What catches your eye as you move through the city after sunset? Is it the lonely spaces in shadows, or the bright lights that signify a warm place meet? Do you lament the exit of the sun or revel in the moonlight? Submit your take on Seattle’s winter nights.

Photos will be judged by members of The Urbanist staff. We are looking for beauty and feeling, how ever they show up. And no, this is not an opportunity to voyeuristically snap photos of people living unhoused to try to prove a point about something. Do not submit such photos, they will be discarded.

Details

First prize will receive a $25 gift card to Secret Garden Books. Two runners up will receive passes to The Urbanist Holiday Extravaganza in Downtown Seattle on November 30. (Email development [at] theurbanist.org for more details/tickets for the holiday party.)

The contest begins on November 12, 2022 (literally right now). All entries must be received through email by 5:00pm Pacific Standard Time on November 21, 2022. Send your submission to photo@theurbanist.org with the subject “Photo Scavenger Hunt.” You have a week of staying up late, get snapping.

The small print

The scavenger hunt and prizes are open to all. By submitting a photograph for this scavenger hunt, you represent that the photograph is your original work and hold harmless The Urbanist and its staff from any and all claims arising in connection with publication of the photograph or your acceptance of the prizes. You retain your rights to your photograph. However, by entering the contest, you grant the The Urbanist a royalty-free, world-wide, perpetual, non-exclusive license to publicly display, distribute, reproduce and create derivative works of the entries, in whole or in part, across all media, products, and promotions. Any photograph reproduced will include a photographer credit as feasible. The Urbanist will not be required to pay any additional consideration or seek any additional approval in connection with such uses.

The post Photo Scavenger Hunt: Sleepless in Seattle first appeared on The Urbanist.

Some of you have a deep affinity for the non-linear parcel. Goodness, you found some weird ones. Excellent work.

We’ll start with the purely strange lot lines as we work our way toward our grand champion. Probably a way to squeeze a few extra feet of buildable lot out of a larger lot or dividing one property for uniquely shaped buildings, these are lots that are bizarre without any help from outside forces.

Special mention has to go out to Crop Circles. These are enclaves in formerly rural areas where houses are in the circles and the rest of the property is shared. Usually by horses.

There are a number of strange lots and parcels created by the hills and roads of the region. In some places, limited access to a highway like I-5 or the wide swath of overhead power lines force lots to put driveways onto other sides of the block.

Of course, when we look at the property ownership under a highway intersection, the lot divisions are just as strange as the lots around them.

And then there are the waterways. Lakes get long lots around their edges so folks don’t fight over which way their piers go. Streams get split across lots, and the protected trees around them get handed to private properties for maintenance and preservation.

We have also platted out expansion of the city into the water, should we ever decide to wash away more hills.

And in that vein, the lots that are “left behind” tend to be good and weird. The flip side of those long lots with streams running along the back, these lots are created where a development squeezes the undevelopable parts into a couple of chunks that can be held by a homeowners association (HOA) or golf club.

But for this competition, we have a clear winner. Looking like an election population map, this property was set aside to hold all of the steep slopes and stream bed for a feeder to Issaquah Creek while the properties around it were developed. Now owned by the City of Issaquah as a private open space tract, it is a uniquely bizarre parcel.

Bonus, according to the recorded plat, the sensitive area designation is imposed on all future owners “on behalf of the pubic by King County.” Sensitive area indeed, and a good illustration of why the first comment you always give when reviewing a plat is “Carefully spell check plat notes.”

Thank you to everyone who sent along your bizarre parcels, we appreciate your attention to detail and strange property lines. Congratulations Marissa. Your gift card is in the mail.

The post The Bizarre-est Lots of Puget Sound first appeared on The Urbanist.

While researching how subdivision screws around with Seattle’s growth, we’ve found some pretty convoluted property lines. Can you find crazier ones? There is money involved.

While these are pretty crazed, we are certain that you can find better ones. Winner gets a $25 gift card from Skål Beer Hall.

Go to one of the region’s on-line property viewers.
– King County Parcel Viewer
– Pierce County ATIP or Public GIS
– Snohomish County SCOPI

Zoom into a level where you can see the property lines (it helps to turn off the address dots). And just start looking around. Screen capture your favorites. Please include enough surrounding info so we can understand the location of the lot.

Submissions will be judged on how convoluted, contorted, discombobulated, and generally not square the lots are. Special consideration will be given for solid titles.

Send your screen caps to ray@theurbanist.org. Deadline is Friday, August 28th at noon PDT.

The post Digital Scavenger Hunt: Bizarre Lots first appeared on The Urbanist.

The theme of The Urbanist’s Scavenger Hunt #4 was pocket parks, which often come in the form of pint sized oases of green distributed in dense neighborhoods. Pocket Parks can honor history, like Homer Harris Park in the Central District, which is built on a tract of land first owned by African American pioneer William Grose, and they can also preserve natural habitat like Nora’s Woods in Madrona, which is a critical part of the pollinator pathways planned habitat corridor for honeybees.

But in recent weeks a new urban park feature has entered into Seattle with much fanfare: the linear park. If the potential of Seattle’s 20 miles of Stay Healthy Streets is fully realized, the active space they provide for outdoor transportation and recreation should function like linear parks, even after traffic picks up as the city reopens.

Of course the success of the Stay Healthy Streets will depend on the kinds of traffic calming measures the City chooses to employ to ensure that streets remain only open for local access. While the Seattle Bicycle Advisory Board was informed that the City plans to post signs designating Stay Healthy Streets, details about plans for traffic calming infrastructure remain undecided. And traffic calming will certainly be needed, particularly where Stay Healthy Streets intersect with busier thoroughfares.

Additionally, while the 20 miles of Stay Healthy Streets is a good start, there are still large swathes of city in which people lack access to safe streets for walking, biking, and rolling. That’s why The Urbanist has endorsed Seattle Neighborhood Greenway’s (SNG) call to increase that number to 130 miles.

But still it’s truly encouraging that the City has taken this step. So let’s celebrate by capturing photos of the joy that these Stay Healthy Streets have brought to many Seattleites. Additionally, in the spirit of pushing the concept forward, feel free to photograph examples of streets you believe are good contenders for future Stay Healthy Streets.

Please send your photos to natalie@theurbanist.org by Tuesday, June 6th.

The post The Urbanist’s Scavenger Hunt #5: Stay Healthy Streets first appeared on The Urbanist.

A little known fact: According to the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT), paved alleys are considered to be part of the City’s street system and are maintained by the Seattle, but unpaved alleys are not.

In practical terms, this means that the City will make some repairs to paved alleys, but it will not provide maintenance, repairs, or improvements to unpaved alleys. Adjacent property owners do have the right to pay out of pocket for alley maintenance or improvements, but first they need to apply for and receive a Street Improvement Permit.

SDOT also cautions that funding is limited to pothole repairs for paved alleys in the event that the alley is damaged “to the extent that there is a safety or mobility problem.” No funding is available for more extensive repairs.

As a former resident of two alley-facing apartments, one in Capitol Hill and another in the University District, I found this information to be surprising. In both of my former living situations, a disruption to the alley’s mobility access could have made my life a real headache. I wonder how many residents of alley-facing buildings are savvy to the precarity of their situation?

Take a moment to enjoy readers’ photos of alleys both paved and unpaved below. Once again, a big thank you to those of you who shared your photos!

The Urbanist’s Scavenger Hunt #3: Pocket Parks and Parklets

While out on afternoon walk in Leschi with my two dogs, I came upon a small park facing Lake Washington that I had never seen before. Dubbed the Leschi-Lake Dell Natural Area, this small green space, which one visitor described online as a “mouthful of a park,” was preserved due to the enamorment of none other than John Charles Olmsted, creator of some of Seattle’s (and the entire country’s) most famous parks. In his 1903 report to the City, Olmsted wrote that the site offered “one of the finest view points along the west shore of Lake Washington….Even if no parkway or large park is laid out in this locality, there ought, at least, to be a few acres secured so as to preserve this remarkably fine view.” 

The eventual transformation of the site into a “pocket park” can probably be attributed to the ravine that slopes down from the viewpoint; development would have been difficult on such a steep landscape.

According to the American Planning Association (APA), pocket parks–often quaintly called “vest pocket parks” first arrived in the United States in the 1950s as a post-WWII export from Europe. Constructed on empty lands or irregularly sized parcels of land, over the last 70 some years, pocket parks have become an important part of many American urban park systems, including Seattle’s.

So what exactly defines a pocket park? Size is the major factor; however, there seems to be some disagreement on how small a pocket park must be meet the categorization. Several groups, including the Cultural Landscape Foundation, describe pocket parks as typically less than three acres, while according to the National Recreation and Park Association’s definition the pocket park is closer to a diminutive quarter-acre in size.

There seems to be more agreement around the fact that pocket parks are usually maintained for recreational versus natural uses, although in the case of viewpoints, those lines can be blurred. Often found in densely developed areas, pocket parks can insert a bit of greenery and open space into an urban environment.

Whether you use three acres or a quarter-acre as the metric, there are many pocket parks stashed across Seattle’s neighborhoods. In fact, many articles have been published on Seattle’s pocket parks.

Your mission this week is to email me (natalie@theurbanist.org) with your photos of pocket parks, whether they be new discoveries or beloved neighborhood treasures. Remember digital exploration using Google Maps is fine, and submissions from outside of Seattle are welcome too. Happy exploring!

The featured photo is of a little patio tucked into an alley between 19th Ave E and 20th Ave E / E Roy St and E Mercer St in Capitol Hill. (Credit: Kelsey Timmer)

The post Readers Shared Their Alley Explorations! Next Up The Urbanist’s Scavenger Hunt #4: Pocket Parks first appeared on The Urbanist.

However, over a series of conversations I realized that was that it was not the mixed-use nature of the beings that he found problematic; instead it was the fact that newer structures seemed homogeneous, squeezing a range of uses into a single monolithic structure. What he wanted instead was a block punctuated by different styles and sizes of buildings, the kind of dense block you can find in older cities where such buildings have been constructed, renovated, and replaced over time.

After that conversation, I have never looked at mixed-use buildings, which I had always admired for their efficiency, quite the same way again. And since then I have puzzled over how architects and urban designers can improve newer mixed-use developments. The photos of mixed-use buildings sent in this week by readers participating in our scavenger hunt reaffirmed for me something I believe to true about this style of development, and maybe the built environment as a whole; the best way to ensure that people appreciate and feel comfortable with a building is to honor the concept of the human scale in its design.

Danish architect Jan Gehl first gained recognition for using the term human scale to describe design which centers its dimensions and forms on the scale of the human body. “In the last 50 years people have forgotten what good human form is,” Gehl said in a 2018 interview with ArchDaily.

Take a moment to enjoy the photos submitted by readers and think about how these mixed use developments incorporate the concept of the human scale in their design. What design choices, particularly on the ground level, make some buildings seems more intimate and inviting than others?

A big thank you to the readers who submitted their photos! We appreciate that you answered the call!

The Urbanist Scavenger Hunt #3: Alleys

Each time I venture out into my neighborhood, I motivate myself to continue to walk down the familiar streets by trying to discover something new on each walk. Lately that has meant exploring alleys, which always seem to offer surprises.

While alleys have been a part of urban landscapes for centuries, they all but disappeared from the design of American cities in the mid 20th century. This fact seems especially curious when you consider that alleys are heavily associated with car storage in the form of garages and parking. Why then did alleys seems to disappear just as car ownership was really taking off?

A short history of alleys by architecture firm Canin Associates offers some plausible answers.

A number of events took place in the past century that contributed to the demise of the alley. Zoning segregated land use in such a way that many of the alley’s uses were redirected to distinct, separate districts. The automobile grew not only as America’s primary mode of transportation, but also as a status symbol. As such, home designs began to feature front loaded garages, allowing the automobile to be proudly displayed for all to see. Simultaneously, government spending focused on building high-speed roads and emphasizing home ownership, creating suburbs in lieu of cities. This “suburban” way of thinking about what communities should look like and how they should function was a shift away from compact, mixed-use development, causing alleys to be dismissed as costly wastes of space.

Alleys in Urban Design: History and Application, Canin Associates

An increasing number of urban planners and designers have recognized the vital role alleys play in dense cities, and a movement to reclaim alleys as public space is underfoot in cities across the US, including in Seattle, where advocates in Pioneer Square and the Chinatown International District have worked hard to transform some alleys into appealing pedestrian friendly streets.

Outside of the downtown core, alleys have played a role in opening up space for detached dwelling units and other kinds of urban infill development. A stroll down nearly any alley in Seattle today reveals all kinds of housing–big and small–situated on the alley.

So your mission this week is to explore some of Seattle’s quieter, less traveled thoroughfares–in person or digitally–and share what you find with The Urbanist’s community of readers. I look forward to seeing what you discover.

The featured image at the top of the article is a 1908 building in the Central District that is home to Katy’s Corner Cafe and four apartments. (Credit: Kelsey Timmer)

The post Nifty Examples of Mixed Use Buildings! Plus The Urbanist’s Scavenger Hunt #3: Alleys first appeared on The Urbanist.

Offering up a mix of the old and new, reader photos of “missing middle” housing illustrate the variety of housing types that comprise the category, which despite its many forms is estimated to only constitute to about only 19% of America’s housing stock.

A big thanks to readers who answered the call! Browse through the selection of submitted photos below and get inspired to participate in our next scavenger hunt. (And your scavenger hunt week #2 mission is to photograph successful mixed-use developments. More below.)

Urbanist Scavenger Hunt # 2 – Mixed Use Development

Mixed-use development is characterized as pedestrian-friendly development that blends two or more residential, commercial, cultural, institutional, and/or industrial uses. While mixed-use development is considered a bedrock of planning livable cities, it also faces challenges. Without proper architectural design and economic planning, ground floor commercial units can sit vacant for years. San Franciscans resoundingly passed Proposition D, a vacancy tax which will be leveraged on landlords who keep stores empty for more than six months.

But when mixed-use development succeeds, streets and neighborhoods are created that exhibit an unparalleled level of walkability and vibrance. And while Seattle definitely suffers from some of the same commercial vacancy woes that have plagued San Francisco, there are also lots of examples of highly successful mixed-use developments that have served to transform and sustain the communities that surround them.

Your mission this week is to identify successful mixed-use developments.

Want to share your scavenger hunt discoveries with other readers of The Urbanist? Email your photographs with descriptions to natalie@theurbanist.org by Monday, April 20th for consideration. 

The post Readers Helped Us Find Missing Middle! Plus The Urbanist’s Scavenger Hunt #2 first appeared on The Urbanist.

Recently as I was walking through the Judkins Park neighborhood near the I-90 greenbelt in Central Seattle, I saw a sign in a house window advertising the Judkins Park Community Council’s neighborhood scavenger hunt. Spoiler alert: I completely failed to locate any other signs or other clues related to said scavenger hunt, but as a result of my blundered search, I found myself paying more attention to neighborhood surrounding me with its quirky mix of traditional and contemporary architecture. I also began thinking about how much we can learn from close observation of places we take for granted.

So I’d like to propose to readers of The Urbanist that we pause and look closer at the urban landscape we inhabit. Let’s use this time to explore, safely and with respect to social distance, the places that are closest to us, and share with others the discoveries we make along the way. As people spend more time hunkered down at home, community scavengers hunts are making a big comeback, not only in Seattle, but across the globe. Let’s use the framing of the scavenger hunt to better understand our cities with all their greenery, sprawl, messiness, and splendor.

This article is the beginning of a series of articles in which I will present an urbanism-focused scavenger hunt theme and invite readers to reach out to me with their discoveries. Then the following week, I will post an article with photographs and descriptions submitted to me by readers, present a new theme, and so on and so on until a vaccine for COVID-19 is deemed effective and safe for the general public, or until Amazon perfects the art of drone delivery systems so that buyers can get sundry items delivered with optimal social distancing at the touch of a button, but with the new risk of facing concussions and other injuries caused by plummeting packages each time we step outdoors. It’s also distinctly possible that we could run out of themes.

Urbanist Scavenger Hunt Theme #1: Find the “Missing Middle”

Like most good ideas, the concept of holding a scavenger hunt to find the “missing middle” was stolen. I first saw an announcement for a similar scavenger hunt organized by Laura Loe of Share the Cities about a year or so ago. At the time I thought it was a an super idea, which is why I’m stealing it now to kick off The Urbanist’s scavenger hunt.

Some of you right now might be thinking, aha, a scavenger hunt to find the “missing middle” how clever! While others might be thinking, wait a second, what is the middle and why is it missing?

In short, the “missing middle” is a term that was coined by architect and urban designer Daniel Parolek in 2010 to described the range of smaller residential building types frequently found in pre-1940’s American neighborhoods. Although they tend to maintain the scale of single family residences, these buildings, which can include duplexes, triplexes, and courtyard apartments among others, often provide affordable housing choices and help to create walkable neighborhoods.

Sadly, the broad shift to single family residence zoning that occurred in the mid-20th century led to housing types that existed in the “middle” between single family residences and mid-rise apartment buildings to go “missing.”

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to locate examples of “missing middle” housing wherever you might be in Seattle or beyond.

For my own personal quest, I returned to Judkins Park, which is covered by low-rise zoning regulations to find examples to share. I was also interested to see what kind of residential density currently exists in an area that will be served by Sound Transit Link Light Rail service after the completion of the East Link extension in 2023.

As one of the older residential neighborhoods in Seattle, there are a quite few examples of pre-1940’s buildings that fall into the “missing middle” category. Many newer buildings also seem to tick many of the boxes; although personally I have questions about whether or not large townhomes that fall into the $700k-$1 million price range technically qualify as “missing middle” housing. (Maybe I should consult Daniel Parolek.)

After about an hour of combing through Judkins Parks’ streets, I returned home with new understanding of a neighborhood not so far from my own, and far more photographs of “missing middle” housing than I could share here. Now it’s up to you to continue the search. I look forward to seeing what examples of “missing middle housing” you are able to uncover.

Want to share your scavenger hunt discoveries with other readers of The Urbanist? Email your photographs with descriptions to natalie@theurbanist.org by Monday, April 13th for consideration. 

The post Urbanist Scavenger Hunt: Find the “Missing Middle” first appeared on The Urbanist.