I’ll sure miss the rhetorical utility of describing Seattle as “the fastest growing big city in America” now that Austin has seized back that mantle, though we’re still one of the fastest growing big cities in America—tied with Ft. Worth for third—so, whatever. But if you ask me, the Seattle Times piece on the new census numbers kinda buries the lede:
Also in the new data: Seattle grew 77 percent faster than surrounding King County in 2014. This marks the third consecutive year that Seattle has outpaced its suburbs.
This trend is not just remarkable, it is historic. The surrounding areas of King County had been adding population at a faster clip than Seattle for more than 100 years, and it’s not just in Seattle where this trend has reversed: for the first time in many decades, the majority of big American cities are growing faster than their suburbs. And there’s absolutely no reason to expect this trend won’t continue for the near future.
Whatever the reasons for this demographic shift, it is a mixed blessing. Obviously, we want and need our cities to grow more dense. Dense cities are more walkable, sustainable, and energy efficient than suburban sprawl. So we want to encourage urban density. But the flood of newcomers is forcing housing costs up, and shutting many middle and lower income residents out.
Seattle added nearly 15,000 new residents in 2014, nearly 18,000 the year before that, and new construction is not keeping pace with demand. While this imbalance is not the only cause of our growing affordable housing crisis, we obviously need to build more housing—some of it outside the market. And to do this, we’re going to have to deny our NIMBYist instincts that welcome growth everywhere but in our own neighborhoods.
Homeowners love it when their own property values rise. They’ll just have to learn to accept the change that comes with it. And that change must include a taller, denser, and more in-filled Seattle.
quick ways to add density at zero cost to the city:
1. loosen silly rules blocking ADUs and DADUs. you could add 20K housing units this way. very affordable ones, too, and also, hello, they help middle class type SF owners.
2. eliminate the requirement, any requirement, that builders must build parking spaces. apart from the fact that some buyers and renters just don’t want one thus shouldn’t be forced to get one, hello, many of our smaller lotsin multifamily find it super hard to cram in the underground garage leading to building sixpack townhomes not 20 apts. on the site.
3. allow traditional rowhouses. i.e., parking not provided, i.e., you can have three or four units in one, i.e. it’s street to alley. our stupid parking rules again force many to build the butt ugly seattle sixpack or eightpack.
4. stop calling people who want reasonable regulations nimby’s. it kind of leads to the position that “any regulation is bad!” which is just plain old stupid. for example, the developers did not want to put a sink in the bathroom of new microhousing. yuk! is that nimby? most of what we arebuilding is ugly crap without adequate setbacks or leaving the skinny sidewalk too narrow. requiring more setback, is that nimby? you simply can’t leave it to market forces to decide what our cityscape will look like, sorry. regulation is needed –as in every single capitalist sector known to humankind! everyone has their views, everyone has a role, every zone will see increased density, including using existing zoning which allows plenty of growth. debating the form of the regulations shouldn’t merit a nimby tag, per se.
5. you want more affordability? well let’s put 6 folks on the council to enact $15 NOW oh wait, by now the $15 now should be $15.50 NOW. just vote for the lefty types in each race, we could put a progressive majority on the council.
Why would homeowners love rising property values? Unless you sell your property (where would you live?) or borrow against the new equity (which is stupid), all you get is higher property taxes. What homeowner wants a massive apartment building next door to his single-family home?
http://tinyurl.com/mev7tu9
But if you pay me a million dollars for my hole in the ground, I’ll pull up tree roots and hop to the suburbs, too. Like any other good little NIMBY, I can be bought, if the price is right. I’m not Edith Macefield.
@1 “some buyers and renters just don’t want one thus shouldn’t be forced to get one”
Fine as long as they don’t expect free street parking in its place. I’m good with no-parking-provided units in conjunction with strictly enforced metered or 1-hour street parking.
I’ll see you no mandated residential parking, and raise you no street parking, too. Drivers searching for spaces are an impediment to traffic flow, and a hazard to pedestrians. Streets need to be less dedicated to cars, and more to pedestrians, cyclists, motircyclists, and delivery vehicles.
Unless there is a vastly more robust public transit system, i have to have a car. To get to work. To get to my kid’s school. To get to the doctor.
@4 That’s all well and good for you young and healthy welps, but not all of us can walk or ride bicycles, and mass transit is practical only when (a) it goes where you need to go (b) when you need to go there and (c) isn’t full as most Seattle commuter buses are. I use public transportation when I can, but at times I can’t, and if a neighborhood has no parking I won’t visit people or businesses located there.
“No Parking Required”
does not mean
“No Parking Allowed”.
If you need a car, you can ALWAYS find a private space for rent.
Parking is one of the few things you can actually trust the free market to provide, at an appropriate cost.
@7 “If you need a car, you can ALWAYS find a private space for rent.”
So your argument is that developers shouldn’t be required to provide parking spaces for apartment units because private enterprise can be counted on to provide renters with parking?
@3.
today we have large areas of uncharged parking on city streets. they are filled with “people who got here earlier!” often owning huge garages filled with crap.
if we build a new building with no parking and a new resident wants to not buy a new parking space and plans to park for free on the street, why on earth is this morally objectionable? he’s only doing what tons of people already do!
there are plenty of reasons to charge for heretofore free parking starting with wsdot park and rides…..or maybe an annual pass for a moderate fee……doing it just because a new building comes up a few blocks away seems a bit punitive and retaliatory. everyone here moved here from somewhere else or their forebearers did. EVERYONE.
@4: while there is some logic and good policy in what you say, it’s vastly overstated. we have TONS of streets that have NO traffic on them and where peds and bikes and whatnot go freely. we have other streets where all parking should be removed i.e. the arterials where we let folks park, taking up a lane, i.e., say on aurora. this constricts the flow and harms all kinds of mobility. in general I agree that the days of handing out free public parking spaces should come to an end as this is a hugeasss subsidy to cars that ‘s bad for climate reasons and becaus street space is in places very limited, but any change has to account for the fact that many working poor need cars and would be harmed by this kind of change. we’re removing free parking all over, this is an uncounted toll on the poor and middle class ….
@7 actually seattle policy is to prevent private garages from being built. it’s a bad policy. much better to let the market decide how much parking to provide once we correct it with a full on carbon tax…….
@8 actually private enterprise does do some things fairly well. for example, they will provide the amount of parking people want at the right price over the long term. there’s a general market correction we need with a huge carbon tax. thiswill incentivize less use of cars. still many will want them or go electric. there’s another huge nonmarket subsidy in us having such vast areas of uncharged free parking. price it. reasonably. third, allow private garages. the result will be what you see in nyc and london and paris ….streets, always will be congested no matter what we do, that’s the nature of huge successful cities. car ownership drops to like half. people are not FORCED to buy a parking space unless they want one. robust transit systems are helped when we are not FORCING renters and condo buyers to participate in the car owning sector with the forced purchase of parking spaces which cost twenty to forty fucking thousand dollars a unit. ending this immoral and monopolistic requirement is one of the cheapest easiest things govt. can do to help achieve more robust multimodal mobility in our city. we subsidize many things. most of us believe we should subsidize transit a lot, and cars, meh, not that much. the forced parking space purchasing and renting is a HUGE forced subsidy it literally compels people to PAY for something they may not want, today it may be only 20% of them, tomorrow it would be 40$ then 50%, or more. the forced parking space reuqirement is simply greed on the part of the ones parking on streets for free who want to continue to get that subsidy without dilution. like any rentier, or person enjoying a freebie, they want it and feel moral in getting it cuz they already got it; people are sometimes not that different than corporations or monopolists!
just throwing it out there, why not limit the number of cars allowed to be housed in seattle ? hand out say, 200K car permits for….free.
then watch the fun begin. make them tradable for cash.
this will give the folks who got here first their legacy asset. newcomers will have to buy in. maybe you could make $10K selling your permit to a rich yuppie amazonian? call it a congestion cap and trade program.
Other solutions:
Bring back the horse.
Bring back trolley cars.
No cars downtown unless they pay a special very expensive tax.
Make all homeowners in Seattle pay to park their POV even if on their private property. Apply this across King county.
Where will the people living in the downtown core keep their vehicles for the upcoming Zombie Apocalypse. If the rapture occurs though will that cure or worsen the parking issues in Seattle?
There is no one who doesn’t want a parking space. No one.
I don’t want a parking space. I sold my last car 10 years ago. I guess that makes you a liar.