I just sent the following to City Council and our new Mayor. If you live in Seattle and agree that we should be embracing density rather than fearing it, I encourage you to send feedback in this week, because there is a loud and effective group of anti-density activists making worrying headway.
Dear Councilmember _________,
I have just learned that a group of my neighbours is trying to get recent improvements to our land use code reverted, to prevent one additional storey being allowed on certain buildings. I won’t be able to make it to the public meeting on January 14th, so I’m emailing my comments in instead. I believe this would be a terrible mistake for the following three reasons:
1) Density is a generally good thing, because it supports more businesses and friendships within walking distance of my house, makes infrastructure cheaper to provide per person, and allows more people to live without cars. I don’t want to turn Capitol Hill into Manhattan, but the modest increases in building sizes that were allowed in 2010 don’t come close to producing that outcome.
2) Further to the above, we should be accommodating many more people within walking distance of our light rail stations, to get the maximum benefit out of the huge investment we are making in building fast, comfortable, high capacity transit.
3) Perhaps most important of all, Seattle has a housing affordability crisis. Too many people who work here can’t afford to live here, saddling them with long commutes that are toxic to their quality of life, strain our transport infrastructure, and add to the region’s carbon footprint and air quality problems. While City Council is taking some positive steps to approach this problem by looking at a large minimum wage increase, all such efforts will be rendered futile if we don’t significantly increase the housing supply in walkable, transit-served parts of Seattle, because putting more money in peoples’ pockets without addressing the artificial scarcity of housing will only increase housing costs by the same amount.
I grew up in London and as wonderful as that city is, I have seen one after another of my old friends pushed out to the edges of town, to deprived, high-crime areas, or to dormitory towns beyond the green belt, because housing is so completely unaffordable in any location that really enjoys the benefits of London. Even people with well established, high status careers are being pushed out, unless their parents can help them buy a home. I desperately want to avoid this fate for Seattle, but since so many people move here each year we can’t avoid it without dramatically loosening the limits on new housing construction.
As a homeowner in the LR3 zone at the top of Capitol Hill, my financial interests would be served by restricting construction, preserving my view of Mount Rainier and inflating the price of my house, but I am speaking up in favour of increased development because I have more to gain by making the city I have adopted into an even better, more inclusive and more sustainable place.
Please stand by the 2010 Code and consider increasing the density allowed around light rail stations, for the sake of the many people who should be able to enjoy what I have but will never be able to afford to if we restrict construction, and for the sake of the much better functioning Seattle we could have if we allow it to be built.
Why are there only low-rises allowed by the light rail station in Capitol Hill? If we are building a light rail station would we not want taller buildings than 50 feet near there? Kent is allowing taller buildings by the planned light rail station. A couple years ago the city of Kent passed a huge rezone to the west part of Kent where the light rail is planned to go. In most of the area rezoned (by highway 516 and 99) developers will be able to build 55 to 200 feet. If we are planning on having the light rail be used, then limiting buildings to low-rise around the light rail station in Capitol Hill makes no sense. If Kent, (suburbia) is upzoning then why would it not make sense for Capitol Hill (right next to downtown) to upzone?
I couldn’t agree more. I am personally very fond of the Vancouver Skytrain development pattern – you can pick out suburban Skytrain locations on the horizon from their clusters of skyscrapers, but each cluster covers quite a small area, so there’s plenty of space left for all the people who don’t want to live in one.
(a detail, though: right by the light rail we’re getting something like 8-10 stories, and some things are being done very right vis a vis integrating mixed-use development closely with the station itself.)