers.
“It’s time for urbanists to accept that Seattle is what it is and stop wishing that it becomes more like your hometown.”
…
“Time for a zoning code update, one not driven by developers.”
Am I misunderstanding you? Because it seems to me you are advocating opposing viewpoints here.
And for purposes of this discussion, what exactly is an “urbanist”?
“There’s a 3-story, 1,200 sq ft, 275-year-old charmer for sale on Philadelphia’s Elfreth’s Alley, the oldest continuously inhabited residential street in America.”
That’s nothing, some of the Neanderthal caves in Europe were continuously inhabited for 200,000 years. You sorta hope they swept them out at least every 10,000 years or so to get rid of the broken crockery and old bones.
“There’s a lot that’s gone terribly wrong with these cities.”
The police, for one thing. Not that ours are all that great.
@2 You and your ilk are good at that.
The problem I’m seeing is that there is a wish to do away with single family housing and replace it with no-family housing.
@ 12 RR
Yeah, “Personal Responsibility” means they will hold anyone else personally responsible they can, as long as they get to walk away smelling like a Rose.
Hell, ol’ Rick Scott is worshiped like a fucking God in GOP circles.
From 2,
That’s standard operating procedure for people: take the credit for anything that goes right and blame any failures on enemies.
The top of Queen Anne Hill has a number of modest older row houses and duplexes that fit in fine with single family homes. Particularly at 6th & Howe. Also corner dulpexes with a front door on each side. New multiple could copy the height, floorplans, and footprints without the mandated 3 foot space between units and useless ground level driveways current zoning requires
In almost all threads concerning bike lanes or anything biking, the suggestion that bikes should be registered is met by the cry, “But we DO pay for the roads because we also have a car!” So for the urbanists who think driveways and garages are not necessary (and who are usually the bike enthusiasts), just where do you put that car? Little bit of hypocrisy there.
@8. Yes, you are misunderstanding me. Think about nuance, about details, about everything not being always black and white.