“Hearing again and again all these stories of being trapped on the roof and having to float on things. Being in these really dire emergency situations, even if you knew how to swim would be terrifying,” Francis said. “Folks of color are getting direct hits from climate chaos that includes rising sea levels and floods.” 

And, climate change chaos is manifesting in Seattle through its new sweltering summers. 

As people turn to urban lakes and rivers to seek some relief, drownings are spiking to totals never seen before. The temperature shift compounds existing environmental and social justice issues: Not only are communities of color living in heat islands with limited cooling infrastructure, but they have also been historically excluded from places where they would have opportunities to learn how to swim. Meanwhile, the lifeguard shortage hitting the region means there are fewer chances to swim in safer, monitored settings.

A spike in drowning cases coincides with Seattle’s yearly bouts of heatwaves that have come each summer since 2019. Over these last few years the number of people who drowned has doubled – averaging 30 preventable deaths a year. And of the 12 people who’ve died so far this year, many drowned during the unusual spring heatwave in May, when fresh snowmelt still flowed through rivers and into lakes, increasing risk of hypothermia. 

“As climate change impacts our region, that’ll be something that we collectively need to come to grips with, that warmer weather is happening earlier,” said Tony Gomez, program manager with Seattle & King County’s Violence and Injury Prevention Unit. “It’s certainly an equity concern.” 

Gomez analyzes trends in Seattle’s drowning cases through numbers he collects from medical examiner records. He looks at demographics and factors, like toxicology and location, in five-year summaries. 

Lake Washington is the deadliest for swimmers and recreationalists in Seattle who take to open water. And, its shorelines in South Seattle bump up to the most racially and ethnically diverse neighborhoods in the city which run parallel to Lake Washington. Black residents here are 2.5 times more likely to drown than White residents. 

In his summary for 2018 to 2022, he also found that people who are Asian, Pacific Islander, and Indigenous make up 17% of drowning deaths.

These statistics stem from racism and violence that persisted at public pools in mid-century America. Seattle was no exception. 

“It’s not just the physical fear of water, it’s really this intense history,” said Francis, who developed trauma-informed workshops at Oshun Swim School centered around healing. “We might not know the details of it, but we still feel and experience it. 

Reclaiming Water Spaces 

When the renovated Colman Pool in West Seattle opened in 1941, the recreational director ordered pool attendants to only allow White people to swim. He called it a solution to overcrowding. 

Densho Archives, an organization that catalogs Japanese American stories, preserved the moment through an interview with Seattle-born Yosh Nakagawa. He tried to use the pool, but while the discrimination was subtle, it was effective, he said. When Nakagawa and other Japanese Americans were forcibly relocated to concentration camps, Black students from the University of Washington protested for three years before finally getting entry to the pool. 

This exclusion still often manifests in public institutions and recreational spaces for people of color, because they don’t see themselves represented there. It’s something Nina Wallace, who now works at Densho Archives, saw when she was a lifeguard for eight years. She watched interactions unfold at the indoor pool in the Central District that still give her pause. 

“Sometimes, I think it’s a question of what is the environment that is being cultivated in this space? Are the lifeguards all White and always yelling at the Black and brown kids for throwing noodles around or things like that? It’s not going to be like an explicit rule that, you know, people of color are not welcome at this pool,” she said. “But maybe that’s the message that people are receiving.” 

The lifeguard shortage is also causing some beaches to close early or not offer supervised swimming hours. Three Seattle beaches don’t have any lifeguards this summer: Madison, Seward, and East Green Lake beaches. Many beaches are unattended after 7pm, despite the sunset being nearly two hours afterward. 

While lifeguard shortages have been blamed on pandemic-era closures and restrictions, nationwide only 6% of lifeguards are Black. The low numbers highlight the limitation of who can enter this workforce because of inequitable access to basic water skills.

Changing Policies for a Safer Future

To keep people safe in open water, policy change increasingly proves to be the most impactful tool for water competency.

Pilot programs like Swim Seattle are trying to remove barriers for the next generation by offering free lessons to those who may not be comfortable in water or can’t afford aquatic-related classes. The first cohort also includes parents who are addressing their fears of water as well as learning about skincare and haircare when swimming. 

The program works closely with community groups like No More Under – a nonprofit dedicated to equitable swim access and tools. Chezik Tsunoda founded this group after her three-year-old son’s drowning. Through her devastating experience, Tsunoda learned that drowning is a leading cause of death of children, and for those who survive, it can leave children with long-term neurological complications.  

Tsunoda advocated for House Bill 1750, and worked with Mill Creek Representative April Berg at the State Legislature who ensured its successful passage. Known as Yori’s Law, the legislation commits the state to providing swim education and tools to all children regardless of race and socio-economic status. 

Yori’s Law is based on awareness, so Tsunoda is now pushing for funding for a drowning prevention curriculum in schools. That way if children get into a life-threatening situation in water, they know what to do – just like they have learned about the drop, cover, and hold positions during earthquakes.  

“You buckle your seatbelt every time you get in a car, right? It’s second nature,” Tsunoda said. “We are surrounded by water, and we recreate around water. It’s sad to me that we don’t have the awareness to not only teach our children, but also, the adults.” 

It’s not just education that needs to be revised by policy, but stronger regulation needs to be written for urban beaches. States that regulate beaches are associated with lower rates of drowning, according to research from the University of Washington and Seattle Children’s Hospital. New York, Massachusetts, and New Jersey have regulations that mandated reviews of beach design and water clarity levels. These states have half the number of drownings in open, natural waters than Washington. 

Conversations about having such regulations in Washington are now just starting. State leaders cite financial restraints, but they are still paying for it retroactively. The drowning cost burden statewide each year is $1.4 billion which includes medical care and other expenses, Gomez said. 

That’s money that could be spent up front on prevention while saving lives – because swim skills are essential for frontline communities of the climate crisis, the same communities who are rebuilding their relationship with water. 

“So many things about the climate catastrophe we’re in, it’s so daunting and complex, but with swimming, it’s straightforward,” Francis said. “You need the time and access to a safe space to learn these skills and then you have it for the rest of your life.” 

Urban Swimming Resources

Swim and Safety Programs: 

• Oshun Swim School
• Dance & Splash Events with Inspired Child 
• Swim Seattle – Parks
• Swim Lessons | YMCA of Greater Seattle

Swimming Locations:

• Swimming Beaches – Parks | seattle.gov
• King County Department of Natural Resources and Parks – Swim Guide

Water Quality for Swimming Locations

• About the Lake Swimming Beach Program – King County Lake Swimming Beach Bacteria and Temperature – King County

The post Drownings Spike in Urban Waters, Hitting People of Color Hardest first appeared on The Urbanist.

“Our analysis shows that the region is on track to add fewer housing units than it needs to match expected population growth by 2050,” the researchers wrote. “The Puget Sound Regional Council (PSRC) estimates a need for about 275,000 new housing units in the region over the next decade — about a third more than were added during the 2010s. Although current zoning policies provide room for additional housing growth near transit, much of that potential is in communities where real estate development demand has been limited in recent decades; on the other hand, many jurisdictions with high development demand have very little room for new homes, inhibiting new construction.”

Seattle was the third-fastest growing metropolitan region in the country in the 2010’s, the authors note, trailing only Austin and Fort Worth, Texas. Without zoning changes and other interventions, it appears housing growth will continue to lag population growth with disastrous implications for housing affordability, homelessness, and a whole host of other related issues.

The report analyzes zoning city by city and quantifies the amount of housing that zoning liberalization would allow. The modeled zoning reforms are focused on frequent transit corridors, also studying a “plexify” option to add fourplexes elsewhere. The clear takeaway is that existing zoning is quite restrictive and is smothering new housing in high demand cities from Seattle and Bellevue on down to smaller cities.

“While some municipalities have added substantial new housing supply, especially near existing and planned transit stations, others — including areas with high housing values such as Bellevue, Lake Forest Park, Mukilteo, and Newcastle — have added very few, despite considerable market demand; these communities also feature few federally subsidized affordable housing units,” the report concludes. “Even in Seattle, where most transit-adjacent housing growth is concentrated, many station areas are zoned for low densities by right.”

Reached by phone, Freemark underscored the mismatch between the Seattle region’s zoning capacity and the location of many of its high-demand housing markets.

“There actually is significant room in the existing zoning to build more housing units,” Freemark said. “The problem is that a huge percentage of that increased space for more homes is specifically in areas that are unlikely to attract developer interest… So you have places like Everett where there’s actually a lot of zoning enabling lots of housing construction but not a lot of developer interest in actually building those houses.”

In Seattle proper, the reforms considered by Urban Institute would make room for 270,000 additional homes near transit, a 50% increase in zoning capacity. However, in cities the authors categorize as “high construction, high demand” the reforms would more than double zoning capacity, with “low-demand cities” and “low construction, high-demand cities” not far behind at just shy of a doubling in capacity.

The researchers state their goal was “to understand the effects of broad land-use policy change conducted through municipal, regional, or state-level action,” and they examined the following four potential reforms:

• “Plexify”: Allowing four-flat apartments in any residential zone that currently limits development to one-, two-, or three-unit buildings — shown in yellow on the maps.
• “Missing Middle”: Allowing up to 12 units in multifamily zones — shown in blue on the maps.
• “Multiply”: Allowing a 100% increase in developable housing units on lots within a quarter mile of stations — shown in red on the maps.
• “Legalize”: Allowing residential development on parcels that are currently zoned only for commercial, neighborhood retail, and public use — shown in black on the maps.

Once implemented, these changes could make a significant difference in a relatively short amount of time. “We project that if the government implemented all reforms together, the number of transit-adjacent housing units produced could increase by about 70% over the next decade, adding more than 60,000 units compared with the status quo,” the researchers wrote.

Freemark noted that their analysis of development trends indicated that the multiply option focused on dense multifamily housing near transit would result in the most new housing, but the “plexify” option was important for better distributing housing in high-demand single-family neighborhoods. For missing middle to really take off and scale up, developers and investors will need to figure out the model and work at a different scale than most operate now, as large apartment project of single-family development predominate.

“We believe that a broad-scale state rezoning policy could be an effective mechanism to encourage a fairer distribution of housing throughout the Puget Sound,” researchers wrote. “Requiring every community to demonstrate how it will provide the space for new units in the coming years — and actually ensuring that units get built in these locations — is a reasonable fair housing strategy and one that could counter the pernicious racial and class segregation that affects much of American society.”

Zoning reforms would help the Seattle region get the most out of the major transit investments in the works. The region’s light rail network will stretch 116 miles plus 54 miles of bus rapid transit lines once the Sound Transit 3 package is completed over the next two decades.

“Major transit investments could transform regional mobility, but local rules currently limit housing growth,” they write. “Most housing is built in neighborhoods zoned for multifamily housing, but about one-third of station-adjacent land is zoned for only single-family homes. Almost 50 percent of this land requires at least one parking spot per unit, adding to housing costs.”

The package Urban Institute isn’t the same as the state bills and local reforms in the works, but it is similar. Rep. Jessica Bateman (D-Olympia) recently introduced a missing middle housing bill, HB 1110, that would legalize fourplexes in cities statewide, with the option for sixplexes if two units are set aside for lower income tenants. A bill focused on denser multifamily housing near transit is also planned, as we noted in our state legislative preview. We’ll continue to monitor those bills as they make their way through the process.

Research like Urban Institute just released only strengthens the case for broad zoning reform.

City-by-City Analysis of Zoning Reforms

Seattle

Urban Institute estimates Seattle would have room for 270,000 more homes near transit with the zoning reforms they modeled. They note that “plexify” option was particularly fruitful in West Seattle, where existing zoning is restrictive and largely single-family zoning.

Tacoma

65,000 more homes would be possible in Tacoma with Urban Institute’s reforms. The Tacoma Link streetcar extension and Pacific Avenue bus rapid transit would be the focal point corridors for changes. Tacoma already has zoning changes in motion with its Home in Tacoma rezone package.

Bellevue

The zoning reform package that Urban Institute proposed would add capacity for 28,000 more homes in Bellevue. With the RapidRide K Line in limbo with no firm timeline for completion, the researchers did not model “multiply” changes along the line.

Redmond

Redmond would have room for 19,000 more homes following the reforms Urban Institute studied. Light rail is due in Redmond by 2025.

Everett

The proposed zoning reform package in Everett would make room for 55,000 more homes. Zoning in downtown Everett is already pretty generous following a recent upzone, but other parts of the city continue to be largely zoned for low density residential development. The Evergreen Way and SR 99 corridor has rapid bus service and will have some Everett Link light rail stations eventually too.

Unincorporated Snohomish County

67,000 additional homes could be accommodated in unincorporated Snohomish County with the reforms studied by Urban Institute. This area will get Everett Link light rail stations and Swift bus rapid transit stations.

Lynnwood

Lynnwood would have room for 19,000 more homes primarily near its bus rapid transit stations and planned light rail stations, as Lynnwood Link arrives in 2024. Lynnwood has flirted with a housing backlash, but seems to have avoided it thus far.

Mountlake Terrace

Mountlake Terrace authorized a rezone ahead of light rail arrival with the Lynnwood Link extension, but the changes are focused in a narrow area around its “downtown” station. Urban Institute’s package would make room for 20,000 more homes.

Shoreline

Shoreline has rezoned near its two soon-to-open light rail stations, but the Urban Institute package would go further, target the RapidRide E Line corridor, and also add zoning changes like fourplexes on single family parcels. Doing so would make room for 39,000 more homes.

Burien

Burien would make room for 7,000 more homes near transit with the reforms studied. Burien already has RapidRide F service and will add Stride S1 bus rapid transit service in 2026.

SeaTac

SeaTac could make room for 21,000 more homes near transit, which includes RapidRide F, Central Link, and, by 2026, Stride S1.

Renton

Renton would add room for 26,000 more homes under the studied changes. The RapidRide F Line serves Renton, and the I Line and Sound Transit’s Stride S1 will add more service in additional corridors.

Lake Forest Park

Lake Forest Park could make room for 5,500 more homes near transit, with its main corridor SR 522 along Lake Washington. The Stride S3 Line will upgrade service in 2027.

Kenmore

Kenmore could make room for 5,000 more homes via the studied reforms. Stride S3 will add bus rapid transit service in 2027.

Bothell

Bothell could make room for 22,000 more homes near transit via the reforms studied. Bus rapid transit lines that serve or will serve Bothell include the Swift Green Line, Stride S3, and Stride S2.

Kirkland

Kirkland could make room for 8,500 more homes near transit under the studied reforms. Adding more rapid transit in Kirkland could fill in the map and add to the total, such as via the delayed RapidRide K Line or extending light rail into the core of Kirkland.

Kent

Multiplying allowed density near Kent’s transit stations will add room for 36,000 more homes. Kent has a South Sounder rail station, and Federal Way Link will serve the southwestern edge of the city. The RapidRide I Line will add service through the heart of the city.

Des Moines

Des Moines could make room for 16,000 more homes under the studied changes. The RapidRide A Line serves the SR 99 corridor, with light rail on the way via the Federal Way Link extension.

Federal Way

Federal Way has RapidRide A service and will have two light rail stations with the Federal Way Link extension and another with the Tacoma Dome Link extensions. The studied zoning reforms could make room for 25,000 more homes near transit.

Auburn

Auburn has a South Sounder station and the future RapidRide I Line will add further rapid transit service. Zoning reforms could make room for 24,000 more homes near transit.

Unincorporated Pierce County

Much of suburban Pierce County is unincorporated and the planned bus rapid transit along SR 7 will serve much of this suburbia. The zoning reforms studied could make room for 74,000 more homes near transit.

The post Report Highlights Puget Sound’s Housing Deficit and Zoning Reform Potential first appeared on The Urbanist.

While wrong track numbers were trending down from a high of 76% in March, they remained high at 69%. Just 30% responded that the city was headed in the right direction, which did mark an improvement. The chamber and its pollster EMC Research said overall the Index poll showed a gradual but positive trend, with fewer respondents saying they were contemplating leaving the region. Chamber CEO Rachel Smith stressed the support the poll found for homeless encampment removals and police hiring in her comments at a press conference this morning. She also found grounds for optimism.

“There are indications that voters believe that we are turning the corner,” Smith said. “Of note, again, homelessness is cooling as a top priority. And I think that’s in large part because people see that progress is being made. It’s slow progress, but it is progress. And again because we’re taking a regional approach and because public and private sector is working together, because there’s a visible difference, including for those experiencing homelessness. I believe that’s why you’re seeing that cooling.”

While the poll question focused on “duplexes and triplexes,” she said that the chamber is open to other housing types, such as the sixplexes and fourplexes that were considered in a statewide zoning reform bill (HB 1782) spearheaded by Rep. Jessica Bateman (D-Olympia) that is likely to return in 2023, perhaps in a modified form. The chamber supports that state legislative effort in addition to working reforms into Seattle’s the major Comprehensive Plan update due in 2024, Smith added.

“You see large numbers of people supporting more housing no matter how you ask the question,” Smith said. “For the chamber’s position, we are very supportive of policies and investments and regulatory changes that are going to allow for more housing… The chamber was very supportive of that legislation last year.”

Andrew Thibault, senior principal at EMC Research, added that the result was remarkable because in other cities, polling has tended to find support for new housing until the question as framed as the neighborhood level where respondents would oppose new housing in their midst. This localized opposition was not prevalent in Seattle, according to the Index poll.

Smith added that the chamber has been in talks with other housing advocates and coalition partners behind the push and expected statewide zoning reform legislation to come back next year.

“I think you will absolutely see [the chamber] supporting that,” Smith said. “Obviously, we haven’t seen the details yet, but our policy position is very supportive.”

She clarified that polling about triplexes wasn’t meant to mark an upward limit of what the chamber would support, or a snub of sixplexes, for instance.

Single family zoning accounts for about two-thirds of residential land in Seattle even as the city has grown rapidly over the past couple of decades. When it comes to apartments, Seattle has been a national leader in production, which has help the city accommodate more than 150,000 additional residents since 2010 — many of them recruited to the region to fill jobs at the fast-growing corporations that the chamber represents. Overall, Seattle hit 762,500 residents at the state’s last tally in April. However, many single family neighborhoods have remained stagnant, and some have actually shrunk in population over that time period.

Housing affordability remained the third-highest ranked issue of concern for Seattleites after homelessness and crime, which were also holdovers. Support for building “new housing in my neighborhood” remained steady at a resounding 67% of poll respondents.

These polling figures continue to suggest boldness and action when it comes to housing and zoning reform, or “big ball, not small ball” in the parlance of Mayor Bruce Harrell. But is the City of Seattle ready to pick up the ball and run with it? A scoping report due this fall should indicate what final alternatives made it into the City’s environmental impact study. Will the playing field be set up for big ball or small ball? Time will tell.

Crime concerns growing

The poll found support for some centrist and conservative positions on other topics, such as police hiring. For example, 73% of respondents agreed with this prompt: “Hiring more police officers should be an immediate priority for the City.” Moreover, support remained relatively high at 59% when framed as police hiring and retention spending “even if means reducing resources available to other City department’s that provide critical services to Seattleites.”

There could be some acquiescence bias going on here, since research has demonstrated poll respondents have a strong tendency to agree with the premise beyond their natural inclinations in agree/disagree questions. Nonetheless, it’s not a favorable data point for supporters of reducing police staffing. This poll would suggest voters are not yet convinced.

The Index poll did not directly tackle the issue of whether the voters would prioritize community-based alternatives and violence prevention programs. However, a recent Crosscut/Elway poll found strong support for these alternative public safety investments and tackling the root causes of crime — even more so than increasing police spending.

“When asked where they think the city should direct its resources to deal with crime, 92% of respondents said funding for more addiction and mental health services,” Crosscut‘s Josh Cohen reported. “Eighty-one percent want to see more de-escalation training for police officers, 80% want more social programs to address crime’s root causes, 75% want to add more nonpolice staffing, and 73% want to see an increase in court staffing to process the caseload.” Meanwhile, 64% of respondents supported hiring more police officers, while 28% wanted to cut spending on police officers in that poll.

Who to trust to fix Seattle’s top issues

On the other hand, acquiescence bias wasn’t enough to goad respondents into agreeing with the statement that “I trust the Seattle City Council to reform the Seattle Police Department without endangering public safety.” For this question, 26% agreed and 74% disagreed.

This question was interesting because the chamber poll did not ask if respondents trusted Mayor Harrell to reform the Seattle Police Department. In fact, this was the only question to bring up either the council or mayor specifically. Ironically, the Mayor is the official tasked with leading on reform as the executive, imbued with the power to hire and fire the police chief.

For his police chief pick, Mayor Harrell went with the status quo pick in interim police chief Adrian Diaz, a deputy chief under his predecessor, Carmen Best. Chief Best was criticized for approving use of tear gas on protesters and overseeing the blast balling of journalists who were covering the protests. She also oversaw the abandonment East Precinct and then helped cover up how those decisions were made by deleting texts, which are public records officially are legally required to retain, apparently in concert with Mayor Jenny Durkan, who repeatedly deleted her own text records and then lied about the coverup. Many advocates saw these actions as opposed to police reform and accountability efforts.

I asked Smith and Thibault why they didn’t ask the same police reform trust question of the mayor, and Smith indicated is was because Mayor Durkan supported increasing funding for the Seattle Police Department when they debuted that question in their August 2021 Index poll. “Reform” is standing in for defunding the police in this context, it seems. Thibault added that other research did suggest voters trusted Mayor Harrell more on the issue of police reform.

“Not from this survey, but from other work — we do a ton of research in Seattle — I can tell that the mayor has significantly higher levels of trust overall than the city council does,” Thibault said. “So that’s so going to bleed over into any question that you ask about. The distrust of the city council is going to bleed over into question of taxes, spending, public safety, and dealing with homelessness.”

Smith agreed trust was essential.

“Trust in government is really important,” Smith added. “We don’t gain trust by ignoring the distrust. We gain trust by rebuilding it and doing what we need to do civically and as a community to rebuild trust in government.”

In recent election cycles, considerable centrist campaign spending has also went into eroding trust in city council, which means the trust building work starts from a bigger hole. Nonetheless, the fate of many major public endeavors from building a world class transit network to decarbonizing the economy to adapting to climate change to building out supportive housing to end the homelessness crisis ride on building trust in government, which, like it or not, includes the Seattle City Council.

The post Chamber Poll Finds Strong Support for Housing, Zoning Reform among Seattle Voters first appeared on The Urbanist.

The research comes as newly available datasets reveal building-level rents over time, and the occasional demographical data. Combining that with statistical analysis helped researchers control for reverse causality. Ultimately, the question that the research is trying to address is about what new market-rate housing does to housing affordability. Two forces are presented; how they measure against each other is the subject of investigation.

On one side are those who think new market-rate units — unsubsidized homes whose price often places them beyond the reach of lower- and middle-income households — make nearby housing more affordable by increasing availability and relieving pressure on the existing housing stock. This is known as the “supply effect.” An opposing view, however, is that new housing only attracts more wealthy households, brings new amenities to the neighborhood (including the housing itself), and sends a signal to existing landlords that they should raise their rents. This “amenity effect” or “demand effect” thus makes housing less affordable.

— Shane Philips, Michael Manville, and Michael Lens

Right off the bat, the roundup’s authors acknowledge that the discussion they’re distilling isn’t about whether or not new housing can reduce housing affordability. They write that there is good consensus that new housing keeps down the prices of housing in high demand regions. However, what is worth further examination is how and why market-rate development affects affordability rather than whether or not affordability is affected.

Addressing Supply Skepticism

The roundup’s authors first ground their writing in a 2018 paper by Vicki Been, Ingrid Gould Ellen, and Katherine O’Regan called Supply Skepticism: Housing Supply and Affordability. The researchers sought to address the growing concerns and advocacy that seek to defeat development on the basis of preserving housing affordability. Notable groups question the premise that increasing supply of market-rate housing will improve housing affordability. Concerned by the lack of serious interrogation of this skepticism, the authors contribute a survey of existing literature that addresses the concerns of supply skeptics. Been, Ellen, and O’Regan offer sincere responses to seemingly plausible but dangerous arguments presented by skeptics.

Supply skeptic arguments and the author’s responses include:

• Supply skeptic argument one: Land used in many high-cost market-rate housing will come at the expense of affordable homes. In other words, supply and demand break down with housing because housing is tied to a specific plot of land. Plus, land is a limited resource and should be used for more affordable units. An extreme example that skeptics would point to as wasted use of land is vacant luxury homes.
  • To approach this argument, the authors of Supply Skepticism present literature that found that in a constrained market like land, supply of housing does increase and that prices generally fall in response. They bring up high intensity of use for housing (density) to address the concerns about land as a limited resource. The authors also discuss the lack of an assurance that land would be used for affordable housing if it wasn’t occupied by market-rate housing — land being too costly for affordable housing and the high cost of affordable housing are brought up as examples to why other uses might outcompete for the land.
  • Inclusionary zoning is presented as a middle ground to ensure that some land is used for affordable units.
• Supply skeptic argument two: Adding supply at the top end will do little or nothing to alleviate affordability challenges in lower-priced markets. Of high concern to skeptics is luxury housing, which they find problematic because skeptics think that building at one price point doesn’t affect prices of housing in another price category.
  • Here the authors refer to literature that shows housing filtering up and down into different price points. They find substantial fractions of affordable housing units have filtered down from moderate and high cost housing markets due to aging and tenure conversion — often owner-occupied to rental. Study in markets that are less responsive to housing demand found a higher likelihood of affordable units filtering up to less affordable housing submarkets, so not building housing to meet demand will make affordable units become less affordable.
  • The authors also emphasize that even though there is down filtering, it doesn’t mean housing needs are being addressed for all price points. This leaves plenty of room to argue for publicly funded below market-rate housing.
• Supply skeptic argument three: Induced demand, cost decreases will instantly be offset by new demand triggered by lower costs. This argument is analogous to how widening highways or building new highways doesn’t ease traffic, long-term, because new capacity will increase demand and not improve traffic conditions.
  • While the authors do find evidence to reinforce induced demand for highways, the logic doesn’t transfer smoothly to housing. They cite literature that points to lower and decreasing mobility of housing compared to driving. The researchers do concede there being a limited induced demand, but the effect doesn’t cancel out affordability benefits from more and sufficient supply increases. While it doesn’t prove causation, the authors do highlight all the empirical evidence that shows more supply leading to lower house prices, which does crack this hypothesis by supply skeptics.
• Supply skeptic argument four: New housing increases rent and triggers displacement in immediate neighborhoods. This line of argument is what the roundup is most concerned with, as they consider the demand effect with the effect of new amenities — retail and improved aesthetics.
  • Here the authors take pause as little empirical evidence existed when inspecting the supply effect in 2018. If anything, they found limited theory and evidence backing skeptical thinking, but they caution that it may not prove a causal relationship. Some study has found that even subsidized low-income development in blighted areas can sometimes increase surrounding property value, this is caveated as new housing replacing disamenities like vacant homes and littered lots.

How the latest literature stacks up

After a foray into supply skepticism, the roundup examines six working papers released in 2019 or 2020. While these papers are still awaiting peer review, they provide a near unanimous view to back up the conventional wisdom that new market-rate housing supply makes housing more affordable. Only one of the six provides mixed results and offers some reasoning to why new market-rate housing might make nearby housing more expensive.

Seemingly aware of the environment it’s publishing in, the first paper in its introduction clearly states that, “If there is an endogenous amenity effect, it appears to be overwhelmed by the standard supply effect.” The 2019 paper, Supply shock versus demand shock: The local effects of new housing in low-income areas by Brian Asquith, Evan Mast, and Davin Reed, analyses the impact of large market-rate rental developments on nearby rents in low-income census tracts. With data spanning 11 cities and tens of thousands of units, the authors find that rents within 250 meters of new development fall by 5% to 7% compared to rents in buildings 250 to 600 meters away.

In the roundup’s next 2019 paper, Evan Mast goes on his own to establish a migration chain within 700 market-rate multifamily developments. Mast’s paper, The effect of new market-rate housing construction on the low-income housing market, found that there is a chain of people moving into new housing, someone else moving into their old home, and so forth. This creates a cycle where slack is created in the lower-end housing market. He found the effect taking place within five years. It also provides evidence to counter the induced demand arguments presented in Supply Skepticism by noting that 67% of movers were from the same metro area, which means new housing isn’t instantly all swallowed up by outside demand. Filtering is also backed up by this study by showing how migration initiates the process where aging homes can start to fall down the pricing submarkets with cycling ownership. This of course isn’t to say that new market-rate housing will solve an affordability crisis alone; five years is not an acceptable timeframe to solve a housing crisis. Plus, housing production would need to be sufficiently robust and sustained to reach a broad swath of the population, and some extremely low-income households may never be able to afford market-rate rents.

The next three studies — Does building new housing cause displacement?: The supply and demand effects of construction in San Francisco by Kate Pennington, Do new housing units in your backyard raise your rents by Xiaodi Li, and The impact of new housing supply on the distribution of rents by Andres Mense — all also find decreasing rents in neighborhoods and cities where new market-rate developments are completed. Pennington’s study also found risk of displacement falling by 17.1% within 100 meters of a development site. Additionally, both Pennington’s and Li’s study observe evidence of a demand effect with increases residential renovations, business turnover, and restaurant openings. Despite an existing demand effect, both of those studies found that increased supply still resulted in decreasing rents — though for Li’s study, rent declines for low-rent buildings were not statistically significant.

Of particular interest to the rest of the roundup is Anthony Damiano and Chris Frenier’s 2020 paper, Building baby build?: Housing submarkets and the effects of new construction on existing rents, that found rents rising on average 6.6% in less expensive Minneapolis buildings when development happened within 300 meters. On the other hand, rents lowered by 3.2% in more expensive buildings. Initial reaction to that finding was controversy due to incongruent class effects. However, the roundup’s authors are quick to note that Damiano and Frenier’s study doesn’t adjust for inflation — a fault that may be refined out with peer review — which would find that real rents grew only by 0.2% for lower market housings — similar to Li’s study. Nevertheless, class differences remain as real rents for middle- and high-market housing decreased by 5.3% and 12.2% respectively. The other studies don’t subdivide the housing market like this one does. Though in a different paper by Mense, new development did make rents fall for cheaper housing stock.

Takeaways

At the end of the roundup, the authors make sure to emphasize that new and additional market-rate housing is not a panacea for rising housing costs. That’s clear from the small percentages that rent does decrease when new development does come. They instead present their evidence to support the argument that market-rate housing should complement rather than undermine other housing affordability strategies like subsidies, inclusionary zoning, and affordable housing construction. The authors also voice concern over problematic development that either reduces housing supply, displaces low-income households in exchange for a modest increase in housing supply, or over-saturates development in low-income and vulnerable communities.

Gentrification, the authors argue, should be addressed with evenly distributed development and varying degrees of government intervention based on demand. Los Angeles’ Echo Lake is elevated as an example of gentrification despite the little housing development that has happened with housing inventory only increasing 10% between 1970 and 2018. The fixed amount of housing was eventually picked off by those that had more money.

Temporarily discarding housing costs, demand effect and supply effect both seem good for our urban environment. More amenities mean more local land uses, and less need for cars. The opposite happens in low-housing supply areas, where negative environmental effects are exasperated. Gentrification despite no housing supply changes further income and racial/ethnic segregation. There’s also evidence that supply restriction limits economic growth. We just have to make high-demand areas more affordable.

Reflecting on how Seattle’s housing market is behaving, it’s clear that the city has rapidly increasing housing costs. More vulnerable areas in Seattle are also disproportionality burdened by urban village designations and therefore development. To combat local gentrification and rising housing costs, both private and public sectors should have a hand in increasing housing supply with market-rate, social, and subsidized housing solutions. Zoning laws should also be updated to allow for more uniform development of the city, as to prevent further entrenchment of wealthy alcoves and provide relief to marginalized communities.

This conclusion isn’t anything new, this research confirms long-held planning and economic theory, but it’s good to have research and urbanist advocacy lined up. Having more nuance and a more robust body of literature on new housing and affordability is not only critical to counter dangerous and misguided supply skepticism, but it also helps guide policymakers on how to set housing policy equitability and effectively. The last thing cities should do is force market-rate and affordable builders into fierce competition by severely constricting the sites that they allow to be developed, which only drives up land and housing costs while resulting in less housing for everyone.

The post New Round of Studies Underscore Benefits of Building More Housing first appeared on The Urbanist.

So, what is the “smart grid” and what does it look like?

Broadly speaking, “smart grid” refers to the technology that digitizes our traditionally analog grid and evolves our electrical grid so that it can accommodate communication devices and software. 

The United States Department of Energy defines a smart grid as an “intelligent electricity grid—one that uses digital communications technology, information systems, and automation to detect and react to local changes in usage, improve system operating efficiency, and, in turn, reduce operating costs while maintaining high system reliability.”

At home, Seattle City Light has rolled out some smart grid technology into its service area. Our utility’s smart grid tech comes into the form of advanced metering infrastructure (AMI). AMI is a combination of smart meters, communication networks, and information-management systems. 

Installation of this system is supposed to reduce the environmental impact of the utility. Bimonthly in person readings are being replaced with multiple communications a day between a smart meter and the utility, eliminating much of the utility’s transportation needs. 

AMI will also improve customer service and grid reliability for consumers. Seattle City Light have better monitoring of interruptions and irregularities, allowing their crews faster response times and greater preventative capacities. Additionally, advanced metering should improve bill accuracy, a much-needed improvement after the debacle and lawsuit after the launch of Seattle City Light’s new billing system.

Advanced metering is just a member of a collection of “smart grid” systems. All smart grid systems are essentially just a few component layers added on to a conventional grid system.

New hardware layers include automated/digital meters, sensors, new controls, and communications devices. Overlaying that hardware are tiers of software involved in combination of administrative, analytical, controls, and customer service tasks. 

These new layers grant our electrical grid greatly enhanced capacity to meet our progressively more complicated energy needs and protect our energy security. They can create platforms where utilities, consumers, and other parties can innovate to improve affordability, reliability, resilience, and environmental friendliness of our electrical infrastructure and supply.

AMI is a smart grid system that primarily collects information. Other smart grid systems not only collect data, but also assemble, display, and analyze information; receive information and control the behavior of devices to achieve a goal; generate, store, or reduce demand for electricity. Smart grid systems that do these operations include:

• Fault location, Isolation, and Service Restoration
• Advanced Pricing
• Grid and Equipment Health Monitoring
• Microgrids
• Distribution Automation
• Distributed Storage

While Seattle City Light’s AMI system isn’t the most advanced system, it does provide valuable insight into the benefits of digitizing our electrical grid. The primary effects that AMI and other smart grid technologies create are reduced greenhouse gas emission and improved grid reliability and resilience, all of which reduce costs.

Modernizing our grid for renewable generation

Incorporation of electric intelligent components in the electrical grid has enabled the grid to adjust to the evolving electricity market. Traditionally, our grid has been designed to transport electricity generated from central power plants to consumers. Power flows have since changed with greater distribution of power generation and energy storage.

In cities, distributed power generation often refers to residential solar. These solar systems are often small scale, and privately owned and operated, a stark difference to traditional central and large-scale energy producers. 

Traditional utilities are often wary of connecting distributed energy resources into the grid over safety, grid stability and operation, and pricing concerns or difficulties. The amalgamation of typically automated monitoring and controlling components in a smart grid allows it to manage distributed generation.

Improved information, and control over electricity could enable real-time pricing and packaging of electricity products. Consumers could gain choice over what kind of electricity they purchase, which in turn grants suppliers further incentive to build that kind of generation. Demand for renewable generation could be made tangible with this kind of electricity marketplace.

Distributed generation viability and the existence of large-scale smart grid infrastructure enables actors of any scale to invest in electrical generation. If regulation allows for it, marketplaces could be built onto smart grid systems and provide further economic incentive for private individuals or organizations to operate energy generation and storage systems.

This marketplace could also price in variability, a trait of ever-fluctuating resources like wind and solar. Currently, utilities have to maintain an equilibrium of electricity generated and supplied because unmet demand leads to unintentional brownouts that could disrupt critical uses of electricity. 

A smarter grid accommodates variability by dynamically accessing diverse electricity resources. Utilities could make discounted rates for degrees of interruptible electricity an option, negating worries of variability affecting critical services. This way, during sudden drops in generation, electricity sent to interruptible areas or stored electricity could be diverted to priority consumers. 

Logistical capabilities and efficiencies 

Alongside the capacity to integrate distributed energy generation and energy storage into our electrical grid system, smart grid technology works to optimize all accessible components. This not only produces environmental benefits, but also monetary savings.

The most direct greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction from smart grid technology is reduced vehicle miles traveled by utilities. Smart meters and digital communication remove the need for a utility to dispatch meter readers. Equipment health monitors optimize maintenance of the grid, further minimizing vehicle miles traveled by maintenance workers.

Other GHG reductions come from smart grid applications that optimize the benefit that suppliers and consumers get out of energy infrastructure. GHG reductions of energy storage and renewable generation can be maximized with applications that are exclusive to smart grid systems.  

A smart grid can communicate with electricity energy storage systems (ESS) to deliver the information needed for an ESS to autonomously conduct demand-shifting energy services. These services include load leveling, and peak shaving. They reduce GHG emission by combating the need for peaker plants. 

Peaking power plants or peakers turn on when demand for electricity exceeds the capacity of base load plants and other energy sources. Peakers are often carbon-based and expensive to operate. Costs of peaker plants raise the cost of electricity 30% to 70% based on demand spikes.

Natural gas is most common fuel for peaker plants. Meanwhile, renewable resources make for poor peaker fuel as they cannot generate a vast amount of energy on a whim.

Smart grid enabled energy storage systems can erase the need for peaker plants by providing services that shift the demand vs time curve. These services effectively shift demand in a manner that levels off electricity needed by electrical plants to the point where only base load is sufficient. 

Peak shaving with ESS just involves using storage energy to smooth out and fill in electrical demand to match base load generation during periods of peaking demand. Load leveling services go further; they purchase and store electricity during periods of low demand and lower prices and then fill the niche that a peaker plant would take during periods of high demand. 

A digitized grid system is required in order to autonomously coordinate operations between generation and storage systems. Robust automation will be needed to ensure that load leveling, and peak shaving occurs smoothly. Additionally, advanced algorithms can be utilized to optimize for cost and emissions.

Demand shifting services are increasingly important as great temperature variances from climate change affect heating and cooling habits. Rising temperatures will require either more peaker plants or more energy storage systems. 

Softer smart grid services may also have a demand shift effect. Advanced metering and communications will inform households of their energy usage and energy costs on a 24-hour scale. This could help reduce electrical demands during their traditional peaks by giving households monetary incentives to time-shift their electrical usage. 

Energy Security

Also bolstered during the adoption of smart grid technology is the security of our energy supply. As we grow increasingly dependent on electricity, increasing our energy security is paramount. Smart grid technology improves our energy security by improving the reliability and resilience of our electrical grid.

Reliability refers to how adequate, safe, and stable the flow of electricity is. This indicator is improved by smart grids through real-time monitoring and communication between smart grid components. It is also bettered with the increased pool of energy resources that a smart grid can accommodate.

Grid resilience comprises of the preparation for, operation through, and recovery from system interrupting events. Data collected from monitors can be used to create models and simulations of outages to train with, improving preparation for large outages. Equipment health monitors can guide utilities crews to quickly respond to outages and hasten recovery.  

The technology also fosters a stable and distributed source of electrical generation and storage, which prevents any singular points of generation failure for significantly impacting supply. This is in clear contrast to traditionally centralized generation, transmission, or distribution, in which failure would be catastrophic.

Some definitions of energy security have expanded to include energy affordability. Removing the need for peaking power plants, a falling cost for renewable generation, and expanded access of the grids to more suppliers further augments energy security gained from smart grid infrastructure.

Barriers and Concerns

As with any major infrastructure project, grid modernization is an expensive task. Seattle’s AMI project ended up costing more than $100 million, after going 20% over its original $84 million budget.

That $100 million is marginal when compared to the 2011 estimate by the Electric Power Research Institute that priced a “fully functioning Smart Grid” at $338 billion to $476 billion. That institute does also estimate that an investment of that size could net a benefit-to-cost ratio of 2.8 to 6.0.

Such an expansion to our grid infrastructure also challenges the role of our utilities. Dispute between a generator and a utility could occur if the utility seeks to curtail a generator’s output for operational stability. New policy must handle the governance on diverse ownership stakes of distributed energy resources.

Tension also arises with the mass collection of usage data by smart grid tools. Utilities will also have to deal with vast amounts of potential sensitive data usage that inflames privacy and cybersecurity concerns. 

In 2018, the Seattle City Council passed a law to protect utility customer’s personal data, during the controversial roll out of the regional utility’s smart meter program. A more elaborate grid will likely harvest even more sensitive data, which demands an equivalent privacy policy. Progressively more vigilant cybersecurity measures would also be needed to protect that data. 

Cybersecurity will need to be addressed even if we don’t upgrade our grid; it’s not just to protect our data, but also to maintain the integrity of our grid. Russia’s attacks on Ukraine’s power grid illustrate the importance of protecting our electricity dependent way of life. 

How we can continue to modernize our grid

Smart grid projects come in packages of varying costs. Smart meter/AMI infrastructure has already been widely deployed. In 2017, nearly half of American electricity consumers had smart meters. Locally, Seattle City Light is continuing to modernize our grid with a mircogrid demonstration in the works.

Microgrids are a hyper-local application of smart grid technology that create a small and contained system capable of working in tandem with and independent of the wider grid. They are smaller increments of smart grid adoption that may be more palatable for local governments in the United States.

During times of economic distress, infrastructure is a dependable option for economic stimulus. Smart grid infrastructure could spur additional investment by enabling further distributed generation investments. Not only could smart grid infrastructure revitalize our economy, but it could also boost the adoption of green generation.

Smart grids can be a vital foundation for our energy infrastructure. They are critical to extracting the most value out of the renewable generation and storage systems that environmentalists champion. They are also practical, potentially reducing electricity cost and protecting our vital electrical supply.

The post Smart Grids: Technology for a Green Urban Energy Future first appeared on The Urbanist.

We can help you on that path. We have anti-racism books to give away. Thanks to Cary Moon and Mark Reddington for the donation and to Elliott Bay Books for making it happen.

These titles are all standouts in guiding our shared quest to become anti-racists. We are giving away 20 copies of each:

• So You Want to Talk About Race, by Seattle superstar Ijeoma Oluo
• Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America, by Michael Eric Dyson
• White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism, by Robin DiAngelo (another Seattle star)
• How to Be an Antiracist, by Ibram X. Kendi

The books are available now, reserved at Elliott Bay Book Company in Capitol Hill (map here). You can go pick up one book of your choosing from the front desk with the code ANTIRACIST SEATTLE. It’s free first come first served, as long as supplies last. These book copies aren’t doing any good unless people are reading them. Be one of those people.

Stay tuned for discussion groups in the new year; it’s better when we do this together, and work through blind spots and insecurities with one another.

The post Claim a Free Book and Join the Anti-Racism Discussion first appeared on The Urbanist.

Do not miss the celebration party on June 4th at the Sunset Hill Community Association Clubhouse:

• Exhibition gallery and refreshments
• Presentation on findings
• Volunteer awards
• Shingletown to Tomorrow Dance

You’ve earned the celebration in over 829 ways (yes that is a hint). Invite your friends! Everyone is welcome to come party for the love of Ballard! The event kicks off at 6pm tonight and runs until 10pm.

RSVP on Facebook and learn more about the project the Ballard Historical Society.

The post Mapping Historic Ballard Grand Reveal Today first appeared on The Urbanist.

Kushner highlights how social media, assists to provide instantaneous feedback into a project. Sharing images of design concepts introduces a project to the community prior to construction or completion, and people can easily provide feedback and input, enabling greater collaboration between architects and the end users of their spaces.

The post Sunday Video: Design Shaped By The Community first appeared on The Urbanist.

In making the film, Lau hoped to instill this same eye-opening experience on his viewers, transforming them into critical beings, active and engaged in the development of their city. The film, Life Between Buildings, has been transposed the film from the exhibition installation for the screen. It summarizes research conveyed in Gehl’s books and explains the importance of cities being designed to support human life.

The post Sunday Video: Life Between Buildings first appeared on The Urbanist.

Design Guidelines

Synthesizing all of the information in the case studies, the site analysis, and the history of I-5 resulted in a set of general themes and specific design guidelines for each lid section. The guidelines take the form of both strict parameters and suggested features that should be considered by designers, elected officials, and the public. However, a more detailed technical review and rigorous public process will be needed before developing an official plan for the area.

A key theme is facilitating neighborhood connections that have been severed for over half a century. The break in the street wall between Downtown and Capitol Hill is a jarring experience for people walking between the two. There is a long pause between any chance of finding welcoming, human-scale places where spontaneous socializing and commerce can happen. Freeway noise, rivers of cars, and exposure to the elements make pedestrians feel vulnerable and isolated. Bringing new low-scale buildings, awnings, trees, and cozy public spaces to the street edges will provide cohesion between neighborhoods and heal the urban scar left by I-5.

Another theme is the “pedestrian spine”. This concept envisions a unified walking experience throughout the series of lids between Madison Street and Olive Way. This spine should have consistent design elements and accessibility, including wide paths, mid-block crosswalks, and, as previously suggested, new ramps for accessing Freeway Park. Such a path would work well both for people walking and people bicycling. The spine theme works in concert with the “emerald chain”: because the lids will be built in phases, each must be an independent park space. Each emerald should shine on its own but work with its neighbors as they are built later on.

What follows is a summary for each lid section in the order they should be developed:

• Section 2A (east side of the Pike Street/Boren Avenue intersection, 0.3 acres): This lid section should be built first because it is small, it can serve as a prototype for the other sections, and it will be timely with the Washington State Convention Center (WSCC) expansion across the intersection. It can also integrate with the existing Plymouth Pillars Park adjacent to the freeway. Design suggestions include a small plaza, a performance pavilion, and an extension of the neighboring dog park. The intersection itself should be raised to prioritize non-motorized traffic.
• Section 6 (Madison Street to Spring Street, 1.5 acres): The Spring Street on-ramp must be removed to build a full lid that is flush with the surrounding streets (the alternate ramp is six blocks away at James Street). This lid should primarily be a park space, but retail buildings would be appropriate on the east side to preserve a southerly view towards Mount Rainier and activate 7th Avenue. A combination of hardscapes and softscapes can provide a large, versatile event space. Crosswalks and sidewalks are needed on the four sides where they are missing.
• Section 5 (Spring Street to Seneca Street, 1.5 acres): The Seneca Street off-ramp will need to be removed to create a more useable and pedestrian-friendly park surface, along with more space for retail buildings (the alternate ramps are at James Street and Madison Street). This section will also need to integrate with the Naramore Fountain on 6th Avenue. Another major design opportunity is to punch through Freeway Park’s old planter boxes on the south side of Seneca Street and transition into a flatter and more useable space on the new lid.

• Section 3 (Pike Street to Pine Street, 2.5 acres): This lid may may become the crown jewel. It should be developed to fit into the Pike-Pine retail corridor and connect to the WSCC facilities on either end of it. A pedestrian shopping street is envisioned down its length (see the rendering at the top of this article), with terraced lawns and roof decks along the periphery taking advantage of the slope. A staircase between the Paramount Theatre and Plymouth Pillars Park could create a new pedestrian route away from busy streets. This lid has the potential to attract a wide array of visitors while also becoming a new place for Capitol Hill residents to relax and socialize.
• Section 1 (Olive Way to Pine Street, 2.6 acres): This area is the the largest and so should be developed last. The steeper slope here is best negotiated with a terraced surface that can be designed with a tight weave of ramps and stairs from top to bottom, facilitating more passive activities and providing a more relaxing park environment. Any commercial activities should be limited to the top tier of the park, which will have a commanding view to the west and which can connect to existing development on the east side of the freeway.

The recommended areas for lidding total 8.4 acres, resulting in the earlier cost estimate of $250 million. This bites a significant chunk out of the Center City’s 13-acre open space deficit.

The rest of the study areas are not recommended for lid development:

• Sections 4A and 4B (Freeway Park gaps, total of 1.5 acres): These two gaps in Freeway Park’s coverage should not be developed. Freeway Park has significant historical value in its original design, and it provides a view of the unique University Street ramp and the curving freeway mainline below. More practically, the gaps can likely provide natural tunnel ventilation, negating the need for some of the costly and space-consuming mechanical equipment that may otherwise be needed throughout the study area.
• Section 2B (west side of the Pine Street/Boren Avenue intersection, 0.1 acres): This area is not a lid candidate because the WSCC expansion will cantilever over the freeway at this location. The latest design iteration proposes retail space and building entries at this corner, which will be a positive change from what is an otherwise desolate pedestrian experience.

• Secondary north (Olive Way to Denny Way, 4.2 acres) and Secondary south (Madison Street to Yesler Way, 15.5 acres): These secondary areas should only be considered for lidding after the primary study areas are fully developed. They are not in a trench that is easily covered, with retaining walls only on the eastern side. In the south a portion of the freeway is also elevated above city streets. If lids were built with open colonnades on the downhill side, the environmental impacts would be substantial. Underneath Freeway Park, for instance, the traffic noise reaches a deafening 85 decibels. Solid walls would be necessary, essentially creating a concrete case. This is likely a costlier proposition that would present little visual improvement unless other measures, like embedding private development into the side of the case, were implemented. But with all of this said, these two areas are quite large and could support a wide variety of park features and private development in the more distant future.

Moving Forward

People live in cities for the access to other people, jobs, shopping, entertainment, and events that only urban environments can foster. Over the past century, that environment has been threatened by a concerted effort to focus less on natural and efficient means of access (that is, walking, bicycling, and transit), and instead make cities more accessible by private automobile. Compared to the rest of North America, Seattle has actually been relatively spared from the most dramatic effects of auto-oriented planning. The city has even managed to stitch some of the tears in its urban fabric. But a gaping hole still remains in the heart of the city where, over 60 years ago, I-5 sliced off Downtown from the bustling Capitol Hill and First Hill neighborhoods. It’s time to close that gap and refresh the urban experience that draws people and businesses to Seattle.

The next step is to form an organization of community members to pressure the City Council and local state legislators to take charge on lid planning. Business leaders, civic figures, neighborhood advocates, and other interested groups must come together as one voice to demonstrate that the status quo is not acceptable. The organization will need to develop a common vision, expand on the interim solutions presented here, and propose an actionable long term strategy. Ultimately, it will be vital to host an open, public process and be transparent about costs and benefits. This could help avoid repeating the 1995 electoral loss of Seattle Commons, a similarly ambitious park proposal that would have made South Lake Union appear much different than it does today.

The early signs of such an movement are here. A group of design and development professionals under the name Lid I-5 started meeting in 2010 to discuss feasibility and sketch out lid concepts. However, that group is currently idle and is waiting for a political spark.

More currently, the Pike-Pine Urban Neighborhood Council meets frequently to discuss how the WSCC expansion can give back to its neighbors with good design. The topic of freeway lids has come up as part of the WSCC’s public benefit package and the group is planning to speak to the Seattle City Council at an upcoming event. On December 16th at 12pm, there will be a “lunch and learn” where members of the public can speak with the Council about lidding the freeway. I have been invited as a speaker to the event and will share details about costs and funding.

Architect Chris Patano recently proposed a two-mile long, 45-acre lid stretching north from roughly Pine Street to Lakeview Boulevard. It would be a park integrated with housing, a museum, a hotel, and the sports arena that Seattle and Tukwila are jockeying for.

I met Patano earlier this year to discuss the concept, and I find his idea bold and exciting. Of the freeway, he told KING 5, “We might as well contain it and turn it into an asset instead of a detriment”. However, his vision is much more complex than what I am proposing. Patano’s early cost estimate is $800 million ($17.7 million per acre), about four times what I estimate it would cost to lid I-5 just in the Downtown core. It’s also located where the freeway is not in a trench, an area I had in my first proposal but later withdrew because of the topographical challenges. Regardless, Patano’s renderings have successfully gained media attention and he is stirring public discussion. This should be capitalized upon to further the conversation.

Downtown Seattle and its surrounding neighborhoods are well developed and still growing even more. The time for freeway lids is now, and the price is manageable in the face of overwhelming benefits. We can create the grand central park that Seattle needs while also reducing I-5’s impact on the people, transportation, and built environment of Downtown. Seattle must seize this opportunity to transform the core of its public realm and create a lasting investment in the lives of future generations. Strong leaders are needed, but it begins with a grassroots effort. Let’s begin refining and advocating for this project today to ensure Seattle has an even brighter tomorrow.

To that end, I have created a Facebook page, an e-mail list, and a new page on my website for interested people to discuss the idea. Whether you support freeway lids now or still have some concerns, sign up to hash out ideas and get updates on this proposal. In the following months, I will be seeking partnerships with other local professionals who can provide more of the detailed financing and engineering analyses that are needed.

For a full version of my thesis on this topic, download a copy of the paper (20 MB PDF).

This article is fourth and final installment in a four-part series on lidding I-5 in Downtown Seattle. A version of this series originally appeared on The Northwest Urbanist.

The post Lidding I-5 in Downtown Seattle: Design Guidelines and Moving Forward first appeared on The Urbanist.