Growth and Godzilla Stakeholders

Politics is not the same as public service.

More attention should be paid to the current invasion of development that is about to replace the old structure of our city. Just as there are no existing old growth trees in Seattle, in many neighborhoods we are entering a new urban demographic and economic generation. Growth now happens at an accelerated pace, simultaneously individual building projects are proportionately much larger. Whereas one generation built incrementally yet independantly, arguably more like a community, today large swatches of property are single handily redeveloped and controlled "tribally" . This interpretation of traditional lot and block development that filled and fitted development within a framework we call a plat, has been replaced block by block with “mixed-use” projects, and many cases the loss of public right of ways. The larger problems are not about the size of development as it is about the new scale of controlling interests.

While arguments ebb and flow at council meetings around the setting and size of these new “groundscrapers”, the white elephant in the room is the gargantuan SCALE of control a single stakeholder holds over a property, culturally a black hole where once stood a neighborhood of stakeholders shaping that same community. And when entire blocks become single enclosures; addresses, access and serviceability are less encouraged to establish patterns from one block to the next. As one of the least adaptable building typologies, how will this new “mixed-use” environment mature when the subsequent change that is inevitable happens in the future? Or, have we consigned ourselves to a future having to replace entire blocks of the city to repair the offences we have created by the suburbanization of the urban infrastructure today? We are better served to look closer at shape and proportion of sovereign lot boundaries WITHIN blocks and concurrently encouraging the right of way to shape our city. We need to start thinking beyond architecture and renew the social urban morphological plating concepts of physically separating property (fee simple) proportionally along blocks. This plot within the larger framework of other lots on blocks over a public infrastructure is what collectively establishes urbanism even if many plots are controlled by the same entity.

So if we cannot control the size of new development, we CAN control the scale of the massing over the blocks by introducing boundaries creating a mix of structures in place of a mix of uses. Enabling the evitable evolutionary dismantling to renew the community in an organized manner as opposed to the wholesale renewal occurring presently. The legacy of platting lot boundaries are a means to compartmentalize expansion, so when neighborhoods mature, fail, and again, grow, there is greater predictability through measured reconstruction, not renewal.

Finally, the notion that higher density should by its very nature, nurture a range economic opportunity is partisan folly. Over simplistic solutions such as legalizing rooming houses or increasing mother and law apartments are insignificant contributions overall to the density the city council is selling to the public. Politically, our city council tries and fails to offset the burden of maintaining a range of economic typologies through credits and incentives. This only provides developers with more capacity quietly displacing elements or targets that were otherwise intended to be inclusive. And when was the last time we reviewed promises made by developers? All Band-Aid solutions to a problem that can only be addressed by allotment. We need to put “skin” in the game so to speak. If we want a range of economic opportunity in our cities we need to physically allocate land. By creating realistic borders instead of donating percentages or feel good intentions sold by developers and politicians we can better manage the social geography that is necessary for community evolution. And when we need to apportion land for higher density (AND WE DO!), or different uses, we need to think again about boundaries as a method to control, not limit the cycles of urban expansion. Can growth become about drawing lines on nurturing a more livable, predictable community experience?

 

Op Ed?