Will Seattle's 19th Century transportation grid continue to survive business as usual?
Today’s blog post is the first in a series where we look at Seattle’s land use history and decades of missed opportunities for comprehensive infrastructure planning for transportation and housing.
There are echoes of the past in the City’s continued delay to require minimal loading and waste design standards for massive downtown mixed use towers. As special interests vie for time to vest their projects, will Seattle’s 167-year old transportation grid continue to survey business as usual? (Read More)
Seattle was a frontier town with big aspirations in 1853 when downtown was platted, locking in place the transportation grid we squeeze through 167 years later.
The Great Fire of 1889 offered the chance for a partial makeover and the Mayor convened a citizen’s committee to study just over a dozen site-specific proposals. To their credit, the group rejected a call to substantially reduce alley width and also supported generous 16’ sidewalks. Then as now, development pressures existed but the proposals were modest and civic leaders appeared to recognize growth and prosperity required good infrastructure.
That belief faltered in 1912 with the large scale Bogue measure, a proposal 100 years ahead of its time including a master plan for roads and mass transit in addition to parks, harbor development and municipal buildings. History Link credits its demise to “ineptitude of the city government in publicly presenting and explaining the plan” coupled with “opposition from many business owners who feared it would reduce their property values by shifting the city’s commercial center northward.”
Eight decades later, business leader Paul Allen proposed the Seattle Commons, a 61-acre public park running from Westlake to Lake Union to be flanked by mid-rise housing and high tech development. The Seattle Commons Levy was rejected primarily due to the reactions of neighboring small business owners and a thin majority of tax adverse voters. Ultimately Allen built the tech hub and housing without the massive public perk.
Today Seattle’s need for rapid transit, wide alleys, sidewalks, streets and public spaces has never been greater. But instead of Grand Visions for transportation and housing, Seattle land use policy is driven by a Grand Bargain that financially rewards excess and incentivizes expedited passage for the City and affordable housing advocates to benefit.
Stay tuned for future posts in this series, exploring how current Seattle development and land use policy is impacting Seattle transportation and sustainable housing.
Be sure to read additional posts in series:
Another rubber-stamped tower is designed to fail
Demands of e-commerce won’t be met by paper band aids
Surface parking lots: A hot button issue
