Aubrey Cohen (Facebook)

Go and read Aubrey Cohen’s piece in the P-I on density and NIMBYs in Seattle, itself a response to this East Bay Express column that’s been been circulating around in the internet recently.  Cohen:

My response was that most area residents already had internalized the lesson the event seemed intended to impart: that growing up makes more sense than growing out. The problem was that there was always a reason why their neighborhood wasn’t the appropriate place for more development.

That’s what makes examining local races so difficult.  Everyone is for density and opposed to sprawl, but what varies (and what really matters) is how much they prioritize density over all the other interests.

At one extreme, you can put essentially no restriction on densification and get a lot of it, but then you have little affordable housing (in the short term), overburdened infrastructure, and fewer amenities like parks and parking.  On the other hand, load the responsibility for that on developers and you get less development, and shift those infrastructure costs out to the periphery.

The whole subject of purity tests for “true” environmentalists is of limited use and should be ridiculed in its own post, but suffice it to say that someone who isn’t willing to sacrifice some of their other interests for environmental reasons isn’t communicating very much with the “environmentalist” tag.  For instance, I’d be inclined to live in a dense, transit-oriented neighborhood even if it were environmentally neutral, so doing so doesn’t, in itself, make me much of an environmentalist.  Similarly, supporting environmental measures as long as they only impact “greedy corporations,” or some other neighborhood, or don’t alter the affordable housing stock at all, is the cheapest form of advocacy.

Seriously, go and read Cohen’s whole piece.

ST just announced that 100 more tickets are going to be available tomorrow morning beyond the 100 already announced.  An entire car of the first train is going to be packed with persistent everyday people.

10 am, Tuesday, Union Station.

Our next meetup will be Thursday, August 6, somewhere in Seattle.

I wouldn’t fill out your absentee ballot till you go.

Two brief items to add to Ben’s excellent write-up:

1. If you’re actually trying to get anywhere with Link on opening weekend, give yourself plenty of time.  I’ve heard estimated waits as high as 4 hours, mainly based on the experience Phoenix had with their opening.  The Link shadow bus may actually be a great way to get around.
2. Be warned that the operating hours are 10am-8pm on Saturday at 10am-6pm on Sunday.  If you’re looking to do a proper pub crawl, as I’ve heard from many people, I suggest you wait until after the 20th, when the usual 1am closing begins.

Preserve the green section? Image from MJC.

The continually outside-of-the-box hugeasscity blog posits an interesting thought: After all the hard work to ensure the remove of the heinous waterfront Alaskan Way Viaduct, perhaps a piece of it should linger. For history. For a park. For a big, beautiful sculpture. For a multi-story illustration of the welcome change to our waterfront:

[...] Buster Simpson, a public artist, and Jack Mackie, an architect, have proposed saving some columns and partial beams as an “urban ruin”. I would take this further and suggest preserving a section large enough to function as an elevated open space and viewing platform (think the NYC High Line, see below). Certainly tearing down the Viaduct has the potential to create an amazing waterfront public space, but the opportunities for increasing open views of the Sound and the mountains beyond are limited by the numerous privately held properties lining the waterfront. Having more elevated viewing opportunities may help address this fact. Victor Steinbrueck Park, and a couple spots in the Market, are among the few elevated public areas where people can take in views of the Sound.

It goes to a core question: Should a city reinvent its existence as the arc of time progresses? I say no, hold on to the history we have. When the World’s Fair ended, we kept our Space Needle and our Monorail. As our city expanded, we kept our Discovery Park and our Arboretum. Many fought to keep the essence of Pike-Pine alive. A nod to the past is perhaps the most pleasurable part of living in a real city, and one that the new generation urban enthusiasts hasn’t began to fully appreciate. We may learn that newness becomes devoid of impact without the old.

Is some part of this decrepit highway worth preserving and fashioning into our urban framework? Absolutely.