Time to sync Seattle’s green rhetoric with reality
Today’s blog post is the final of a series where we look at Seattle’s land use history and decades of missed opportunities for comprehensive infrastructure planning for transportation and housing.
Reeling from a pandemic, protests and a gut punch to the economy, it’s time for Seattle to hit reset. Priorities have shifted, budgets shrunk and plans are on hold. But it doesn’t require shelving progress.
As a center of commerce and housing, downtown is rebuilding and Seattle decision makers have a chance to course-correct the unsustainable traffic and development patterns of pre-COVID-19 levels. It won’t take more money, just political resolve.
Recent DRA posts examined how enforcing basic code and policy decisions could open space on strained downtown streets and alleys, resulting in a transportation grid that can manage density and the way people travel, shop and live in the 21st century.
The recommendations are:
1) Require an adequate number and length of loading berths especially in residential towers.
2) Stage waste and recycling in niches out of right-of-ways to unblock Seattle’s one-lane alleys.
3) Design public and private parking garages to accept the height and turn radius of common service trucks and vans.
4) Compel tower architects to produce functional designs that actually work. Locate mail and package rooms on the ground floor next to loading facilities and make sure occupied loading berths don’t block access to other functions.
These aren’t radical, untested ideas. They’re best practices backed by City-sponsored research and proposed legislation stuck in limbo.
So, where’s the roadblock? Special interests! Developers and investors say their projects won’t “pencil out” if they have to provide internal space to contain the congestion they generate.
Instead of questioning whether projects that can’t contain their environmental impacts are compatible with Seattle’s Green New Deal, government departments fail to push back.
City legislation proclaims Seattle is a “national leader in sustainable development and energy conservation” and plans to become a carbon neutral city by 2050.
For that goal to be reality, land use and transportation policy have to match the rhetoric. Building in Seattle should be a right that comes with responsibilities.
DRA’s four best practice recommendations are a start.
We hope you have learned a lot from this series, which explored how current Seattle development and land use policy is impacting Seattle transportation and sustainable housing.
Be sure to read additional posts in series:
Will Seattle’s 19th century transportation grid continue to survive business as usual?
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
