gentrification, tent cities, climate change, garbage, traffic jams

June 16, 2015 7:59 PM

Grist: Seattle: City Of The Future series includes -
Is Seattle a model for sustainable cities, or just a mess?

In reality, of course, change is a complicated and messy thing. With that in mind, the crew at Grist decided a few months back to use our hometown as something of a laboratory. We abandoned our work stations and set off in search of stories that would illustrate how Seattle is changing, for better or worse, and how the city and its residents are coping. It was a chance to get to know the place better, put our theories and prognostications to the test, and see what lessons Seattle holds for other cities.

Who killed the gayborhood? A Grist podcast investigation

When I was looking for neighborhoods in Seattle, I decided on Capitol Hill — a densely populated area not far from downtown — based on its reputation as the city’s gay neighborhood, a reputation it’s had since the ’60s. The Hill appealed to me because, well, have you seen my haircut? I’m super gay. But despite Capitol Hill’s reputation as the gayborhood, it doesn’t feel gay to me. Sure, there’s a gay bookstore and a thrift shop where you can also get a HIV test, but after I moved here, I was surprised to find that there are more hot yogas studios than hot gay clubs in my neighborhood. Capitol Hill, it seems, is losing its place as the epicenter of Seattle’s gay life.

Seattle’s unbelievable transportation megaproject fustercluck - previously

Tent cities: Seattle’s unique approach to homelessness

Nickelsville is one of several roving tent cities in Seattle. Christened in a deliberate slam against Seattle’s former mayor, Greg Nickels, whose administration regularly cleared homeless encampments, it has relocated about 20 times since its creation in 2008.

Today, at the corner of 10th and Dearborn, a few hundred yards from the I-5 overpass, a cluster of tents and tiny houses painted flamingo pink huddle together against the Seattle chill, bright splotches of color under a dove-gray sky. The houses were built by Home Depot Foundation volunteers. The pink paint pays homage to the encampment’s original tents, which were donated by the Girl Scouts.

Can Seattle’s restaurants survive the new $15 minimum wage?

Last June, Seattle’s City Council voted unanimously to gradually raise the city’s minimum wage from $9.32 to $15 an hour, effectively becoming the highest minimum wage in the country. A $15 minimum wage will help put a little money back into the pockets of those who need it most, a good thing in a city where the cost of living has skyrocketed. But for small business owners, especially in the restaurant industry, the increase to $15 is a little more complicated.

Why Seattle still has a huge garbage problem

In the meantime, six days a week, 52 weeks a year, roughly 1,000 tons of garbage get trucked to the South Transfer Station and shoveled into a giant hole in the middle of a concrete floor. With a thunderous screech, two oblong tubes of metal squash the stuff into dense bricks that are loaded into shipping containers, stacked at the nearby railyard, and shipped 600 miles south to a landfill in east Oregon. That’s right: 1,000 tons, six days a week, all year long – at least – for a grand total of more than 300,000 tons of garbage each year.

Compared to other American cities of Seattle’s size, that ain’t half bad. But even if Seattle were to hit its 60 percent waste-diversion goal this year, it’d still remain leagues behind its overachieving peers. San Francisco, for instance, leads the country with a whopping 80 percent waste diversion rate; Los Angeles has hit 76.4 percent; and Portland was already at 70 percent in 2012.

Climate refugees, DO NOT MOVE TO THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST

via Seattle Transit Blog: Amazon’s Shuttle Fleet

see also:
Longshore workers keep their grip on the global supply network
Seattle’s Left Coast Formula
The Limits of the “Left Coast Formula”: A Response to James N. Gregory
Everything is Architecture

posted by the man of twists and turns (35 comments total)

Grew up in Portland, went to school in NY and then back to Seattle, Eugene and PDX and - I've had this conversation many, many times in this past month - with the projections for population infux in the next two decades at around 700,000+, not counting climate change refuges... And worries about Portland succumbing to what had happened to both San Francisco and Seattle.

(Portland's local NPR station's "Think Out Loud" show last week had a program on "How Dense And Tall Should Portland's Neighborhoods Be?")

In the next 20 years, the Portland region is expected to grow by an estimated 700,000 people, to nearly 3 million. Portland is considered to be the country’s 28th most populated city. Planners and community members have a big question to ponder: where are all those people going to live and what will those neighborhoods look like?
posted by Auden at 8:48 PM on June 16, 2015 [2 favorites]

Pdx > sea obviously.

Also let's not forget that Seattle schools are a mess.

Sigh.
posted by k8t at 8:57 PM on June 16, 2015

Seattle has been a mess ever since they brought in the brides.
posted by oneswellfoop at 9:07 PM on June 16, 2015 [1 favorite]

Uh, San Francisco absolutely suffers from the lack of the Embarcadero Freeway. The Marina might as well be some other city, further away in many absolute terms than Oakland.
posted by effugas at 9:36 PM on June 16, 2015 [2 favorites]

The Marina might as well be some other city, further away in many absolute terms than Oakland.

And I, for one, am grateful that this is the case.
posted by un petit cadeau at 10:06 PM on June 16, 2015 [5 favorites]

And I, for one, am grateful that this is the case.

Zing?

Why do you think such distinct cultures have developed?
posted by effugas at 11:00 PM on June 16, 2015

Seattle just needs more tunnels...
posted by sammyo at 3:47 AM on June 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

Thanks for the article and links--nice piece of reporting, writing and in a format that is manageable/readable. I realize the articles are quite short but in this case I appreciated the brevity, an ongoing sense of humor and the succinct content
posted by rmhsinc at 4:07 AM on June 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

This comment is mostly in response to this article :
'Is Seattle a model for sustainable cities, or just a mess?'

People working to create Sustainability instead of Adaptability and Agility aren't just using the wrong term. They are denying reality and are a serious impediment to designing a livable future.

Nothing is sustainable in the face of change. Change precludes sustainability. Not only is change all we ever have, there is acceleration to change. Designing a computer without a computer results in a not very capable computer. But, with that computer, a far more capable computer is possible. Each generation of technology enables creating ever more powerful technologies. Not only is there acceleration in electronics technology, there is also acceleration in medical, transportation, surveillance, and other technologies. There is also acceleration in climate change.

This CGP Grey video is primarily about employment but the changes effect all aspects of life :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU

The Grist article gives a population increase for Seattle of 15,000 for 2014. Seattle will continue to be a place where jobs are available and population migration from rural to urban areas will continue. People and businesses will be migrating from areas where water is expensive, from where the heat is too much, and from areas on the U.S. Gulf and East coasts where rising seas and storms make those areas no longer economically viable for human habitation. The migration may be toward the Pacific Northwest. There may be acceleration in population growth in Seattle. Not building infrastructure will not prevent people from coming. Even without acceleration, population growth of 15,000 per year results in a doubling of Seattle's population in about 40 years. So in the next 40 years a Seattle sized water resource, and a wastewater treatment resource, and a transportation resource, and a housing resource need to be developed just to maintain current levels of services. One way to develop the housing resource would be to double the size of every residential building in Seattle.

What Seattle was doing in 1975 is not sustainable in 2015. What is being done in 2015 will not be sustainable in 2055. Adapting to an unknown, but certainly changing, future requires trashing, not recycling, any plans for Sustainability and developing Agility.
posted by llc at 4:20 AM on June 17, 2015 [5 favorites]

I'm sorry, how is sustainability incompatible with adaptability? I'm having trouble extracting any meaning from your comment beyond a jab at a context-free and naive interpretation of the word "sustainable". Has the inane Agility cult metastasized beyond software development? Infrastructure for cities is not like software. Needs have to be anticipated decades in advance when built structures that profoundly influence everything around them have lifetimes measured in multiple generations. Democracy is messy and that means years of horse-trading, consultation, change in government, and other unforseen complications before shovels even hit the ground in most cases. "Whatever, just use the client's live system as our dev machine, they can't even give us clear requirements so why should we care?" is not a philosophy that can translate into planning transportation and utility infrastructure for a city of millions.

You want an example of a city where "Fuck it, we'll do it live!" has been a planning motto for the last few decades? Come share my two hour commute from Toronto to Mississagua. In fact, dear reader, this turgid and ornery comment means I'm already sharing it. Lucky you!

Sustainablily doesn't mean doing the same thing forever. Sustainability means planning in a way that doesn't sacrifice the future for the convenience of the present. There were people in 1975 who knew that Seattle wasn't developing sustainably for 2015 or even 1975, and throwing money into a giant hole for cars right after Boston's huge clusterfuck isn't sustainable for 2055, 2015, or 1975 and everybody knows it.
posted by [expletive deleted] at 5:55 AM on June 17, 2015 [8 favorites]

Wait... Seattle has a huge garbage problem, right?

...and a giant hole undeneath the heart of the city, that is causing buildings to subside?!

Seems like the answer is obvious!
posted by markkraft at 6:07 AM on June 17, 2015 [3 favorites]

expletive deleted,

I am not a member of an inane Agility cult and don't consider myself lucky that you are sharing your insults with me. Perhaps if I was involved in software development I could extract some meaning from your comment that infrastructure is not software.
posted by llc at 6:35 AM on June 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

These articles were an ok primer on some of the issues facing Seattle, but I had hoped for something more insightful. Seattle itself is fairly small and the density conundrum isn't just a problem for the urban core.
posted by stowaway at 7:11 AM on June 17, 2015

llc,

You'll have to excuse me, you mentioned computers designing better computers, adapting to accelerating change, and also capitalized 'agility', which for some people should probably come with a trigger warning. I think I may have just hallucinated being trapped at a TED Talk about using Agile Methodology to bring about the Singularity, and responded to that instead of your comment.
posted by [expletive deleted] at 8:10 AM on June 17, 2015 [3 favorites]

What does "agility" actually mean in the context of urban planning? Could an example be offered to clarify matters?
posted by clockzero at 8:25 AM on June 17, 2015

Agility in urban planning means being able to create dense urban centers without concurrent transportation and other infrastructure improvements all while dodging the inevitable impacts of having the most regressive tax structure in the nation.
posted by Mei's lost sandal at 9:13 AM on June 17, 2015 [4 favorites]

Uh, San Francisco absolutely suffers from the lack of the Embarcadero Freeway. The Marina might as well be some other city, further away in many absolute terms than Oakland.

Indeed. It is nigh impossible to get from downtown to the Marina.
posted by Aizkolari at 9:41 AM on June 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

i feel like future archeologist will discover Bertha and wonder what the fuck was going on.

Probably something along the lines of Jeff Bezos astride it with glowing blue eyes shouting "The Goods must flow!" as it bores through a crowd of WTO protesters.

The strata is very disturbed at this level and carbon isotope anomalies from the burning of fossil fuels leave the exact timeline a little hazy.
posted by [expletive deleted] at 10:01 AM on June 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

Not to mention, of course, the inherent difficulties of excavating underwater sites.
posted by [expletive deleted] at 10:03 AM on June 17, 2015

clockzero,

By agility I mean moving quickly and smartly. These characteristics do not apply to governments that I am familiar with.

In the year 2000, Seattle decided that the Alaskan Way Viaduct needed to be replaced before it fell down. In 2015, the city and state have gotten as far as burying the tunnel boring machine Bertha. The ready to fall in the next earthquake Viaduct is still in use.

Replacing the Viaduct was a decision made by a government looking backward. Governments should be looking forward, continuously adapting to changing circumstances and being agile enough to keep up with change.

Governments not keeping up with change is going to be more and more of a problem because of accelerating change in many areas.

In the Grist article, the question is asked if Seattle is a model of sustainability. This question only makes sense to me if sustainability is slow and modest improvements in public transportation, recycling and bicycling infrastructure. In this case, and others, advocates for sustainability see a future that is a lot like today. I see a future that will inevitably be radically different from today.
posted by llc at 11:05 AM on June 17, 2015 [2 favorites]

Uh, San Francisco absolutely suffers from the lack of the Embarcadero Freeway.

Indeed, it suffers a revitalized waterfront and amazing views. Quelle horror.
posted by entropicamericana at 11:37 AM on June 17, 2015 [2 favorites]

Indeed, it suffers a revitalized waterfront and amazing views. Quelle horror.

Well, I like tourists as much as the next guy, but for people who live in the city trying to get to work the views don't help much.
posted by sideshow at 12:12 PM on June 17, 2015

But it's also not clear that freeways within cities actually help a lot of people get to work more quickly.
posted by en forme de poire at 12:24 PM on June 17, 2015

Cities are for people, not cars.
posted by entropicamericana at 12:35 PM on June 17, 2015 [2 favorites]

Is Seattle a model for sustainable cities, or just a mess?

Mess.

Next question.


No but seriously, i've lived here forever, and this place is a fucking mess. Nothing can get accomplished really, zoning is fucked and nimbys are fighting to keep it that way at every turn, transit is good in route but not in practice due to not enough service and ridiculously early cutoff times or cutbacks to less trips, light rail wont be done until i'm middle aged even though i'm MTV-demographic young, the police department is completely crazy to judge dredd/mad max/ferguson levels and that's repeatedly demonstrated in the news, rents are forcing everyone into the suburbs and basically creating an extra urban serf class. I missed a lot too. Terrible school district, suspension breaking bike flipping roads so bad that you'd think we were under economic sanctions from some superpower for 50 years, ass backwards policies like no smoking in public parks and no sitting/laying 7am-9pm that are just war on the poor shit designed to "clean up appearances", and a ton of other shit i missed.

I could go on for a really long time. It's like the city is being controlled by a really stoned guy playing sim city/cities skylines for the first time who thinks SF is the model of a "good" city.

I always sound like a bitter shit, but besides the light rail i can't think of a single good thing that's happened in the past 10 years. It's all good local businesses and restaurants closing and being replaced by panera breads and city targets, rents quadrupling, and everyone i know scattering all over the place(and sometimes out of the state) so that no one really ever hangs out anymore.

It's also been depressing, although mildly interesting in a dry snarky way, to watch how as income inequality gets way worse and the neighborhood i live in(the aforementioned gayborhood from the fpp, where my dad grew up, mom moved to when she was 16, and they both still live) fills with rich techbros who are apprehensive to be close to the "filth" even though it's "cool" and close to work... the homeless and drug problems get way worse.

Never had a dude ask me for shards outside my house until a few weeks ago. He was super nonchalant about it too, like he was asking for directions or what bus to take to get to X location.

I'd kinda like to see someone write a good piece on how many homeless people just come here from other places because the social services are so decent(i've heard from friends who've been homeless that this is pretty much the easiest place to get food and supplies), or come here seasonally. It's kinda the new "bus ticket to SF" place, it seems.

Cracks me up every time i see some new transplant clutching their purse and freaking out at a screaming mentally ill homeless person who doesn't even notice them though. Especially when i've seen the guy every day on my way to work for 2 years, and he's completely harmless.


But hey, we have weed stores and lots of greenery and beautiful views i guess.
posted by emptythought at 1:39 PM on June 17, 2015 [6 favorites]

> rents are forcing everyone into the suburbs

I was one of those people a decade ago, when we got priced out of Seattle. Now people are getting priced out of the suburbs, too -- I know people who've moved to Edmonds (not that part of Edmonds, a different part), Montlake Terrace, even Bellingham.
posted by The corpse in the library at 3:19 PM on June 17, 2015

That's another funny thing here, the south end has sort of a mild version(and white people have an aversion) of the same sort of "reputation" oakland has, despite it being in no way dangerous.

Everyone moves further and further north, but no one will move even a little bit south.

Rents are cheaper in beacon hill than they are in bothell, but people react weirdly when you even mention the idea of moving there. And further south than that, like rainier beach or renton, is "the hood lol".

So everyone keeps going north, but the south remains cheap. A couple friends of mine until pretty recently were renting a 4 bedroom house with a huge yard and a basement for less than a lot of apartments are in the rest of seattle, even in the shitty areas. It's weird.

I keep waiting to see which part of the south end suddenly gets hit with the gentrification sledgehammer of "hipsters" and becomes the new cool neighborhood. It's taking surprisingly longer than i expected, with none of the cool honkies wanting to go further south than the central district really... which is well, central, but just a tiny bit less white than this hollywood-movie-white city.
posted by emptythought at 3:27 PM on June 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

I thought Columbia City already was getting some of that. Or maybe it's already hopelessly gentrified -- what would I know, huddled against the King / Snohomish border.
posted by The corpse in the library at 3:47 PM on June 17, 2015

The schools are kind of shitty in the south end, though, so if you know anyone for whom that's a concern, that is probably a big factor in why they choose one area over another. I now live in a hopelessly uncool suburb (just south of the King/Sno line, hi to the corpse in the library) and the schools were a big factor for us.

Is the gentrification of White Center still happening?
posted by stowaway at 4:55 PM on June 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

k8t and emptythought: what is it about the schools that are so bad?
posted by RakDaddy at 4:56 PM on June 17, 2015

Indeed, it suffers a revitalized waterfront and amazing views. Quelle horror.

Well, I like tourists as much as the next guy, but for people who live in the city trying to get to work the views don't help much.

Um, do any of the people advocating for the Embarcadero freeway remember what a shitshow it was? A parking lot at any time you'd be going to work or going home.
posted by oneirodynia at 7:25 PM on June 17, 2015

Bremerton's trying to get in on the gentrification action, but people are still reluctant to rely on the aging WSFs. Seems like I hear about a broken boat every couple of weeks now.
posted by ctmf at 7:39 PM on June 17, 2015

...and a giant hole undeneath the heart of the city, that is causing buildings to subside?!

Seems like the answer is obvious!


They actually did that a while back...
posted by Jon Mitchell at 8:29 PM on June 17, 2015

West Seattle appears to be the latest "hot" neighborhood. There's so much new construction here, it looks like Ballard a few years ago. I wouldn't be surprised if it moves south (to White Center and Burien) and/or east (to Rainier Valley and Beacon Hill) next, after real estate in the SW quadrant is no longer affordable.

Or maybe it's already happening there too, and I just haven't noticed. I don't leave my little West Seattle bubble very often.
posted by mbrubeck at 9:08 PM on June 17, 2015

I grew up in Seattle, and it seems to me like a huge cultural shift happened with the tech boom, starting with Microsoft and continuing with Amazon. Neighborhoods became trendy, like the aforementioned Capitol Hill, which has gone from an awesome gayborhood to a yoga studio/cupcake shop type place, etc. And Ballard, and Fremont, and Belltown, sigh. Rent and traffic got worse, also, as the population increased. The city went from grungy blue collar awesomeness to upscale hipster, if I completely generalize in a cranky old lady fashion. Maybe Seattle is just an in-between city right now, like it needs to settle back into itself and find new grit and weirdness and culture, absorbing the population shift. And seriously get to work on the traffic issues and the mythological light rail.
posted by branravenraven at 10:40 PM on June 17, 2015