The number of car fatalities in the United States has declined over the decades:
Overall: The number of traffic deaths has decreased since the 1970s, and the rate of deaths per 100,000 people is 38% lower than it was in 1975.
Per capita: The number of deaths per capita decreased by 35.46% from 1979 to 2005.
Mileage: The mileage death rate has decreased 93% since 1923.
Drunk driving: Drunk driving fatalities have decreased 36% since 1982, and 83% among people under 21.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has implemented a number of safety initiatives to reduce traffic deaths, including requiring automatic emergency braking systems in passenger cars and light trucks by 2029. Driver assistance technology and apps can also help prevent crashes, such as lane-departure warning, blind spot.
I raise these points to highlight that traffic safety has been an ongoing function of road repair and car design (a topic the video does not address) for the last fifty years, along with car safety including car seats for children and infants. Two advancements are separating directions on highways and freeways, and seatbelt use and airbags. Some think driverless cars or taxis could be a significant safety advance in urban areas. Recently Waymo opened operations in Austin. Another is the acceptance of roundabouts that are not only safer but increase throughput although Americans struggle with roundabouts that are more than one lane.
Another factor to reduce fatalities is to reduce VMT. Work from home and simply living closer to work are two good ways to reduce private VMT, along with online purchases. Reducing speeds helps, but not reducing car capacity which bunches cars more. With the right designs speeds can be reduced but through put capacity maintained. The number of miles driven by those 16 to 19 — a critical danger age — has declined while their use of ride shares has increased dramatically.
If I could add a tool it would be regular instruction requirements. A lot of drivers don’t know the rules or how to drive. Schools no longer offer drivers Ed. Requiring a certain number of hours of instruction every 10 years would help train drivers better. As cars become more complicated and autonomous training in these systems is important. Today you buy a new, much more complicated car with an enormous manual, and drive it off the lot.
I know some believe car size and weight should be factors but the declines noted above are not size related as SUV’s have become popular. Designing cars to crumble upon impact reduces the force to the driver and passenger during impact. This is why cow catchers or other rigid structures attached to front grills should be prohibited, and some states do.
Another important factor is driver distraction. Cell phones are an obvious factor although Bluetooth is helping. Music is shown to not be a distraction except it can impair hearing especially with ear buds. Eating and drinking are.
Thanks for the video.
On an unrelated note, has anyone on this blog used or subscribed to the news service advertised in the video. It looks like it collects news across the spectrum (like The Weekly) but rather than screening the news by source it tries to educate the reader on which news services produced the news and which rebroadcast it and their relative bias ratings, although assigning bias ratings is always subjective. I gave up my NY Times subscription despite its excellent news reporting because I felt it had become too biased in its editorials, selection of articles, and headlines.
I haven’t watched the videos yet since I’m about to go check out the new Overlook Walk at Pike Place Market, but that “collects news across the spectrum” sounds like Ground News, which has been making the rounds in YouTube sponsorships. The video creators say they find it useful, and maybe it is. I haven’t found a compelling need for it yet. And when it says “We show whether only the left or right is covering it”, I wonder whether it’s distinguishing between center-left vs far-left. The far right has captured the Republican party and presidential/congressional candidates, but on the left the far left is still just a fringe and an occasional representative, no matter how much right-wing media claims otherwise. There’s one historian on YouTube, Ludyard Lynch (Whatifalthist), who is reasonably good up until the 1990s, then he seems to go off the deep end and thinks everything is a “left/right” battle, but what he means is far left vs far right, and that ignores the vast majority of center-left/moderate-left Democrats and politicians, so it’s like a false choice or imaginary world. I’d check for that if you’re considering Ground News or something similar.
From what I’ve read, VMT was declining throughout the 2010s but may have plateaued or reversed since 2020, so I’d check that. And also that GenZ high schoolers are less interested in a drivers’ licence than previous generations. That may be why schools stopped teaching drivers’ ed (if they did), as well as the general funding squeezes at schools.
Notice that all those car-safety measures are about protecting the car’s occupants, and ignore the pedestrians and bicyclists around them.
App-taxis and autonomous cars do have niches and some advantages. My arguments are against them not because I don’t recognize those, but because mainstream society ignores how Uber exploits drivers with non-living wages and no employee protections and devastated the taxi industry because “Look, a shiny new app”, and how autocars are a distraction from autobuses and autotrains, and how some people are trying to replace medium- and low-density transit with app-taxis wholesale.
The number of in-car fatalities is falling, for the reasons you noted. However, the number of pedestrian and cycle fatalities is rising because of the greater heights and masses of contemporary vehicles.
It’s a classic case of the rich man’s mantra: I got mine, screw you.
I haven’t seen any data that compares the grill height or car weight to bicyclist deaths. Death is usually due to impact with the concrete.
However most bicycle deaths are due to head injuries when 90% of bicycle fatalities are to bicyclists not wearing helmets.
Bicycle fatalities and trips to the ED have fallen significantly for kids because of helmet mandates and better educating parents. At the same time adult bicycle deaths have risen (as has the number of bicyclists).
A large number of bicyclists suffer serious head and brain injuries simply by falling on concrete without a helmet with no impact. Riding a bicycle at speed on concrete with clip in pedals is inherently dangerous. Recently there have been some high profile bike injuries from riders simply getting their tires caught in rail tracks. Is this a case of SDOT saying, “I got mine screw you”?
To ride a bicycle on concrete without a helmet and bare skin is very foolish which is why few motorcyclists do it.
At some point bicyclists have to assume some risk for their actions. I regularly see bicyclists riding at high speed in traffic taking dangerous actions. Motorists don’t want to hit a bicyclist, or another car, or hurt anyone, but bicyclists can be hard to see, especially if they are not following normal traffic rules so they are not anticipated.
If they insist on riding without a helmet deaths or serious injuries from traumatic head injuries are not surprising from any impact with concrete whether there is an impact or not. Seattle and King Co. were negligent in repealing bicycle helmet mandates for bicyclists to benefit Lime and other shared bike/scooter programs. There is your “I got mine screw you”.
It would be like adopting a Vision Zero program for car fatalities but telling drivers and passengers to not wear seatbelts and to disable air bags.
Ah, Tom, 92% percent of US families own a car (and much of the 8% who don’t wish they could). Driving is not the privilege of the rich. We have public roads for everybody. Nobody is giving up on cars.
The problem with attacking cars is the same as attacking single family homes. The vast amount of people who count in America (those who vote in elections) have cars…. and mortgages on homes as well. Even the most Liberal cities in the USA, starting with Seattle, are not voting to get rid of cars or single family homes. There isn’t going to be any big transit pushing class war because that’s not who we are.
@tacommee
> The problem with attacking cars is the same as attacking single family homes.
Other countries have cars and do not require such a high amount of pedestrian/cycle fatalities. I do find a bit funny how you associate trying to rein in pedestrian fatalities with the end of American society though.
WL,
As a long time cyclist, I think road safety is important. It’s Tom who insists that driving is privilege of “the rich” . Everybody drives. Everybody needs to be more aware of cyclists and pedestrians. We need more traffic calming features on our roads. More education and awareness. We need to learn to “share the road” because honestly…. the cars aren’t leaving.
Been to Europe a number of times and those people love, and I mean love!, cars.
tacomee, sure, people have to have cars in America. But they don’t have to have four ton pickups or three ton seven foot tall “SUV’s”, at least, the ones who aren’t construction workers toting loads to a worksite don’t. Big cars have been shown to be safer for their occupants and massively more dangerous for others, including people in smaller vehicles. They are especially dangerous for pedestrians and cyclists they hit because instead of rolling the victim up over the hood as a sedan usually does they push them down the pavement and the running gear mangles them.
For the guys Rollin’ Coal in the big Hemi’s, it’s just another “Mine is bigger than yours!” flash.
And Frank, just because people can be idiots on bicycles doesn’t excuse the selfishness of the people who are driving these over-tall, mangle people in the concrete, pedestrian assassins. I certainly agree that toe clips plus no helmet is a dumb thing, but that “Rabbit!” bloviation, is about the most egregiously JDV-like “deflection” I’ve seen on this otherwise pretty sane blog.
Driving is a burden for the lower-income. Some of them will sacrifice to do it because they love driving or love the social status it gives them. Others drive just because they have to to survive in this society. We should give them more options so they don’t have to drive.
Another issue is when a bicycle is going straight and a car suddenly turns right in front of them.
As someone who rode with them for 30 years, I don’t agree that SPDs, or any other form of clippers pedal is dangerous. At worst, you fall over at a stop sign. The real thing that no one talks about is the suitability of certain bikes for street use. IMO riding a racing frame on the street and complaining about potholes and rails is equivalent to driving an F1 racing car on the street. We wouldn’t take their complaining seriously..
I think this is incredibly disingenuous to make this about a class war. Even low priced makers are selling SUVs etc and if you look in small america and poorer farming communities the big-a$$ pickup trucks reign supreme so in a lot of areas there have always been big vehicles and a bike stands not a lot a chance getting hit even by a small vehicle. Come to think of it I am more worried by those oversized e bikes with fat tires that go flying down the bike lanes at 30+mph than I do any car. Just a thought.
Clearly something is wrong in the US. Not only are things getting worse in the US, but they are clearly getting better in the rest of the developed world. Yet we are doing little about it. Tom’s point is fairly clear: folks don’t care. Vehicles are routinely sold as “safe” only from the perspective of the person in the car. Larger vehicles are routinely touted as being safer merely because they have more mass. Many of these vehicles are inherently a lot more dangerous to others, but they don’t tell you that in the show rooms.
Consider how big an issue crime is in every city and across the country. It did rise during the pandemic. But traffic violence was the only violent crime that was increasing *before* the pandemic. Yet it is rarely talked about. Even in cities like Seattle it often gets ignored. The city seems focused on petty crime and not traffic violence. Now a city council that was elected in part on law-and-order issues is suddenly soft on crime: https://www.theurbanist.org/2024/10/03/saka-questions-school-zone-camera-expansion/. Holy cow, they are cracking down on hookers on Aurora, but we don’t want to stop people from speeding? WTF?
Part of the reason is the idea that Tom mentioned (not very tactfully). Road safety — unlike other types of crime — is your personal responsibility. If you get beat up or someone steals your money then it is a societal problem. We should increase police presence everywhere and throw anyone suspected of committing such crimes in jail for a long time (if there is enough room given all the drug addicts we want to send there). But get hit by a car? That is your fault. You should have been paying more attention. You should have had a better helmet. You should have been driving a bigger car.
In small America and poorer farm communities there isn’t as much traffic or tight spaces: bikes aren’t jammed in between a curb and a wall of cars. The large vehicles are working vehicles, not SUVs.
The reason carmakers have turned toward SUVs and large cars is their high profit margin. And they could exploit a gas-mileage loophole in the “light truck” category, which was intended for trucks as they existed in the 1980s, not everybody having an SUV. The carmakers practically pushed small cars off the market, contrary to what they do outside the US.
It is extremely rare that a bike fatality occurs that does not involve getting hit by a car. It almost never happens. And if you are hit by a car going 40mph, a car is almost certainly going to kill you, regardless of helmet. Helmet’s are rated for 10mph impacts. They help a little, but only a little – generally cutting your risk of TMI in half, if you are lucky enough to survive.
Biking is unsafe because we have built terrible, dangerous infrastructure.
In almost any other country, they don’t even wear helmets, yet their bike fatalities are a tiny fraction of what we have here. Because they build much safer infrastructure, taking into account bikes, and there percentage of SUVs is much much smaller than here.
To paraphrase a political meme: “It’s the roads, stupid”
“While bicycles are generally considered to be a safer mode of transportation than cars, they are not immune to accidents. According to statistics, there were around 857,000 bicycle accidents in the United States in 2019. Although the number of accidents is significantly lower than for cars, it is still a significant concern.
[There are around 1100 bicycle deaths each year. 90% of those bicyclists who died were not wearing a helmet].
“Unlike cars, most bicycle accidents do not involve collisions with other vehicles. Only about 29% of bicycle accidents are caused by such collisions. The majority of bicycle accidents are solo accidents, meaning that they do not involve any other vehicles. These accidents can be caused by factors such as rider error, road hazards, or mechanical failures.
“Despite the lower number of accidents, bicycle accidents tend to result in more severe injuries compared to car accidents. This is due to the lack of protective measures available to cyclists, as they do not have the same safety features as cars, such as airbags or seat belts”.
“Encourage helmet usage: Wearing a properly fitted helmet is essential for protecting the head during an accident. Encouraging and promoting the use of helmets among cyclists can greatly minimize the risk of severe head injuries.
“The safety measures taken by bicycle riders also play a significant role in accident rates. Failure to wear helmets, improper signaling, and lack of visibility accessories such as lights and reflectors can increase the chances of injury in the event of an accident. Adequate training and education regarding bicycle safety can help reduce these risks”.
The video discusses the improvements the U.S. is making to infrastructure to make biking safer, although we are spending billions on a mode that nationwide accounts for 1% of all trips.
Helmets should be mandatory just like seatbelts and airbags are mandatory, and in 2029 advancements such as automotive braking and warnings of collisions including with bicyclists. Infrastructure is important but is only one tool. It is irresponsible for any bicyclist to ride on concrete without a helmet, just as riding at night without proper lighting is irresponsible, and our laws should mandate helmets, certainly for any vehicle sharing roads with cars.
We were discussing fatalities, not injuries and crashes. The stats are very different.
On the topic of car capacity, more capacity does not make roads safer, it makes roads less safe. There are multiple reasons why.
First off, it’s not good if roads are too open, as that encourages gross speeding. A well designed system, people who try to drive too fast should be stuck behind others going at or near the speed limit. However, traffic volume varies a lot at different times of day, so a ride wide enough to handle 5 PM traffic without any delays is probably wide enough to lead to lots of speeding at 10 PM.
Second, the wider a road is, the bigger the distance one has to travel to cross it, so the more dangerous crossing it becomes. This is especially true for pedestrians, but even turning left in a car is safer if you only have to cross one oncoming lane than 3 or 4.
Third, an obsession with car capacity typically means shortchanging bikes and pedestrians to make room for one more car lane. This means no bike lanes, and speeding cars right up against a skinny sidewalk, which means more danger.
I walked around Capitol Hill with my 8-year old daughter yesterday (in between trips to Chinatown and Seattle Center). She was underwhelmed. “Why is this place abandoned?” she asked about the densest neighborhood in Seattle. She was also wondering why the buildings were so short – I had to explain to her why the apartment buildings were so much shorter than in Redmond, and why Broadway has so few pedestrians.
She liked the tower in Volunteer Park. She ran up and down the stairs four times.
I don’t know that Capitol Hill is denser than downtown Seattle or Belltown. Both of these have tall buildings but anemic retail activity or people on the street for the residential density. Redmond has taller buildings but its downtown is still very suburban. Pedestrian traffic and retail are weak for an affluent city of 84,000.
Pedestrian activity comes down to walkable retail which comes down to street safety and retail density. But there are many other factors. U Village has greater pedestrian traffic than Capitol Hill because it has better walkable retail density, for many different reasons, although Capitol Hill does have a late night club scene.
Some on this blog have mistakenly assumed residential density results in retail density, even using Belltown as an example and claiming Belltown has more retail than Seattle’s commercial core from Pine to Yesler which is not borne out by retail sales tax revenue . Retail density has traditionally been in or near the commercial/office zones because an office building can hold five times the residents of a residential building the same size, and workers have to enter and exit the building several times/day and don’t have full kitchens so it puts them on the streets. Plus they have higher transit use and must walk to and from transit along the streets so are natural customers. And of course they are working so tend to have more money to spend on average. That is why pre-pandemic 2/3 of Seattle’s total tax revenue came from downtown.
Downtown Seattle has many issues affecting retail density and vibrancy including zoning, crime, and high parking costs, but by far the biggest blow has been work from home because that eliminated so many customers.. I have never quite understood those who think Broadway is “urban” or has retail density and vibrancy. For example, a huge prime location is a burger joint with surface parking, despite relatively high residential density.
There is only so much retail a certain population can support. The zoning can either condense it or disperse it throughout the city. Seattle has chosen the latter in a city that is 142 sq miles with 775,000 citizens. Seattle would need closer to 5 million residents for that kind of zoning to create retail density unless through private malls. People WANT walkable retail density that is vibrant, but the zoning means private mall owners have to artificially create it.
This also means a city like Redmond must compete with Bellevue for retail. Link won’t bring shoppers to Redmond. It will take Redmond shoppers to Bellevue because Bellevue is such a better retail experience which is supported by Bellevue’s commercial office towers.
I have come to accept this is what Pacific Northwesterners like. Maybe because they work so much on computers. They just are not like other cities in which the residents really live on the streets and the streets are packed day and night. . People here are well educated but introverts. One isn’t better than the other, just different. I think that is why malls are so popular here and account for so much of the retail. It is the only areas with true walkable retail density.
At the same time Seattle has some of the nicest residential neighborhoods I have seen for a city, especially so close to the downtown, in part due to Seattle’s large size and relatively small population, and that seems to be the primary focus and concern of the residents. Cities with larger populations would have commercialized or changed neighborhoods like Queen Anne, Capitol Hill, Freemont and so on to look like Belltown.
There is only so much retail a certain population can support. The zoning can either condense it or disperse it throughout the city. Seattle has chosen the latter
Nonsense. Retail is heavily restricted, and you want to restrict it more? Holy cow, you do realize that in most neighborhoods, you can’t even open a shop on the corner! Various cities in Washington prevent this, and the state (unsuccessfully) tried to force them to stop.
Clearly retail is heavily restricted, which explains the high prices. Do you know any Seattle business owner who says “Well, at least rent is cheap here”. Hardly. It is really expensive. Why do you think people open up food trucks? It is cheaper then renting out a place. Same goes for any retail.
The zoning is way too restrictive, which pushes up the prices. I don’t know why people think it is a good idea to limit retail in this manner. OK, actually I do — it has to do with cars. Remember, the history of cities is tied to retail. They allowed people to operate a business on the first floor and live above it. This is now illegal in most of the city (and most of the suburbs). So all of these restrictions are quite new, and they have everything to do with cars. People in the neighborhood got tired of people in other neighborhoods driving and parking there.
But it is still a stupid restriction. The last thing we need is more of it. We should go the other way and allow as much retail as the market will bear. If someone can’t lease out their little retail store then just lease it out as a place to live. Cities should stop trying to micromanage development. They are terrible at it. Everyone suffers as a result.
I do think there is case to be made that zoning is too restrictive and too lax at the same time. Take New York, for example, which is known for having plentiful corner stores of the kind it seems you advocate for. But all of Manhattan’s retail, including these corner stores, is concentrated along the avenues, with almost all streets being entirely residential.
In Seattle, corner stores should be probably be allowed in more places. But retail is still allowed to spread too much. In U District where I live, the retail in new mixed use developments are almost all vacant, partially due to newness, but even the occupied units are also never busy the same way that stores on the Ave are. With the exception of Safeway, the rest of the stores could probably easily fit in the vacant spots on the Ave, and they would probably all see more traffic that way. It would have made more sense to concentrate all retail on the Ave and Roosevelt, located 1000 ft apart (compare to 700-900 ft between avenues in New York).
Capitol Hill has settled on a 7-story standard on Broadway and Pike-Pine (Bellevue Avenue already had it), so I don’t know how your daughter could have failed to see the new buildings, or all the pedestrians that are constantly on the streets and in Cal Anderson Park. If you stayed around 15th and its side streets, then yes, it’s not as tall or dense.
Downtown Redmond has also settled on 7 stories or less from what I’ve seen, and I don’t know any that are taller. Again, if you stayed around 14th, 15th, and 16th, you wouldn’t have seen Capitol Hill’s full density, which is west of Broadway.
The primary retail spark on Capitol Hill shifted from Broadway to Pike-Pine in the late 2000s or early 2010s, and Broadway hasn’t found a new groove yet. So all the old and new business on Broadway are playing catch up. I sometimes walk to the library or BECU or Pho Than Brothers or QFC, which are all at Broadway & Republican, and I pass a significant number of pedestrians along the way, more than in most Seattle neighborhoods or the suburbs. So I don’t know why you wouldn’t have, unless it was on a weekend morning when people aren’t out yet, or an unusual day.
“I don’t know that Capitol Hill is denser than downtown Seattle or Belltown. Both of these have tall buildings but anemic retail activity or people on the street for the residential density.”
Downtown, Belltown, and First Hill have highrises. Capitol Hill doesn’t.
The downtown pedestrian crowds are on Pine Street, in Pike Place Market, and the restaurant area on 1st south of the market. These are all in the daytime and early evening.
Belltown has significantly lower pedestrian activity. Part of that is the growing safety problems or perception of them, but a lot if it is because Belltown doesn’t have the destinations residents need. In Vancouver’s West End there are full-sized supermakets, drugstores, and a school and probably a medical clinic, but where are these in Belltown or SLU? You have to go out of the neighborhood to get to them, and so you drive or go briefly to a bus stop and aren’t visible. Belltown has restaurants, but how many are the kind you’d go to every week?
Lower downtown (between Pike Street and Yesler Way) is an office-only ghetto: there are few things to go other than that (the library being the biggest one), and most of the restaurants are only open for the lunch crowd and close at 5pm and on weekends. So there aren’t places for pedestrians to go to, so they aren’t visible. This is where you need more mixed use instead of office-only or residential-only areas.
“This also means a city like Redmond must compete with Bellevue for retail. Link won’t bring shoppers to Redmond.”
So what? It will bring Redmond residents to Redmond. It will bring people to businesses that aren’t in Bellevue or Seattle. (I went to Cartridge World in Redmond when the Seattle store closed.) It will bring people to the Redmond trails, Marymoor Park, and the “quaint Redmond downtown” atmosphere they’re building. Some of those people will shop or eat along the way, or notice unique businesses they’ll go to later. Not all shopping trips are for the kinds of things sold in Bellevue Square department stores or its specialty chain shops or Neiman Marcus.
“There is only so much retail a certain population can support.”
That only applies to department stores and large retailers. There may be too many department stores or big-box stores, but that doesn’t mean all retail is saturated. If Belltown or Eastlake had a supermarket it would get customers because there’s latent demand for it — people are going out of the neighborhood only because there’s nothing available in the neighborhood.
The seven-block radius around my apartment in southwest Capitol Hill has almost a dozen convenience stores and a dozen cafes. I don’t know how they can all stay in business but they do. Likewise, Broadway has two QFCs, and there’s two Safeways on 15th and 23rd. Surely that’s too many? But apparently First Hill has enough population for one supermarket, southwest Capitol Hill for another, and eastern Capitol Hill (15th) another. So why don’t you think Belltown could support a supermarket and a few other everyday stores? Again, the “15-minute city” model works in Barcelona and other cities that have tried it.
I don’t know that Capitol Hill is denser than downtown Seattle or Belltown.
I doubt it is. Maybe Christopher meant “non-downtown” neighborhood. I think a lot of people would consider Belltown part of downtown. But even that distinction is pretty arbitrary. South Lake Union feels quite “downtown” to me.
Anyway, there are parts of Capitol Hill that aren’t dense. There are single-family homes, especially close to Volunteer Park. These mansions were occupied by groups of people in the past, but my guess is they are mostly owned by wealthy families (one family per house) these days.
But there are plenty of areas of Capitol Hill that are quite dense. Some of them are new, but a lot of the the buildings are old. A lot of these buildings aren’t particularly high, but they hold more people than in places like, say, Redmond. Height isn’t the same as density. You have to get really high to make up for all the inefficiencies typical of modern six-story American apartment buildings. They quite often have setbacks. One issue is single staircases — https://www.thesisdriven.com/p/the-case-for-single-stair-multifamily. To be honest I haven’t dug into that issue much (I only know that liberalizing the code to match Europe seems like a good idea) but it is common to have old, fairly short buildings (e. g. brownstones in Brooklyn) to have way more people than a modern “5 over 1” buildings. I’m not against such buildings — I’m just saying that under the current code, you can’t expect density to be that high.
I guess the question is: dead in what way?
The one time I went to downtown Redmond, it seemed to be a huge tangle of car traffic and parking lots, but not much actual stuff.
I have to admit it’s kind of naive to think a nightlife district should be like a retail district. And Capitol Hill at 10 pm on a Saturday night is pretty dang active!
There are a few vacant places on Capitol Hill like the former drug store at Broadway and John. But for the most part it’s not dead. Not by a long shot!
Al S.
That’s because Capitol Hill is the Official Gay Party District! I loved it when I was young. I get the nightlife part of it. But Capitol Hill is drawing people in every weekend for a 50 mile radius. Young people in Tacoma go to Capitol Hill for fun. That makes downtown Tacoma dead on Saturday night.
“I have to admit it’s kind of naive to think a nightlife district should be like a retail district.”
Aren’t most nightlife districts retail districts? Both Capitol Hill and Ballard are. Not department-store retail like downtown, but lots of small retail shops and restaurants that draw both neighborhood residents and others.
A lot of Capitol Hill nightlife is straight, such as the live-music venues.
The drugstore at Broadway & John just closed recently as part of the Rite-Aid downsizing. The Bartell’s above QFC got caught in it too. There are probably some other empty storefronts somewhere.
Tacoma could have more venues to attract more people.
“ Aren’t most nightlife districts retail districts? Both Capitol Hill and Ballard are. ”
It depends on how one defines “nightlife”. If nightlife is restaurants it’s one thing as parts of Ballard and Capitol Hill are — but not all areas. If it’s performance spaces and sporting events it’s another. And if it’s dance clubs it’s somewhat irrelevant to have restaurants and apartments nearby.
“And if it’s dance clubs it’s somewhat irrelevant to have restaurants and apartments nearby.”
Maybe somebody wants to go to a restaurant before the club, or a late-night restaurant after the club, or walk from home to the club.
“It depends on how one defines “nightlife””
I thought nightlife meant bars and clubs and live-music venues. Not sporting events. Plays and things could go either way; I’m not sure if people would think of going to a play as “nightlife”.
I always considered “nightlife” to be lots of people walking around at night. Typically this is an area with a lot of clubs, restaurants and bars. People walk from one to another. It is also quite common (as Mike pointed out) to have other forms of retail in the same general area. It all goes together, really. For example a clothing retailer benefits from everyone walking by. I see about a half dozen clothing stores all on the same block in Capitol Hill. Not surprising in the least.
It is worth pointing out that “nightlife” areas also often have a lot of “daylife” if you will. In other words, lots of people walking around in the daytime. So while a lot of these shops do stay open until night (e. g. 8 PM on a weeknight) they have plenty of “foot traffic” in the day time as well.
My apartment building is offering “6 weeks free plus $1000”. This is the largest sale they’ve had and I the first with a sign on the door. Half the building is Amazon or Microsoft because you can walk to the spheres or an MS shuttle stop or the 545. Still, I guess the influx of 10,000 returning Amazonians that was going to push rents up hasn’t happened yet.
Also, last week I saw a building around somewhere like 10th Ave E or outer Roosevelt
— i don’t remember exactly — a 1 BR for $1600. The average rate is around $2000. It said “shared laundry” so that’s part of the reason for the lower cost. I’m surprised at the low price, surprised they advertised the price and laundry limitation. At that price I’d expect it to be snapped up in a week so why put the price on the sign? Maybe the market is softer than I thought. I briefly thought about moving there and saving $400, but I just signed a renewal two months ago and I’ll take my walk ability. Still, the fact that that sign exists is interesting.
Yeah, the rental market in Seattle is quite a bit softer than it was a few years ago. I wouldn’t say $1600 is a bargain for one bedroom however. Not if you’re working retail. Rental markets tend to go up and down over say, a decade.
What doesn’t go up and down and only increases in value over time? The 30 year home mortgage. Imagine locking into a 3 bedroom home at $800 for 30 years and then owning the house outright? Couple of roommates and heck! You live close to free. Having your own garden? A little shop in the garage? A place to store your camping and fishing gear in the basement? Everybody deserves the good life.
Have you bought a new roof lately? $20k in my neighborhood. How about a furnace? Or worse, priced a heat pump? My point is that you can’t forget maintenance costs, which increase at inflation rates or faster. Taxes, insurance and everything but your mortgage payment increase at the rate of inflation. So only part of your housing costs are fixed. Currently in this area the rental price of most single family homes is well below the carrying costs for owners – mortgage, insurance , maintenance, and taxes. So you are arguably better off renting IF you have the personal discipline to invest the savings. Of course, historically most people don’t have this discipline!
NoneOfTheAbove,
Oh no, I understand maintenance costs all too well and paying property management fees as well. One thing that’s changed in America in my lifetime is houses are now so big and complicated, DIY projects are less likely done by home owners. With a couple of friends, you can put a new roof on a 1200 sq ft house in long weekend. Installing a new hot water tank or even a new furnace isn’t really that hard. And we have Youtube now! There’s a lot of great videos on home projects. I feel most all of the young people on this blog could keep a modest house going. There’s a lot of angst on this blog…. home ownership would fix some of that.
I’ve calculated the personal space I’ve been living in as an adult over the years, and it’s about 400 square ft. As far as my carbon footprint, I’d put my impact living in a house in Tacoma (under 1200 sq ft shared with 2-4 people over the years) as way lower than anybody living by themselves in an apartment. We’ve grown a lot of our own food in the garden. Rode bikes and walked a lot. Used Tacoma’s crappy bus system. Just stayed home, ate homegrown popcorn and played Uno instead of going out…. domestic bliss is highly underrated. Life is not really about “retail density”.
I think most TOD projects just look like prison…. shitty apartments stuffed into soulless transit stations…. not place to raise kids or make long term neighborhood connections… I mean it looks like a place to consume drugs, booze, porn…. and loneliness. Count me out.
As far a car culture… most of the good places in Seattle predate autos and they’re mostly single family homes. These places are so envied on this board…. and so hated. “Let’s rezone Wallingford and tear it down!” Why? Because posters secretly love the houses there but can’t buy one? Why not leave other people’s shit alone and go build something new somewhere else that suits us?
“I wouldn’t say $1600 is a bargain for one bedroom however.”
No, it’s not affordable to retail clerks, but it’s less than I expected for a unit near (but not in) an inner Seattle retail district. (I’ll have to say “neighborhood commercial center” so Frank doesn’t think it’s downtown.)
“Imagine locking into a 3 bedroom home at $800 for 30 years and then owning the house outright?”
Did you buy it in the 1990s? Oh, you’re in Utah. The thing with home ownership is locking up your down payment money, having long-term debt, and living in Utah. And house/yard maintenance and costs. And not being able to walk to as many things. It’s suitable for some people, but not for others.
“As far as my carbon footprint, I’d put my impact living in a house in Tacoma (under 1200 sq ft shared with 2-4 people over the years) as way lower than anybody living by themselves in an apartment. We’ve grown a lot of our own food in the garden. Rode bikes and walked a lot.”
Good for you, but that’s not a typical American homeowner.
1200 sq ft is what houses were like in the 1950s, then they ballooned to 2000 and 3000 sq ft and counting. Part of the problem is people who want small houses can’t find them; they have to settle for a larger (and more expensive) one, because that’s what’s been built for the past thirty years.
> Why not leave other people’s shit alone and go build something new somewhere else that suits us?
Because there are no jobs there! They’re all in the city! At some point, a city has to start putting people on top of other people if it’s going to put jobs on top of other jobs. The logical end-point of continuous greenfield sprawl is Los Angeles or Houston – do you think either of those are sustainable models? At least LA has the deep-buried bones of streetcar suburbs and LA Metro is trying to retrofit the city with mass transit at great expense, but sprawl simply doesn’t work.
The office jobs are in mainly in Seattle and Bellevue; the manufacturing jobs are mainly in SODO, Tukwila, Kent, and Auburn. It’s ridiculous to believe every new employee in whatever growing company in Seattle will joyfully commute in from some idealized SFH development in Sumner or Orting or Black Diamond or wherever. Unless you believe businesses should simply stop growing and stop adding employees once their host city can’t build any more SFH, and should open new branches in whatever new sprawled development is the next place for new housing, but that’s also a ridiculous notion.
tacomee must be unaware that housing prices are going down in some parts of the country. Or maybe he just missed the housing bubble burst in 2008?
You’re looking at things from a big picture point of view. I look at things from a much more personal point of view.
Currently Seattle is looking at epic underfunding of both public education and public transit. Want to talk about sustainability? Seattle is way worse off than most of the country. Just where is the money going come from to finish current light rail projects? Or fix public public education? These are very real problems .
If you’re ignoring the big picture because it doesn’t jive with your personal preferences, you’re part of the problem.
That’s bullshit. Of course people should keep an eye on big picture issues. But at the end of the day, everyone is responsible for their own lives. Where’s the money coming from to fix all these under funded “social obligations” in Seattle? If you think bloated light rail projects haven’t had a negative impact on public education on the Left Coast, you’re not really a “big picture “ guy. Do you support public education, transit or “social housing” ? Funds are limited.
> everyone is responsible for their own lives
So why are you so opposed to letting property owners build what they want to build on their own land? What’s wrong with loosening zoning regulations to let folks build housing products where they think they can sell it?
No (private) developer has power of eminent domain, and we sure as hell don’t give enough money to public developers to buy out millionaire homeowners in wealthy neighborhoods.
Nathan Dickey,
What my neighbors do with their property certainly impacts my property. I used to own a small house in Tacoma that currently has been rezoned for huge apartment buildings that would block all the sunlight from the backyard. Nobody really wants to live next to buildings like that. Nobody even wants to live in buildings like that. Communities have the right to say no to things.
Here’s a list of shitty housing projects in Tacoma that went broke. Several of these developments tore down reasonable houses to build more bland and unaffordable apartments. Only half of the units got built and I doubt the other ones that did get built are maintained in a reasonable manner. Just more out-of-State Tacoma slumlords in the end. Changing the zoning is going to promote reckless development like this.
People on this board who want to change current zoning just have no idea of the impact of doing so. It’s just another silly false solution for people who just can’t seem to face the facts. Seattle doesn’t owe anybody an affordable place to live. Seattle can’t even provide children with a good basic public education. The City has a lot of deep structural problems it’s refused to deal with for decades. Starting with Sound Transit. If you can’t see ballooning transit project costs impacting affordable housing and public education I’m not sure you’re living in political reality.
That’s the big picture. On a personal level, I recommend most families move ASAP to a more affordable housing market with schools aren’t a dumpster fire.
People on this board who want to change current zoning just have no idea of the impact of doing so.
Nonsense. In many cases we simply accept the fact that taller buildings will be built. But quite often we are simply arguing that the buildings hold more people. Consider the height limits of a house in Seattle. Why can’t you build an apartment with the same dimensions (like they do in Spokane)? Why do we have laws requiring parking?
We have a very good idea of what would happen if they changed the zoning. Instead of building large single family homes in most of the city they would large multi-family home in most of the city. You would then see lower housing prices. (This is well-accepted idea in academic circles and you can find numerous studies confirming the obvious by just searching for them. )
Nathan, I would like to address some comments you make to Tacomee:
1. [Tacomee] “Why not leave other people’s shit alone and go build something new somewhere else that suits us”?
[Nathan] “Because there are no jobs there! They’re all in the city! At some point, a city has to start putting people on top of other people if it’s going to put jobs on top of other jobs. The logical end-point of continuous greenfield sprawl is Los Angeles or Houston – do you think either of those are sustainable models? At least LA has the deep-buried bones of streetcar suburbs and LA Metro is trying to retrofit the city with mass transit at great expense, but sprawl simply doesn’t work”.
First, the number of jobs in the urban center has declined around 40% with work from home, at least in Seattle.
Second, according to the U.S. Census Bureau population in King Co. is flat over the last four years and the 20-year future population estimates look to be wildly inflated. In 2022 the GMPC determined King Co. alone has existing zoning for 800,000 new residents, and every city already has zoning to meet its 2044 future housing growth targets. On any one day Seattle has around 20,000 vacant rental units for rent. So what problem are you trying to solve with upzoning?
2. [Nathan] “The office jobs are in mainly in Seattle and Bellevue; the manufacturing jobs are mainly in SODO, Tukwila, Kent, and Auburn. It’s ridiculous to believe every new employee in whatever growing company in Seattle will joyfully commute in from some idealized SFH development in Sumner or Orting or Black Diamond or wherever”.
This is why we built Link and have Sounder and express buses. It is why the PSRC advocates for self-contained urban villages. Then work from home arrived. Workers in large U.S. cities have been commuting to offices for decades by transit, or car, because they either can’t afford to live in the city or don’t want to.
3. [Nathan] “So why are you so opposed to letting property owners build what they want to build on their own land? What’s wrong with loosening zoning regulations to let folks build housing products where they think they can sell it”?
This was the original zoning sin. We took a three-county area of almost 6500 sq. MILES with very few people and zoned the whole thing for development. At least Los Angeles County with 4750 sq miles has almost 10 million residents.
The entire point of the Growth Management Act in 1991 was to try and put the zoning genie back in the bottle and NOT let “property owners build what they want to build on their own land”?
What planning agencies today DON’T want to do is double down on the zoning mistakes of the past. That is why since 2006 the PSRC has pushed for TOD housing in dense zones near walkable transit and retail, and to discourage property owners from building whatever they want wherever their property is.
It is why just recently the King Co. Affordable Housing Council directed cities to allocate most of their GMPC future housing targets into dense zones and upzone those, ideally to create more affordable housing and housing that does not require a car.
I can tell you from the developer side most believe Seattle is overbuilt when it comes to multi-family market rate housing (and developers are not interested in low-income market rate or subsidized housing). This is why permit applications are way down. Developers also don’t really know what to do with work from home, and how permanent it will be.
What we have seen from work from home is more sprawl, that is true, because the zoning already existed in these outer areas of Snohomish, Kitsap, King and Pierce Counties while workers don’t need to commute to a city every day anymore, exactly what the PSRC didn’t want, although Link is designed to increase sprawl while allowing people to live in suburbia but work in the city. I mean, what do people think TOD in Mountlake Terrace is designed for?
Zoning is simply a tool. Identify the problem, and then match the zoning to the problem. Unfortunately, in the U.S. we made some bad zoning mistakes early on that are difficult to repair.
The problem today is affordable housing because so much existing, older, more affordable housing has been destroyed by new construction and the wealth gap has widened in King Co. King Co. under ESB 1220 has determined affordable housing CAPACITY must be in new zoning to avoid displacement, and it must be in existing dense multi-family zones near walkable transit and retail, which most cities already did because of PSRC recommendations since 2006, not because they are intent on preserving SFH zoning.
Nearly every city is upzoning right now under 1220, although few think the future population growth targets are accurate, and few think any of the upzoning will result in affordable housing (0% to 60% AMI) but all of that upzoning is going into already dense multi-family zones.
So you are correct about the demand to upzone, although I don’t see the population growth for it, but you are wrong about WHERE the upzoning will occur: in already existing dense multi-family zones near walkable transit and retail Capitol Hill will go from 7 to 20 stories before Blue Ridge will go to four-plexes although I don’t see the future population growth to upzone Capitol Hill except King Co. thinks it will create more new market rate construction that will be affordable to those earning under 60% AMI.
@Fact Check
Actually even in the most recent One Seattle comprehensive plan they planned for around 160k jobs and only 80k housing units when it should be around 1:1 to keep the housing to job ratio manageable.
American cities just keep under allocating housing when it comes to their zoning plans.
@Fact Check
What exactly is the downside of upzoning more — the only thing that happens is extra apartments get built.
American society will not collapse from some more 5 over 1’s being built.
So let me get the argument straight here:
Poor person: “I want to buy a condo in the city, but all you build is houses. Can we please allow builders to build more condos?”
Wealthy person: “No. I don’t want a tall building blocking my view”
Poor person: “The building would be just as tall as a house. ”
Wealthy person: “Still no. You should build somewhere else.”
Poor person: “I don’t want to live somewhere else.”
Wealthy person: “Tough. Maybe you should have been wealthier.”
Do I have that right? Am I missing something?
“Poor person: “I want to buy a condo in the city…”
Very funny. Show me a condo in the city that a poor person can buy including financing, down payment, property taxes, and HOA dues. Seattle’s median condo sales price in July was $628,000, up from June’s $529,250. This is a 5.5% increase year-over-year. In July of 2023, the median price was $595,000.
This comment completely misunderstands affordable housing, which is rentals, and the process the King Co. Affordable Housing Committee is going through under ESB 1220.
The VERY FIRST consideration is affordable housing must be located where a person can live without a car because the cost of a car can be $1000/mo. which consumes any subsidy for affordable housing.
That is why King Co. — not exactly a bastion of conservative developers — is demanding cities upzone THEIR EXISTING DENSE MULTI-FAMILY ZONES, and will not count any upzone in the SFH zone toward a city’s affordable housing targets.
Only 20-30% of the land allows multifamily housing. Why should we have to squeeze more into the limited multifamily areas? That’s what leads to tearing down the “older, more affordable” apartments. Do you know what happens if the older building is not replaced? The price goes up! It’s no longer affordable.
We should expand the footprint of urban villages. Then the density is adjacent to existing walkable areas, destinations, and transit.
tacomee refuses to get it and that’s their choice, but they think they get to control other people’s lives even though “everyone is responsible for their own lives”. I guess tacomee is our benevolent dictator who gets to decide who builds what and where?
Fact Check:
> the number of jobs in the urban center has declined around 40% with work from home, at least in Seattle.
[citation needed]. Manufacturing jobs can’t be done from home, WFH still declining, and even with hybrid WFH, the office jobs are still largely based in the commercial districts of Seattle and Bellevue.
> On any one day Seattle has around 20,000 vacant rental units for rent.
NIMBY dogwhistle #1, unless you believe every time a renter moves, their former dwelling can and should be occupied less than 24 hours later. If someone lives in an apartment for 24 months, moves out, and a new tenant is in 1 month later, that unit has been vacant for 1/25 months, or 4% of that time. If vacancies are at 4%, that means every unit is occupied or about to be occupied. What’s our current vacancy rate again?
> This is why we built Link and have Sounder and express buses.
> We took a three-county area of almost 6500 sq. MILES with very few people and zoned the whole thing for development.
This is one of your most misleading statements to date.
> I can tell you from the developer side most believe Seattle is overbuilt when it comes to multi-family market rate housing
I can tell you from the house-buying side that Seattle’s missing middle is still missing. Check Redfin; 1,200-sq-ft townhomes are 80-90% the price of SFHs, but the SFHs have 25-50% more space and 5x property. Not to mention HOAs.
> Unfortunately, in the U.S. we made some bad zoning mistakes early on that are difficult to repair.
No, we are refusing to repair them because we refuse to re-legalize the types of flexible development which all the beloved mid-war and mid-century housing in this city. We had to wait for State Legislature to force cities to adopt rules allowing 4 units on a lot, and even then the Mayors are using every tool available to prevent that style of development.
What’s incredible about the end of the comment is that FC clearly has a grasp of basic economics, but then still thinks that upzoning is like Sim City or Cities Skylines, where changing the zoning density results in anything not matching that specific density gets bulldozed and immediately redeveloped.
Exactly what harm would come if 3-4 story apartments were legalized across 100% of Seattle’s non-industrial land? 3-4 story SFHs have been legal across 100% of Seattle’s non-industrial land forever. What if we allowed 6-story walkups everywhere? Again, not a required, but simply allowed. What harm would come?
“Poor person: “I want to buy a condo in the city…”
Very funny. Show me a condo in the city that a poor person can buy
Oh, you mean in Seattle. Wow, you completely missed the point. They want to buy a condo in Seattle but they can’t afford to buy a condo in Seattle because Seattle isn’t building enough condos. They aren’t building enough condos because the city makes it difficult (if not just plain illegal) to build them. Understand now?
Oh, and the argument is exactly the same in terms of rentals. Just switch “buy” to “rent” and “condo” to apartment”. I mentioned condos because the OP seems obsessed with ownership.
Ross thinks with a little upzoning “poor people” can afford $628,000 condos
Bullshit! Stop lying about what I wrote. I referenced condos that cost one hundred grand. Then, when you obsessed about renting versus buying I clearly stated that the same argument applies to renting.
Why do purposely misrepresent my argument? Or do I have to repeatedly explain it before you realize what it was? Keep in mind the former is a violation of our comment policy.
Nathan, I don’t want to get in between the back and forth between you and Tacomee.
Tacomee doesn’t get to decide how areas are zoned or what is built there. That begins with the GMA, then descends to regional planning bodies like the PSRC and GMPC, and now under 1220 King Co., to finally city councils. All I am trying to do is explain the decisions they are making and why.
I don’t live in the SFH zone and we don’t develop there. I do think some of the desire to change the zoning of the SFH zoning on this blog and The Urbanist has to do with a belief the SFH zone is privileged. At least Mike has stated so.
But the issue today is how to create — and preserve — affordable housing in the 0% to 60% AMI band. According to King Co. you can’t do that in the SFH zone so no upzoning in the SFH zone counts unless cities want to voluntarily exceed their GMPC housing allocations even though their current zoning meets their future housing targets. Most don’t want to.
The reality is when in 2022 the GMPC allocated its future housing targets through 2044 to cities every city already had existing zoning to meet their allocations. So who are you upzoning for?
I’ve seen this game before in other cities. Housing prices are not going down in this area. Too much money. Builders want to build for the rich. You can zone for the poor all you want but builders won’t build it without public subsidies that are very expensive. Cities won’t amend the regulatory limits in the SFH zone which is allowed under 1110 so whether a four plex or six plex it doesn’t pencil out after paying over $1 million for the lot.
Ross thinks with a little upzoning “poor people” can afford $628,000 condos with a monthly HOA of $1000 because insurance and maintenance are through the roof (if you want an affordable condo go to my old stomping ground in Miami although you might get hit with a $300k assessment — free tip DON’T buy a condo today).
Personally I don’t really care. I don’t want to fight over it. Most comp. plans are completed and out for 30 day public review and they change very little, and in cities like Kirkland and Redmond where there is some proposed upzoning there is a big public backlash. If voters don’t like their zoning get new leaders. That is what the SFH zone in Seattle did with Harrell and the Council.
It just isn’t worth you and Tacomee getting so animated over this when the cake is baked and you can’t do anything about it. There are tons of places to rent in Seattle with all different price levels and townhomes and houses and condos for sale if you have the down payment and financing to compete against other wealthy bidders, many of whom have two incomes.
So let’s let the upzoning discussions go because everyone gets too emotional, many have simplistic understandings of why things are zoned the way they are or what motivates builders, and see how the comp. plans look in early 2025.
> the cake is baked and you can’t do anything about it.
> see how the comp. plans look in early 2025.
The comp plans aren’t baked! That’s the whole point of arguing about it now! Seattle has a pretty meaningful election in less than 30 days!
As soon as the comp plans are finalized in 2026, people like you are among the first to say we can’t do anything and need to wait until the next 10-year update. And then, when the draft plan comes out and it’s still milquetoast, you’ll say it’s already baked. So, when should the advocacy happen?
> Personally I don’t really care. I don’t want to fight over it.
Says the guy who’s writing 500+ words every comment.
First of all, I think it’s important to think about jobs as mostly secondary to the really important things in life. There are lots and lots of jobs in Seattle, but with the high housing prices and low quality public education system, do you want to live there with a household income of under 100K? Doesn’t matter how many jobs Seattle is planning to have…. if the quality of life there keeps going down for folks of moderate income. I believe there’s a lot of angst on this board because the “Seattle dreams” of posters doesn’t match up with their “Seattle reality”. I’d just shrug and move on, and stop believing in a solution though politics or zoning or anything else. Seattle is what it is. I doubt voting will change the economic dynamics much.
After spending much of my life in East Tacoma, I can guarantee you that any talk about not living a house or living “car free” would not go over at a public meeting very well. The working class see themselves living in their own house with a big car in the driveway. I can’t believe posters here chirping on and on about housing and transit for poor people….. without even asking those poor people.
I’m not sure where the “delusions of grandeur” come from with the educated urban Left. Maybe university life? Posters see Seattle as “their” city…. a place that needs to provide from them. In reality Seattle is meaner than Hell and only provides for those with incomes of over 150K and/or property owners. Otherwise you’re screwed. Go ahead with your transit plans, your social housing dreams, the rezoning ideas….. these are going to change the nature of the City.
@Nathan
Both of them start from the assumption “apartments are bad” then will work backwards to justify it from anything.
WL,
My greatest gift is that I’m “uneducated”. I’m a simple, blue collar guy. I didn’t get brainwashed at some university. I have delusions that the world is going to change to accommodate little old me.
Life #1. Grow up and buy a house somewhere you can afford. Learn how to be a homeowner and a good neighbor. Work hard and save 15% of your income for retirement. Become a pillar of your community. Retire with dignity.
Life #2. Live in some impossible to afford Liberal city and pay an ever increasing rent bill. Put all of your faith for the future in political change. Work hard but let the “rent monster” eat up money you should be saving for retirement. Waste years…. decades even…….. on political change that never comes. Retire to a homeless camp.
Go ahead. Hate bomb me……. but just what road are you on?
Here’s a key to life well lived. Muncie, Indiana, the home of Ball State University. Move there, find a job, a romantic partner, buy a house like this one and grow. Or keep spinning your wheels in Seattle.
@tacomee: I think we’ve been waiting for you to walk the walk and move to SLC for a couple years now.
Lol I really don’t quite understand why fact check and tacommee act as if more apartments is the end of American society. And if it’s added to Seattle it doesn’t even affect tacommee who doesn’t even live in Seattle.
@tacommee
lol so what was decided in the 1950s of freeways and then 1970s of single family homes is the pinnacle of zoning? We should freeze it forever?
You’re acting like this was some great ancient tradition when it’s only been one generation.
From the Census Bureau:
“The decline in household size continued. There was an average of 3.51 people per household in 1950, substantially higher than the average of 2.61 in 2019.
“ One factor: Fewer people lived alone. In 1950 just 9% of households had someone living alone compared with 28% in 2019.”
This is not a bias. This is a statement of the facts.
Anyone who gets nostalgic about the single family popularity of the middle 20th Century needs to get a good reality slap in the face about demographic realities of today.
“You’re acting like this was some great ancient tradition when it’s only been one generation.”
WL
For people like him it’s a stubborn unwillingness to accept that their generation’s own conventional wisdom on homeownership and the suburban experiment as they enter retirement has aged like milk in the modern era.
and has truly soured for many people younger than them who aren’t currently buying, as the market has shifted dramatically from where it was 30 to 40 years ago.
Where back then a single person’s income could realistically pay for a mortgage or most of the mortgage depending on the city. Alongside that housing was treated as a commodity to buy rather than an investment vehicle that it is seen as now. That’s not to say it wasn’t back then as well, but to the degree it mattered was very different back then.
My retired parents were later to home buying, they bought in South Tacoma in the early 90s for 78K on my dad’s decently paid for the time military income as my mom decided to stay home and take care of me. Their house currentlu values half a million now, adjusted to inflation it’s 3 times the original buying price to the current estimated value. My parents likely wouldn’t be able to afford their home now if they had to buy now.
The more salient and darker point I’d make here is that the older generations unrelenting stubbornness to change on housing is making them willfully unprepared for retirement.
As many will have to eventually during retirement stop driving a car and will be needing to rely on paratransit or public transit to get around. Something said seniors haven’t planned for as an inevitably and why the suburban experiment has come home to roost as now they’re stuck in car dependent suburbs and driving cars long past they reasonably should as they enter worse cognitive decline & impaired driving skills from age and decreased ability to react to their surroundings on the road.
Children being unable to live nearby their aging parents because of how expensive housing has got is another point they’re uncomfortable to deal with or perfer to ignore. They would’ve likely been able to have their children and grandchildren near or closer to them had they not kept fighting against new more dense housing being built. Something that’s important as people age and more older family members pass.
But that is the definition of hubris and pride blinding a person’s own ability to think with clarity to a situation that has changed dramatically over the decades.
I’ll end with a proverb that some people should take into account the next time they complain about new housing or more density because they believe “they know better” or “know what’s best for the neighborhood”.
“Pride comes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.”
Nathan, you write:”
“As soon as the comp plans are finalized in 2026, people like you are among the first to say we can’t do anything and need to wait until the next 10-year update. And then, when the draft plan comes out and it’s still milquetoast, you’ll say it’s already baked. So, when should the advocacy happen”?
I assume this is a typo. The ten-year updates of comprehensive plans for every city planning under the GMA are due Dec. 31, 2024. The original 10-year anniversary was Dec. 31, 2022 (the GMA became effective 1992) but Covid extended it 2 years. Many cities have completed their drafts or are about to in order to allow 30 days public notice and comments before final adoption.
The Urbanist has been warning since last January that Seattle might not meet its deadline although I haven’t seen an extension granted and don’t think there is an exception clause considering the ten-year update has been extended to 12 years already. However King Co. was delayed in issuing its guidance under 1220 which delayed a lot of cities’ plans.
Seattle’s/Harrell’s One Seattle Comprehensive Plan was issued March 5, 2024 and IIRC public comments were accepted until May. Progressive organizations like The Stranger were underwhelmed, but it isn’t clear they understood at the time how King Co. would apply 1220. Not surprisingly the city’s website was enthusiastic.
According to the city’s website the One Seattle Plan would be completed in early 2024 with council review and approval in the third quarter 2024. I haven’t seen much discussion at the council level and don’t quite know what kind of public comment will be allowed before adoption considering there will likely be many changes. Right now the council is pretty overwhelmed with balancing the general budget deficit of $260 million.
The Plan can be amended once per year, but usually those are discreet amendments, so when I say the cake is baked I meant for most other cities that have finished their Plans, and likely won’t make major changes over the next ten years unless required by state law. My guess is Seattle’s Plan will be similar to Harrell’s Plan released on March 5, but with guidance from King Co. on 1220 now finalized that requires new housing to primarily to go into the existing dense multi-family and commercial/office zones (including Seattle’s office core) Seattle like many other cities could make substantive changes to where they upzone their cities.
I wish some in this blog would not take housing and zoning so personally. The proof will be in the Plans themselves. None of us will be making the decisions so there is no need for personal insults.
Zach, half of young adults now live with their parents, mostly in single family homes. In Europe the percentage is higher. It makes sense because the parents have the room and the lack of rent allows the kids and their partners or spouses to save up for a down payment or to start a business. A lot of parents bought long ago so their houses are pretty centrally located which is good for the kids if they have jobs or are going to school. What is new is young people wanting to live alone outside the house and that is expensive if you don’t have roommates.
Many seniors stay in their houses because it allows in home care to live there, and they are terrified of assisted care living places. Plus they know it. My older sister cared for my dad from age 85 to 94 in his house, and it worked well for her because she was recently divorced and he needed help and didn’t want a stranger or to be alone at night. It also allowed her to have a covered parking stall for her car as she did most of the driving and all of it after age 90 and plenty of space for the two of them, and room for her dog to go outside. It is also good if they have grandkids who stay over.
Assisted care for someone my dad’s age can cost between $10,000/mo. and $40,000/mo. depending on the amount of care that is needed unless you go with a group home. Having a kid live with the parent and help with the care means it preserves the value of the house as an inheritance rather than going to an assisted care place and saves the kid helping out and living in from paying rent. Plus the parent stays in their home. That is what happened with my dad. Plus the family home kept the family together as it was the gathering space for holidays and other events.
If someone doesn’t have kids this might not apply, but then someone who is single or doesn’t have kids probably doesn’t want a house, and will end up in assisted care which are pretty awful places from what I have seen if you love your parent. Like putting your dog in a kennel forever.
I am still single so can’t afford to buy a house but I hope some day to get married and have kids and buy a house. When I am my dad’s age I hope I have a kid like my sister and the other kids who helped out. I don’t think that is a terrible thing like you claim. I found your proverb to be insulting and demeaning. My sister and family and dad were not proud or haughty and there was no fall. Instead my dad lived out the rest of his life in dignity surrounded by people he loved and loved him, not someone paid to care for him. You should be ashamed of your last comment.
Zach B.
What I hear in your last post is a young person who is so angry because he has no chance of being as successful as his parents. You absolutely deserve your own house. Believe it, Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Ask your dad. He thinks renting is for suckers.
And actually, I’m set up really well for retirement Zack. I own real estate worth $1 million dude. Pretty sure when I get old, I’ll just move into assisted living with assets of selling that. Won’t need that house when I’m dead. Now, if I would’ve rented, I would be in a terrible place financially.
Al S.
Living alone, long-term is the worst life plan you could possibly make. I don’t care what the demographics say, It’s just a shitty choice. What happens when you get cancer or just get really old and are not able to do everything yourself? Living alone a strain on your finances, it makes you emotionally unstable. It’s not the way that people have lived for thousands and thousands of years. Do so at your own risk.
“He thinks renting is for suckers.”
You don’t know my dad, so don’t put words in my dad’s mouth. He literally paid for my rent all through college with his military retirement pension, so I didn’t have to worry about having a roof over my head. He didn’t have to do that, but I am forever thankful he did that for me as it allowed me to get my bachelor’s degree.
So do not disrespect my father that way you are doing now in trying to speak for him, its rude and truly a gross thing to do to a man I respect and love. He is very aware and sympathetic to the reality around him in these times from the amount of homelessness he sees when driving in Tacoma. He grew up dirt poor so he knows what true poverty looks like to struggle and have little on the table. Which is why he donates to local churches and orgs who help with the homeless. Either through money or volunteering his time because he knows the struggle all too well, and if he can help someone get help escaping homelessness then that is worth it to him to help as much as he can.
we can talk around in circles for hours, but the main thing is that ‘fact check’ and ‘tacomee’ will not support apartments/townhouses and will contort any reasoning to stop it.
If it’s easy to build they’ll say it’ll destroy single family homes
If it’s hard to build they’ll say don’t upzone it does nothing
If poor people move in they’ll say it destroys the neighborhood
if rich people move in they’ll say it’s gentrification
etc…
They are not considering housing or jobs or anything all they are thinking about is “stop apartments” that’s it and working backwards to find a reason to justify it.
This video about housing costs showed up on my video feed. It’s interesting food for thought. Although it doesn’t discuss much about Seattle, Seattle is on several charts.
– wheelchair uneven boarding
– bad welding and holes in shelters
– bad paint job
– signal timing
– not lining up the curbs
– bus bunching / service gaps
This is not going well at all.
“Children being unable to live nearby their aging parents because of how expensive housing has got”
I hadn’t thought of that. How much is this happening? I think most adult children still live in the same metropolitan area as their parents, even if not in the same city. If the parent lives in Bellevue (in my case), while I live in Seattle I could imagine a child/helper living in Auburn, Everett, or Lakewood, but how much does this happen?
There’s also a converse situation. When my relative needed to move to a Medicaid adult family home, we chose one in Bellevue because she’d lived there for 50 years and wanted to stay there and her volunteer-helpers and doctors were there. The best we could find on a bus line was in Lake Hills, closest to a coverage route (but doable from the routes on 156th). Other places in King County I considered were only on coverage routes (except one on the 106 in Skyway). Others I had to turn down because I couldn’t get to them: they had no transit or would be two hours away (e.g., Monroe).
All these homes are deep in single-family areas because that’s where the lowest-price houses are, and they need a house large enough for six residents and staff. That would be OK if these neighborhoods were more walkable and mixed-use and had more transit, but they don’t, because of how we’ve been building neighborhoods for the past eighty years.
The Urbanist reports that Metro is expecting a $500 million budget shortfall by 2028. Hopefully this is motivation for either/both a larger Seattle TBD and a county-wide TBD. I’ll be interested to see whether the county is full-speed-ahead on 100% electrification or if this is the reality check that service quality (frequency, span-of-service, reliability, etc.) matters far more than the type of vehicle, as long as it’s getting cars off the road and giving people more mobility options.
Metro managed to narrowly dodge massive service cuts 10 years ago, so hopefully they are able to accomplish that again given the years of warning.
Excellent video that caused me to wonder: then why haven’t we done any of these things? Answer: our transit boards are not elected. They are mostly comprised of hand-picked politicians who have primary jobs of serving their cities or counties, with the board position being akin to an aside. Their board decisions are based on whatever the transit staff tell then, but tend to be parochial, as they won’t be voted out of their primary office because of them. A better structure would to have these transit boards entirely elected, with each region represented (e.g., county council districts) and three riders on the board, such as many of you on this forum. The transit agencies will fight you tooth and nail to protect their fiefdoms, however. Intercity Transit (Olympia) is one kind of exception who, in addition to having three community members as board members, who hopefully are regular riders, despite being tied with Community Transit for having the highest transit sales tax in the state – 1.2% – offset that a bit by being fare-free (CT is not).
The number of car fatalities in the United States has declined over the decades:
Overall: The number of traffic deaths has decreased since the 1970s, and the rate of deaths per 100,000 people is 38% lower than it was in 1975.
Per capita: The number of deaths per capita decreased by 35.46% from 1979 to 2005.
Mileage: The mileage death rate has decreased 93% since 1923.
Drunk driving: Drunk driving fatalities have decreased 36% since 1982, and 83% among people under 21.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has implemented a number of safety initiatives to reduce traffic deaths, including requiring automatic emergency braking systems in passenger cars and light trucks by 2029. Driver assistance technology and apps can also help prevent crashes, such as lane-departure warning, blind spot.
I raise these points to highlight that traffic safety has been an ongoing function of road repair and car design (a topic the video does not address) for the last fifty years, along with car safety including car seats for children and infants. Two advancements are separating directions on highways and freeways, and seatbelt use and airbags. Some think driverless cars or taxis could be a significant safety advance in urban areas. Recently Waymo opened operations in Austin. Another is the acceptance of roundabouts that are not only safer but increase throughput although Americans struggle with roundabouts that are more than one lane.
Another factor to reduce fatalities is to reduce VMT. Work from home and simply living closer to work are two good ways to reduce private VMT, along with online purchases. Reducing speeds helps, but not reducing car capacity which bunches cars more. With the right designs speeds can be reduced but through put capacity maintained. The number of miles driven by those 16 to 19 — a critical danger age — has declined while their use of ride shares has increased dramatically.
If I could add a tool it would be regular instruction requirements. A lot of drivers don’t know the rules or how to drive. Schools no longer offer drivers Ed. Requiring a certain number of hours of instruction every 10 years would help train drivers better. As cars become more complicated and autonomous training in these systems is important. Today you buy a new, much more complicated car with an enormous manual, and drive it off the lot.
I know some believe car size and weight should be factors but the declines noted above are not size related as SUV’s have become popular. Designing cars to crumble upon impact reduces the force to the driver and passenger during impact. This is why cow catchers or other rigid structures attached to front grills should be prohibited, and some states do.
Another important factor is driver distraction. Cell phones are an obvious factor although Bluetooth is helping. Music is shown to not be a distraction except it can impair hearing especially with ear buds. Eating and drinking are.
Thanks for the video.
On an unrelated note, has anyone on this blog used or subscribed to the news service advertised in the video. It looks like it collects news across the spectrum (like The Weekly) but rather than screening the news by source it tries to educate the reader on which news services produced the news and which rebroadcast it and their relative bias ratings, although assigning bias ratings is always subjective. I gave up my NY Times subscription despite its excellent news reporting because I felt it had become too biased in its editorials, selection of articles, and headlines.
I haven’t watched the videos yet since I’m about to go check out the new Overlook Walk at Pike Place Market, but that “collects news across the spectrum” sounds like Ground News, which has been making the rounds in YouTube sponsorships. The video creators say they find it useful, and maybe it is. I haven’t found a compelling need for it yet. And when it says “We show whether only the left or right is covering it”, I wonder whether it’s distinguishing between center-left vs far-left. The far right has captured the Republican party and presidential/congressional candidates, but on the left the far left is still just a fringe and an occasional representative, no matter how much right-wing media claims otherwise. There’s one historian on YouTube, Ludyard Lynch (Whatifalthist), who is reasonably good up until the 1990s, then he seems to go off the deep end and thinks everything is a “left/right” battle, but what he means is far left vs far right, and that ignores the vast majority of center-left/moderate-left Democrats and politicians, so it’s like a false choice or imaginary world. I’d check for that if you’re considering Ground News or something similar.
From what I’ve read, VMT was declining throughout the 2010s but may have plateaued or reversed since 2020, so I’d check that. And also that GenZ high schoolers are less interested in a drivers’ licence than previous generations. That may be why schools stopped teaching drivers’ ed (if they did), as well as the general funding squeezes at schools.
Notice that all those car-safety measures are about protecting the car’s occupants, and ignore the pedestrians and bicyclists around them.
App-taxis and autonomous cars do have niches and some advantages. My arguments are against them not because I don’t recognize those, but because mainstream society ignores how Uber exploits drivers with non-living wages and no employee protections and devastated the taxi industry because “Look, a shiny new app”, and how autocars are a distraction from autobuses and autotrains, and how some people are trying to replace medium- and low-density transit with app-taxis wholesale.
The number of in-car fatalities is falling, for the reasons you noted. However, the number of pedestrian and cycle fatalities is rising because of the greater heights and masses of contemporary vehicles.
It’s a classic case of the rich man’s mantra: I got mine, screw you.
I haven’t seen any data that compares the grill height or car weight to bicyclist deaths. Death is usually due to impact with the concrete.
However most bicycle deaths are due to head injuries when 90% of bicycle fatalities are to bicyclists not wearing helmets.
Bicycle fatalities and trips to the ED have fallen significantly for kids because of helmet mandates and better educating parents. At the same time adult bicycle deaths have risen (as has the number of bicyclists).
A large number of bicyclists suffer serious head and brain injuries simply by falling on concrete without a helmet with no impact. Riding a bicycle at speed on concrete with clip in pedals is inherently dangerous. Recently there have been some high profile bike injuries from riders simply getting their tires caught in rail tracks. Is this a case of SDOT saying, “I got mine screw you”?
To ride a bicycle on concrete without a helmet and bare skin is very foolish which is why few motorcyclists do it.
At some point bicyclists have to assume some risk for their actions. I regularly see bicyclists riding at high speed in traffic taking dangerous actions. Motorists don’t want to hit a bicyclist, or another car, or hurt anyone, but bicyclists can be hard to see, especially if they are not following normal traffic rules so they are not anticipated.
If they insist on riding without a helmet deaths or serious injuries from traumatic head injuries are not surprising from any impact with concrete whether there is an impact or not. Seattle and King Co. were negligent in repealing bicycle helmet mandates for bicyclists to benefit Lime and other shared bike/scooter programs. There is your “I got mine screw you”.
It would be like adopting a Vision Zero program for car fatalities but telling drivers and passengers to not wear seatbelts and to disable air bags.
Ah, Tom, 92% percent of US families own a car (and much of the 8% who don’t wish they could). Driving is not the privilege of the rich. We have public roads for everybody. Nobody is giving up on cars.
The problem with attacking cars is the same as attacking single family homes. The vast amount of people who count in America (those who vote in elections) have cars…. and mortgages on homes as well. Even the most Liberal cities in the USA, starting with Seattle, are not voting to get rid of cars or single family homes. There isn’t going to be any big transit pushing class war because that’s not who we are.
@tacommee
> The problem with attacking cars is the same as attacking single family homes.
Other countries have cars and do not require such a high amount of pedestrian/cycle fatalities. I do find a bit funny how you associate trying to rein in pedestrian fatalities with the end of American society though.
WL,
As a long time cyclist, I think road safety is important. It’s Tom who insists that driving is privilege of “the rich” . Everybody drives. Everybody needs to be more aware of cyclists and pedestrians. We need more traffic calming features on our roads. More education and awareness. We need to learn to “share the road” because honestly…. the cars aren’t leaving.
Been to Europe a number of times and those people love, and I mean love!, cars.
tacomee, sure, people have to have cars in America. But they don’t have to have four ton pickups or three ton seven foot tall “SUV’s”, at least, the ones who aren’t construction workers toting loads to a worksite don’t. Big cars have been shown to be safer for their occupants and massively more dangerous for others, including people in smaller vehicles. They are especially dangerous for pedestrians and cyclists they hit because instead of rolling the victim up over the hood as a sedan usually does they push them down the pavement and the running gear mangles them.
For the guys Rollin’ Coal in the big Hemi’s, it’s just another “Mine is bigger than yours!” flash.
And Frank, just because people can be idiots on bicycles doesn’t excuse the selfishness of the people who are driving these over-tall, mangle people in the concrete, pedestrian assassins. I certainly agree that toe clips plus no helmet is a dumb thing, but that “Rabbit!” bloviation, is about the most egregiously JDV-like “deflection” I’ve seen on this otherwise pretty sane blog.
Driving is a burden for the lower-income. Some of them will sacrifice to do it because they love driving or love the social status it gives them. Others drive just because they have to to survive in this society. We should give them more options so they don’t have to drive.
Another issue is when a bicycle is going straight and a car suddenly turns right in front of them.
As someone who rode with them for 30 years, I don’t agree that SPDs, or any other form of clippers pedal is dangerous. At worst, you fall over at a stop sign. The real thing that no one talks about is the suitability of certain bikes for street use. IMO riding a racing frame on the street and complaining about potholes and rails is equivalent to driving an F1 racing car on the street. We wouldn’t take their complaining seriously..
I think this is incredibly disingenuous to make this about a class war. Even low priced makers are selling SUVs etc and if you look in small america and poorer farming communities the big-a$$ pickup trucks reign supreme so in a lot of areas there have always been big vehicles and a bike stands not a lot a chance getting hit even by a small vehicle. Come to think of it I am more worried by those oversized e bikes with fat tires that go flying down the bike lanes at 30+mph than I do any car. Just a thought.
Check out these charts:
https://usa.streetsblog.org/2020/10/10/exactly-how-far-u-s-street-safety-has-fallen-behind-europe-in-four-bombshell-charts, https://smartgrowthamerica.org/pedestrian-fatalities-at-historic-high/
Clearly something is wrong in the US. Not only are things getting worse in the US, but they are clearly getting better in the rest of the developed world. Yet we are doing little about it. Tom’s point is fairly clear: folks don’t care. Vehicles are routinely sold as “safe” only from the perspective of the person in the car. Larger vehicles are routinely touted as being safer merely because they have more mass. Many of these vehicles are inherently a lot more dangerous to others, but they don’t tell you that in the show rooms.
Consider how big an issue crime is in every city and across the country. It did rise during the pandemic. But traffic violence was the only violent crime that was increasing *before* the pandemic. Yet it is rarely talked about. Even in cities like Seattle it often gets ignored. The city seems focused on petty crime and not traffic violence. Now a city council that was elected in part on law-and-order issues is suddenly soft on crime: https://www.theurbanist.org/2024/10/03/saka-questions-school-zone-camera-expansion/. Holy cow, they are cracking down on hookers on Aurora, but we don’t want to stop people from speeding? WTF?
Part of the reason is the idea that Tom mentioned (not very tactfully). Road safety — unlike other types of crime — is your personal responsibility. If you get beat up or someone steals your money then it is a societal problem. We should increase police presence everywhere and throw anyone suspected of committing such crimes in jail for a long time (if there is enough room given all the drug addicts we want to send there). But get hit by a car? That is your fault. You should have been paying more attention. You should have had a better helmet. You should have been driving a bigger car.
Oh, and about that grill height: https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/vehicles-with-higher-more-vertical-front-ends-pose-greater-risk-to-pedestrians
In small America and poorer farm communities there isn’t as much traffic or tight spaces: bikes aren’t jammed in between a curb and a wall of cars. The large vehicles are working vehicles, not SUVs.
The reason carmakers have turned toward SUVs and large cars is their high profit margin. And they could exploit a gas-mileage loophole in the “light truck” category, which was intended for trucks as they existed in the 1980s, not everybody having an SUV. The carmakers practically pushed small cars off the market, contrary to what they do outside the US.
It is extremely rare that a bike fatality occurs that does not involve getting hit by a car. It almost never happens. And if you are hit by a car going 40mph, a car is almost certainly going to kill you, regardless of helmet. Helmet’s are rated for 10mph impacts. They help a little, but only a little – generally cutting your risk of TMI in half, if you are lucky enough to survive.
Biking is unsafe because we have built terrible, dangerous infrastructure.
In almost any other country, they don’t even wear helmets, yet their bike fatalities are a tiny fraction of what we have here. Because they build much safer infrastructure, taking into account bikes, and there percentage of SUVs is much much smaller than here.
To paraphrase a political meme: “It’s the roads, stupid”
https://bicyclepotential.org/blog/bicycle-and-car-accident-statistics-comparative-analysis-trends-and-implications-for-road-safety
“While bicycles are generally considered to be a safer mode of transportation than cars, they are not immune to accidents. According to statistics, there were around 857,000 bicycle accidents in the United States in 2019. Although the number of accidents is significantly lower than for cars, it is still a significant concern.
[There are around 1100 bicycle deaths each year. 90% of those bicyclists who died were not wearing a helmet].
“Unlike cars, most bicycle accidents do not involve collisions with other vehicles. Only about 29% of bicycle accidents are caused by such collisions. The majority of bicycle accidents are solo accidents, meaning that they do not involve any other vehicles. These accidents can be caused by factors such as rider error, road hazards, or mechanical failures.
“Despite the lower number of accidents, bicycle accidents tend to result in more severe injuries compared to car accidents. This is due to the lack of protective measures available to cyclists, as they do not have the same safety features as cars, such as airbags or seat belts”.
“Encourage helmet usage: Wearing a properly fitted helmet is essential for protecting the head during an accident. Encouraging and promoting the use of helmets among cyclists can greatly minimize the risk of severe head injuries.
“The safety measures taken by bicycle riders also play a significant role in accident rates. Failure to wear helmets, improper signaling, and lack of visibility accessories such as lights and reflectors can increase the chances of injury in the event of an accident. Adequate training and education regarding bicycle safety can help reduce these risks”.
The video discusses the improvements the U.S. is making to infrastructure to make biking safer, although we are spending billions on a mode that nationwide accounts for 1% of all trips.
Helmets should be mandatory just like seatbelts and airbags are mandatory, and in 2029 advancements such as automotive braking and warnings of collisions including with bicyclists. Infrastructure is important but is only one tool. It is irresponsible for any bicyclist to ride on concrete without a helmet, just as riding at night without proper lighting is irresponsible, and our laws should mandate helmets, certainly for any vehicle sharing roads with cars.
We were discussing fatalities, not injuries and crashes. The stats are very different.
https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/road-users/pedestrians/data-details/https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/road-users/pedestrians/data-details/
On the topic of car capacity, more capacity does not make roads safer, it makes roads less safe. There are multiple reasons why.
First off, it’s not good if roads are too open, as that encourages gross speeding. A well designed system, people who try to drive too fast should be stuck behind others going at or near the speed limit. However, traffic volume varies a lot at different times of day, so a ride wide enough to handle 5 PM traffic without any delays is probably wide enough to lead to lots of speeding at 10 PM.
Second, the wider a road is, the bigger the distance one has to travel to cross it, so the more dangerous crossing it becomes. This is especially true for pedestrians, but even turning left in a car is safer if you only have to cross one oncoming lane than 3 or 4.
Third, an obsession with car capacity typically means shortchanging bikes and pedestrians to make room for one more car lane. This means no bike lanes, and speeding cars right up against a skinny sidewalk, which means more danger.
I walked around Capitol Hill with my 8-year old daughter yesterday (in between trips to Chinatown and Seattle Center). She was underwhelmed. “Why is this place abandoned?” she asked about the densest neighborhood in Seattle. She was also wondering why the buildings were so short – I had to explain to her why the apartment buildings were so much shorter than in Redmond, and why Broadway has so few pedestrians.
She liked the tower in Volunteer Park. She ran up and down the stairs four times.
I don’t know that Capitol Hill is denser than downtown Seattle or Belltown. Both of these have tall buildings but anemic retail activity or people on the street for the residential density. Redmond has taller buildings but its downtown is still very suburban. Pedestrian traffic and retail are weak for an affluent city of 84,000.
Pedestrian activity comes down to walkable retail which comes down to street safety and retail density. But there are many other factors. U Village has greater pedestrian traffic than Capitol Hill because it has better walkable retail density, for many different reasons, although Capitol Hill does have a late night club scene.
Some on this blog have mistakenly assumed residential density results in retail density, even using Belltown as an example and claiming Belltown has more retail than Seattle’s commercial core from Pine to Yesler which is not borne out by retail sales tax revenue . Retail density has traditionally been in or near the commercial/office zones because an office building can hold five times the residents of a residential building the same size, and workers have to enter and exit the building several times/day and don’t have full kitchens so it puts them on the streets. Plus they have higher transit use and must walk to and from transit along the streets so are natural customers. And of course they are working so tend to have more money to spend on average. That is why pre-pandemic 2/3 of Seattle’s total tax revenue came from downtown.
Downtown Seattle has many issues affecting retail density and vibrancy including zoning, crime, and high parking costs, but by far the biggest blow has been work from home because that eliminated so many customers.. I have never quite understood those who think Broadway is “urban” or has retail density and vibrancy. For example, a huge prime location is a burger joint with surface parking, despite relatively high residential density.
There is only so much retail a certain population can support. The zoning can either condense it or disperse it throughout the city. Seattle has chosen the latter in a city that is 142 sq miles with 775,000 citizens. Seattle would need closer to 5 million residents for that kind of zoning to create retail density unless through private malls. People WANT walkable retail density that is vibrant, but the zoning means private mall owners have to artificially create it.
This also means a city like Redmond must compete with Bellevue for retail. Link won’t bring shoppers to Redmond. It will take Redmond shoppers to Bellevue because Bellevue is such a better retail experience which is supported by Bellevue’s commercial office towers.
I have come to accept this is what Pacific Northwesterners like. Maybe because they work so much on computers. They just are not like other cities in which the residents really live on the streets and the streets are packed day and night. . People here are well educated but introverts. One isn’t better than the other, just different. I think that is why malls are so popular here and account for so much of the retail. It is the only areas with true walkable retail density.
At the same time Seattle has some of the nicest residential neighborhoods I have seen for a city, especially so close to the downtown, in part due to Seattle’s large size and relatively small population, and that seems to be the primary focus and concern of the residents. Cities with larger populations would have commercialized or changed neighborhoods like Queen Anne, Capitol Hill, Freemont and so on to look like Belltown.
There is only so much retail a certain population can support. The zoning can either condense it or disperse it throughout the city. Seattle has chosen the latter
Nonsense. Retail is heavily restricted, and you want to restrict it more? Holy cow, you do realize that in most neighborhoods, you can’t even open a shop on the corner! Various cities in Washington prevent this, and the state (unsuccessfully) tried to force them to stop.
Clearly retail is heavily restricted, which explains the high prices. Do you know any Seattle business owner who says “Well, at least rent is cheap here”. Hardly. It is really expensive. Why do you think people open up food trucks? It is cheaper then renting out a place. Same goes for any retail.
The zoning is way too restrictive, which pushes up the prices. I don’t know why people think it is a good idea to limit retail in this manner. OK, actually I do — it has to do with cars. Remember, the history of cities is tied to retail. They allowed people to operate a business on the first floor and live above it. This is now illegal in most of the city (and most of the suburbs). So all of these restrictions are quite new, and they have everything to do with cars. People in the neighborhood got tired of people in other neighborhoods driving and parking there.
But it is still a stupid restriction. The last thing we need is more of it. We should go the other way and allow as much retail as the market will bear. If someone can’t lease out their little retail store then just lease it out as a place to live. Cities should stop trying to micromanage development. They are terrible at it. Everyone suffers as a result.
I do think there is case to be made that zoning is too restrictive and too lax at the same time. Take New York, for example, which is known for having plentiful corner stores of the kind it seems you advocate for. But all of Manhattan’s retail, including these corner stores, is concentrated along the avenues, with almost all streets being entirely residential.
In Seattle, corner stores should be probably be allowed in more places. But retail is still allowed to spread too much. In U District where I live, the retail in new mixed use developments are almost all vacant, partially due to newness, but even the occupied units are also never busy the same way that stores on the Ave are. With the exception of Safeway, the rest of the stores could probably easily fit in the vacant spots on the Ave, and they would probably all see more traffic that way. It would have made more sense to concentrate all retail on the Ave and Roosevelt, located 1000 ft apart (compare to 700-900 ft between avenues in New York).
Capitol Hill has settled on a 7-story standard on Broadway and Pike-Pine (Bellevue Avenue already had it), so I don’t know how your daughter could have failed to see the new buildings, or all the pedestrians that are constantly on the streets and in Cal Anderson Park. If you stayed around 15th and its side streets, then yes, it’s not as tall or dense.
Downtown Redmond has also settled on 7 stories or less from what I’ve seen, and I don’t know any that are taller. Again, if you stayed around 14th, 15th, and 16th, you wouldn’t have seen Capitol Hill’s full density, which is west of Broadway.
The primary retail spark on Capitol Hill shifted from Broadway to Pike-Pine in the late 2000s or early 2010s, and Broadway hasn’t found a new groove yet. So all the old and new business on Broadway are playing catch up. I sometimes walk to the library or BECU or Pho Than Brothers or QFC, which are all at Broadway & Republican, and I pass a significant number of pedestrians along the way, more than in most Seattle neighborhoods or the suburbs. So I don’t know why you wouldn’t have, unless it was on a weekend morning when people aren’t out yet, or an unusual day.
“I don’t know that Capitol Hill is denser than downtown Seattle or Belltown. Both of these have tall buildings but anemic retail activity or people on the street for the residential density.”
Downtown, Belltown, and First Hill have highrises. Capitol Hill doesn’t.
The downtown pedestrian crowds are on Pine Street, in Pike Place Market, and the restaurant area on 1st south of the market. These are all in the daytime and early evening.
Belltown has significantly lower pedestrian activity. Part of that is the growing safety problems or perception of them, but a lot if it is because Belltown doesn’t have the destinations residents need. In Vancouver’s West End there are full-sized supermakets, drugstores, and a school and probably a medical clinic, but where are these in Belltown or SLU? You have to go out of the neighborhood to get to them, and so you drive or go briefly to a bus stop and aren’t visible. Belltown has restaurants, but how many are the kind you’d go to every week?
Lower downtown (between Pike Street and Yesler Way) is an office-only ghetto: there are few things to go other than that (the library being the biggest one), and most of the restaurants are only open for the lunch crowd and close at 5pm and on weekends. So there aren’t places for pedestrians to go to, so they aren’t visible. This is where you need more mixed use instead of office-only or residential-only areas.
“This also means a city like Redmond must compete with Bellevue for retail. Link won’t bring shoppers to Redmond.”
So what? It will bring Redmond residents to Redmond. It will bring people to businesses that aren’t in Bellevue or Seattle. (I went to Cartridge World in Redmond when the Seattle store closed.) It will bring people to the Redmond trails, Marymoor Park, and the “quaint Redmond downtown” atmosphere they’re building. Some of those people will shop or eat along the way, or notice unique businesses they’ll go to later. Not all shopping trips are for the kinds of things sold in Bellevue Square department stores or its specialty chain shops or Neiman Marcus.
“There is only so much retail a certain population can support.”
That only applies to department stores and large retailers. There may be too many department stores or big-box stores, but that doesn’t mean all retail is saturated. If Belltown or Eastlake had a supermarket it would get customers because there’s latent demand for it — people are going out of the neighborhood only because there’s nothing available in the neighborhood.
The seven-block radius around my apartment in southwest Capitol Hill has almost a dozen convenience stores and a dozen cafes. I don’t know how they can all stay in business but they do. Likewise, Broadway has two QFCs, and there’s two Safeways on 15th and 23rd. Surely that’s too many? But apparently First Hill has enough population for one supermarket, southwest Capitol Hill for another, and eastern Capitol Hill (15th) another. So why don’t you think Belltown could support a supermarket and a few other everyday stores? Again, the “15-minute city” model works in Barcelona and other cities that have tried it.
I don’t know that Capitol Hill is denser than downtown Seattle or Belltown.
I doubt it is. Maybe Christopher meant “non-downtown” neighborhood. I think a lot of people would consider Belltown part of downtown. But even that distinction is pretty arbitrary. South Lake Union feels quite “downtown” to me.
Anyway, there are parts of Capitol Hill that aren’t dense. There are single-family homes, especially close to Volunteer Park. These mansions were occupied by groups of people in the past, but my guess is they are mostly owned by wealthy families (one family per house) these days.
But there are plenty of areas of Capitol Hill that are quite dense. Some of them are new, but a lot of the the buildings are old. A lot of these buildings aren’t particularly high, but they hold more people than in places like, say, Redmond. Height isn’t the same as density. You have to get really high to make up for all the inefficiencies typical of modern six-story American apartment buildings. They quite often have setbacks. One issue is single staircases — https://www.thesisdriven.com/p/the-case-for-single-stair-multifamily. To be honest I haven’t dug into that issue much (I only know that liberalizing the code to match Europe seems like a good idea) but it is common to have old, fairly short buildings (e. g. brownstones in Brooklyn) to have way more people than a modern “5 over 1” buildings. I’m not against such buildings — I’m just saying that under the current code, you can’t expect density to be that high.
I guess the question is: dead in what way?
The one time I went to downtown Redmond, it seemed to be a huge tangle of car traffic and parking lots, but not much actual stuff.
I have to admit it’s kind of naive to think a nightlife district should be like a retail district. And Capitol Hill at 10 pm on a Saturday night is pretty dang active!
There are a few vacant places on Capitol Hill like the former drug store at Broadway and John. But for the most part it’s not dead. Not by a long shot!
Al S.
That’s because Capitol Hill is the Official Gay Party District! I loved it when I was young. I get the nightlife part of it. But Capitol Hill is drawing people in every weekend for a 50 mile radius. Young people in Tacoma go to Capitol Hill for fun. That makes downtown Tacoma dead on Saturday night.
“I have to admit it’s kind of naive to think a nightlife district should be like a retail district.”
Aren’t most nightlife districts retail districts? Both Capitol Hill and Ballard are. Not department-store retail like downtown, but lots of small retail shops and restaurants that draw both neighborhood residents and others.
A lot of Capitol Hill nightlife is straight, such as the live-music venues.
The drugstore at Broadway & John just closed recently as part of the Rite-Aid downsizing. The Bartell’s above QFC got caught in it too. There are probably some other empty storefronts somewhere.
Tacoma could have more venues to attract more people.
“ Aren’t most nightlife districts retail districts? Both Capitol Hill and Ballard are. ”
It depends on how one defines “nightlife”. If nightlife is restaurants it’s one thing as parts of Ballard and Capitol Hill are — but not all areas. If it’s performance spaces and sporting events it’s another. And if it’s dance clubs it’s somewhat irrelevant to have restaurants and apartments nearby.
“And if it’s dance clubs it’s somewhat irrelevant to have restaurants and apartments nearby.”
Maybe somebody wants to go to a restaurant before the club, or a late-night restaurant after the club, or walk from home to the club.
“It depends on how one defines “nightlife””
I thought nightlife meant bars and clubs and live-music venues. Not sporting events. Plays and things could go either way; I’m not sure if people would think of going to a play as “nightlife”.
I always considered “nightlife” to be lots of people walking around at night. Typically this is an area with a lot of clubs, restaurants and bars. People walk from one to another. It is also quite common (as Mike pointed out) to have other forms of retail in the same general area. It all goes together, really. For example a clothing retailer benefits from everyone walking by. I see about a half dozen clothing stores all on the same block in Capitol Hill. Not surprising in the least.
It is worth pointing out that “nightlife” areas also often have a lot of “daylife” if you will. In other words, lots of people walking around in the daytime. So while a lot of these shops do stay open until night (e. g. 8 PM on a weeknight) they have plenty of “foot traffic” in the day time as well.
My apartment building is offering “6 weeks free plus $1000”. This is the largest sale they’ve had and I the first with a sign on the door. Half the building is Amazon or Microsoft because you can walk to the spheres or an MS shuttle stop or the 545. Still, I guess the influx of 10,000 returning Amazonians that was going to push rents up hasn’t happened yet.
Also, last week I saw a building around somewhere like 10th Ave E or outer Roosevelt
— i don’t remember exactly — a 1 BR for $1600. The average rate is around $2000. It said “shared laundry” so that’s part of the reason for the lower cost. I’m surprised at the low price, surprised they advertised the price and laundry limitation. At that price I’d expect it to be snapped up in a week so why put the price on the sign? Maybe the market is softer than I thought. I briefly thought about moving there and saving $400, but I just signed a renewal two months ago and I’ll take my walk ability. Still, the fact that that sign exists is interesting.
Yeah, the rental market in Seattle is quite a bit softer than it was a few years ago. I wouldn’t say $1600 is a bargain for one bedroom however. Not if you’re working retail. Rental markets tend to go up and down over say, a decade.
What doesn’t go up and down and only increases in value over time? The 30 year home mortgage. Imagine locking into a 3 bedroom home at $800 for 30 years and then owning the house outright? Couple of roommates and heck! You live close to free. Having your own garden? A little shop in the garage? A place to store your camping and fishing gear in the basement? Everybody deserves the good life.
Have you bought a new roof lately? $20k in my neighborhood. How about a furnace? Or worse, priced a heat pump? My point is that you can’t forget maintenance costs, which increase at inflation rates or faster. Taxes, insurance and everything but your mortgage payment increase at the rate of inflation. So only part of your housing costs are fixed. Currently in this area the rental price of most single family homes is well below the carrying costs for owners – mortgage, insurance , maintenance, and taxes. So you are arguably better off renting IF you have the personal discipline to invest the savings. Of course, historically most people don’t have this discipline!
NoneOfTheAbove,
Oh no, I understand maintenance costs all too well and paying property management fees as well. One thing that’s changed in America in my lifetime is houses are now so big and complicated, DIY projects are less likely done by home owners. With a couple of friends, you can put a new roof on a 1200 sq ft house in long weekend. Installing a new hot water tank or even a new furnace isn’t really that hard. And we have Youtube now! There’s a lot of great videos on home projects. I feel most all of the young people on this blog could keep a modest house going. There’s a lot of angst on this blog…. home ownership would fix some of that.
I’ve calculated the personal space I’ve been living in as an adult over the years, and it’s about 400 square ft. As far as my carbon footprint, I’d put my impact living in a house in Tacoma (under 1200 sq ft shared with 2-4 people over the years) as way lower than anybody living by themselves in an apartment. We’ve grown a lot of our own food in the garden. Rode bikes and walked a lot. Used Tacoma’s crappy bus system. Just stayed home, ate homegrown popcorn and played Uno instead of going out…. domestic bliss is highly underrated. Life is not really about “retail density”.
I think most TOD projects just look like prison…. shitty apartments stuffed into soulless transit stations…. not place to raise kids or make long term neighborhood connections… I mean it looks like a place to consume drugs, booze, porn…. and loneliness. Count me out.
As far a car culture… most of the good places in Seattle predate autos and they’re mostly single family homes. These places are so envied on this board…. and so hated. “Let’s rezone Wallingford and tear it down!” Why? Because posters secretly love the houses there but can’t buy one? Why not leave other people’s shit alone and go build something new somewhere else that suits us?
“I wouldn’t say $1600 is a bargain for one bedroom however.”
No, it’s not affordable to retail clerks, but it’s less than I expected for a unit near (but not in) an inner Seattle retail district. (I’ll have to say “neighborhood commercial center” so Frank doesn’t think it’s downtown.)
“Imagine locking into a 3 bedroom home at $800 for 30 years and then owning the house outright?”
Did you buy it in the 1990s? Oh, you’re in Utah. The thing with home ownership is locking up your down payment money, having long-term debt, and living in Utah. And house/yard maintenance and costs. And not being able to walk to as many things. It’s suitable for some people, but not for others.
“As far as my carbon footprint, I’d put my impact living in a house in Tacoma (under 1200 sq ft shared with 2-4 people over the years) as way lower than anybody living by themselves in an apartment. We’ve grown a lot of our own food in the garden. Rode bikes and walked a lot.”
Good for you, but that’s not a typical American homeowner.
1200 sq ft is what houses were like in the 1950s, then they ballooned to 2000 and 3000 sq ft and counting. Part of the problem is people who want small houses can’t find them; they have to settle for a larger (and more expensive) one, because that’s what’s been built for the past thirty years.
> Why not leave other people’s shit alone and go build something new somewhere else that suits us?
Because there are no jobs there! They’re all in the city! At some point, a city has to start putting people on top of other people if it’s going to put jobs on top of other jobs. The logical end-point of continuous greenfield sprawl is Los Angeles or Houston – do you think either of those are sustainable models? At least LA has the deep-buried bones of streetcar suburbs and LA Metro is trying to retrofit the city with mass transit at great expense, but sprawl simply doesn’t work.
The office jobs are in mainly in Seattle and Bellevue; the manufacturing jobs are mainly in SODO, Tukwila, Kent, and Auburn. It’s ridiculous to believe every new employee in whatever growing company in Seattle will joyfully commute in from some idealized SFH development in Sumner or Orting or Black Diamond or wherever. Unless you believe businesses should simply stop growing and stop adding employees once their host city can’t build any more SFH, and should open new branches in whatever new sprawled development is the next place for new housing, but that’s also a ridiculous notion.
tacomee must be unaware that housing prices are going down in some parts of the country. Or maybe he just missed the housing bubble burst in 2008?
https://www.wsj.com/real-estate/florida-home-sales-slowing-355616a2?
Shockingly, supply and demand still function.
Nathan Dickey,
You’re looking at things from a big picture point of view. I look at things from a much more personal point of view.
Currently Seattle is looking at epic underfunding of both public education and public transit. Want to talk about sustainability? Seattle is way worse off than most of the country. Just where is the money going come from to finish current light rail projects? Or fix public public education? These are very real problems .
If you’re ignoring the big picture because it doesn’t jive with your personal preferences, you’re part of the problem.
That’s bullshit. Of course people should keep an eye on big picture issues. But at the end of the day, everyone is responsible for their own lives. Where’s the money coming from to fix all these under funded “social obligations” in Seattle? If you think bloated light rail projects haven’t had a negative impact on public education on the Left Coast, you’re not really a “big picture “ guy. Do you support public education, transit or “social housing” ? Funds are limited.
> everyone is responsible for their own lives
So why are you so opposed to letting property owners build what they want to build on their own land? What’s wrong with loosening zoning regulations to let folks build housing products where they think they can sell it?
No (private) developer has power of eminent domain, and we sure as hell don’t give enough money to public developers to buy out millionaire homeowners in wealthy neighborhoods.
Nathan Dickey,
What my neighbors do with their property certainly impacts my property. I used to own a small house in Tacoma that currently has been rezoned for huge apartment buildings that would block all the sunlight from the backyard. Nobody really wants to live next to buildings like that. Nobody even wants to live in buildings like that. Communities have the right to say no to things.
Here’s a list of shitty housing projects in Tacoma that went broke. Several of these developments tore down reasonable houses to build more bland and unaffordable apartments. Only half of the units got built and I doubt the other ones that did get built are maintained in a reasonable manner. Just more out-of-State Tacoma slumlords in the end. Changing the zoning is going to promote reckless development like this.
https://news.yahoo.com/news/bankrupt-tacoma-developer-apartment-property-120000298.html
People on this board who want to change current zoning just have no idea of the impact of doing so. It’s just another silly false solution for people who just can’t seem to face the facts. Seattle doesn’t owe anybody an affordable place to live. Seattle can’t even provide children with a good basic public education. The City has a lot of deep structural problems it’s refused to deal with for decades. Starting with Sound Transit. If you can’t see ballooning transit project costs impacting affordable housing and public education I’m not sure you’re living in political reality.
That’s the big picture. On a personal level, I recommend most families move ASAP to a more affordable housing market with schools aren’t a dumpster fire.
People on this board who want to change current zoning just have no idea of the impact of doing so.
Nonsense. In many cases we simply accept the fact that taller buildings will be built. But quite often we are simply arguing that the buildings hold more people. Consider the height limits of a house in Seattle. Why can’t you build an apartment with the same dimensions (like they do in Spokane)? Why do we have laws requiring parking?
We have a very good idea of what would happen if they changed the zoning. Instead of building large single family homes in most of the city they would large multi-family home in most of the city. You would then see lower housing prices. (This is well-accepted idea in academic circles and you can find numerous studies confirming the obvious by just searching for them. )
Nathan, I would like to address some comments you make to Tacomee:
1. [Tacomee] “Why not leave other people’s shit alone and go build something new somewhere else that suits us”?
[Nathan] “Because there are no jobs there! They’re all in the city! At some point, a city has to start putting people on top of other people if it’s going to put jobs on top of other jobs. The logical end-point of continuous greenfield sprawl is Los Angeles or Houston – do you think either of those are sustainable models? At least LA has the deep-buried bones of streetcar suburbs and LA Metro is trying to retrofit the city with mass transit at great expense, but sprawl simply doesn’t work”.
First, the number of jobs in the urban center has declined around 40% with work from home, at least in Seattle.
Second, according to the U.S. Census Bureau population in King Co. is flat over the last four years and the 20-year future population estimates look to be wildly inflated. In 2022 the GMPC determined King Co. alone has existing zoning for 800,000 new residents, and every city already has zoning to meet its 2044 future housing growth targets. On any one day Seattle has around 20,000 vacant rental units for rent. So what problem are you trying to solve with upzoning?
2. [Nathan] “The office jobs are in mainly in Seattle and Bellevue; the manufacturing jobs are mainly in SODO, Tukwila, Kent, and Auburn. It’s ridiculous to believe every new employee in whatever growing company in Seattle will joyfully commute in from some idealized SFH development in Sumner or Orting or Black Diamond or wherever”.
This is why we built Link and have Sounder and express buses. It is why the PSRC advocates for self-contained urban villages. Then work from home arrived. Workers in large U.S. cities have been commuting to offices for decades by transit, or car, because they either can’t afford to live in the city or don’t want to.
3. [Nathan] “So why are you so opposed to letting property owners build what they want to build on their own land? What’s wrong with loosening zoning regulations to let folks build housing products where they think they can sell it”?
This was the original zoning sin. We took a three-county area of almost 6500 sq. MILES with very few people and zoned the whole thing for development. At least Los Angeles County with 4750 sq miles has almost 10 million residents.
The entire point of the Growth Management Act in 1991 was to try and put the zoning genie back in the bottle and NOT let “property owners build what they want to build on their own land”?
What planning agencies today DON’T want to do is double down on the zoning mistakes of the past. That is why since 2006 the PSRC has pushed for TOD housing in dense zones near walkable transit and retail, and to discourage property owners from building whatever they want wherever their property is.
It is why just recently the King Co. Affordable Housing Council directed cities to allocate most of their GMPC future housing targets into dense zones and upzone those, ideally to create more affordable housing and housing that does not require a car.
I can tell you from the developer side most believe Seattle is overbuilt when it comes to multi-family market rate housing (and developers are not interested in low-income market rate or subsidized housing). This is why permit applications are way down. Developers also don’t really know what to do with work from home, and how permanent it will be.
What we have seen from work from home is more sprawl, that is true, because the zoning already existed in these outer areas of Snohomish, Kitsap, King and Pierce Counties while workers don’t need to commute to a city every day anymore, exactly what the PSRC didn’t want, although Link is designed to increase sprawl while allowing people to live in suburbia but work in the city. I mean, what do people think TOD in Mountlake Terrace is designed for?
Zoning is simply a tool. Identify the problem, and then match the zoning to the problem. Unfortunately, in the U.S. we made some bad zoning mistakes early on that are difficult to repair.
The problem today is affordable housing because so much existing, older, more affordable housing has been destroyed by new construction and the wealth gap has widened in King Co. King Co. under ESB 1220 has determined affordable housing CAPACITY must be in new zoning to avoid displacement, and it must be in existing dense multi-family zones near walkable transit and retail, which most cities already did because of PSRC recommendations since 2006, not because they are intent on preserving SFH zoning.
Nearly every city is upzoning right now under 1220, although few think the future population growth targets are accurate, and few think any of the upzoning will result in affordable housing (0% to 60% AMI) but all of that upzoning is going into already dense multi-family zones.
So you are correct about the demand to upzone, although I don’t see the population growth for it, but you are wrong about WHERE the upzoning will occur: in already existing dense multi-family zones near walkable transit and retail Capitol Hill will go from 7 to 20 stories before Blue Ridge will go to four-plexes although I don’t see the future population growth to upzone Capitol Hill except King Co. thinks it will create more new market rate construction that will be affordable to those earning under 60% AMI.
@Fact Check
Actually even in the most recent One Seattle comprehensive plan they planned for around 160k jobs and only 80k housing units when it should be around 1:1 to keep the housing to job ratio manageable.
American cities just keep under allocating housing when it comes to their zoning plans.
@Fact Check
What exactly is the downside of upzoning more — the only thing that happens is extra apartments get built.
American society will not collapse from some more 5 over 1’s being built.
So let me get the argument straight here:
Poor person: “I want to buy a condo in the city, but all you build is houses. Can we please allow builders to build more condos?”
Wealthy person: “No. I don’t want a tall building blocking my view”
Poor person: “The building would be just as tall as a house. ”
Wealthy person: “Still no. You should build somewhere else.”
Poor person: “I don’t want to live somewhere else.”
Wealthy person: “Tough. Maybe you should have been wealthier.”
Do I have that right? Am I missing something?
“Poor person: “I want to buy a condo in the city…”
Very funny. Show me a condo in the city that a poor person can buy including financing, down payment, property taxes, and HOA dues. Seattle’s median condo sales price in July was $628,000, up from June’s $529,250. This is a 5.5% increase year-over-year. In July of 2023, the median price was $595,000.
This comment completely misunderstands affordable housing, which is rentals, and the process the King Co. Affordable Housing Committee is going through under ESB 1220.
The VERY FIRST consideration is affordable housing must be located where a person can live without a car because the cost of a car can be $1000/mo. which consumes any subsidy for affordable housing.
That is why King Co. — not exactly a bastion of conservative developers — is demanding cities upzone THEIR EXISTING DENSE MULTI-FAMILY ZONES, and will not count any upzone in the SFH zone toward a city’s affordable housing targets.
Only 20-30% of the land allows multifamily housing. Why should we have to squeeze more into the limited multifamily areas? That’s what leads to tearing down the “older, more affordable” apartments. Do you know what happens if the older building is not replaced? The price goes up! It’s no longer affordable.
We should expand the footprint of urban villages. Then the density is adjacent to existing walkable areas, destinations, and transit.
tacomee refuses to get it and that’s their choice, but they think they get to control other people’s lives even though “everyone is responsible for their own lives”. I guess tacomee is our benevolent dictator who gets to decide who builds what and where?
Fact Check:
> the number of jobs in the urban center has declined around 40% with work from home, at least in Seattle.
[citation needed]. Manufacturing jobs can’t be done from home, WFH still declining, and even with hybrid WFH, the office jobs are still largely based in the commercial districts of Seattle and Bellevue.
> On any one day Seattle has around 20,000 vacant rental units for rent.
NIMBY dogwhistle #1, unless you believe every time a renter moves, their former dwelling can and should be occupied less than 24 hours later. If someone lives in an apartment for 24 months, moves out, and a new tenant is in 1 month later, that unit has been vacant for 1/25 months, or 4% of that time. If vacancies are at 4%, that means every unit is occupied or about to be occupied. What’s our current vacancy rate again?
> This is why we built Link and have Sounder and express buses.
… because in 2010, Seattle had 462k jobs but only 308k housing units? (https://www.arcgis.com/apps/dashboards/c8cfcb827e564623a6fa3af6360141fe) and in 2023, Seattle had 638k (+175k) jobs and only 413k (+105k) housing units?
> We took a three-county area of almost 6500 sq. MILES with very few people and zoned the whole thing for development.
This is one of your most misleading statements to date.
> I can tell you from the developer side most believe Seattle is overbuilt when it comes to multi-family market rate housing
I can tell you from the house-buying side that Seattle’s missing middle is still missing. Check Redfin; 1,200-sq-ft townhomes are 80-90% the price of SFHs, but the SFHs have 25-50% more space and 5x property. Not to mention HOAs.
> Unfortunately, in the U.S. we made some bad zoning mistakes early on that are difficult to repair.
No, we are refusing to repair them because we refuse to re-legalize the types of flexible development which all the beloved mid-war and mid-century housing in this city. We had to wait for State Legislature to force cities to adopt rules allowing 4 units on a lot, and even then the Mayors are using every tool available to prevent that style of development.
What’s incredible about the end of the comment is that FC clearly has a grasp of basic economics, but then still thinks that upzoning is like Sim City or Cities Skylines, where changing the zoning density results in anything not matching that specific density gets bulldozed and immediately redeveloped.
Exactly what harm would come if 3-4 story apartments were legalized across 100% of Seattle’s non-industrial land? 3-4 story SFHs have been legal across 100% of Seattle’s non-industrial land forever. What if we allowed 6-story walkups everywhere? Again, not a required, but simply allowed. What harm would come?
“Poor person: “I want to buy a condo in the city…”
Very funny. Show me a condo in the city that a poor person can buy
https://www.redfin.com/MN/Minneapolis/433-S-7th-St-Minneapolis-MN-55415/building/115590. There are plenty more where that came from, actually.
Oh, you mean in Seattle. Wow, you completely missed the point. They want to buy a condo in Seattle but they can’t afford to buy a condo in Seattle because Seattle isn’t building enough condos. They aren’t building enough condos because the city makes it difficult (if not just plain illegal) to build them. Understand now?
Oh, and the argument is exactly the same in terms of rentals. Just switch “buy” to “rent” and “condo” to apartment”. I mentioned condos because the OP seems obsessed with ownership.
Ross thinks with a little upzoning “poor people” can afford $628,000 condos
Bullshit! Stop lying about what I wrote. I referenced condos that cost one hundred grand. Then, when you obsessed about renting versus buying I clearly stated that the same argument applies to renting.
Why do purposely misrepresent my argument? Or do I have to repeatedly explain it before you realize what it was? Keep in mind the former is a violation of our comment policy.
Nathan, I don’t want to get in between the back and forth between you and Tacomee.
Tacomee doesn’t get to decide how areas are zoned or what is built there. That begins with the GMA, then descends to regional planning bodies like the PSRC and GMPC, and now under 1220 King Co., to finally city councils. All I am trying to do is explain the decisions they are making and why.
I don’t live in the SFH zone and we don’t develop there. I do think some of the desire to change the zoning of the SFH zoning on this blog and The Urbanist has to do with a belief the SFH zone is privileged. At least Mike has stated so.
But the issue today is how to create — and preserve — affordable housing in the 0% to 60% AMI band. According to King Co. you can’t do that in the SFH zone so no upzoning in the SFH zone counts unless cities want to voluntarily exceed their GMPC housing allocations even though their current zoning meets their future housing targets. Most don’t want to.
The reality is when in 2022 the GMPC allocated its future housing targets through 2044 to cities every city already had existing zoning to meet their allocations. So who are you upzoning for?
I’ve seen this game before in other cities. Housing prices are not going down in this area. Too much money. Builders want to build for the rich. You can zone for the poor all you want but builders won’t build it without public subsidies that are very expensive. Cities won’t amend the regulatory limits in the SFH zone which is allowed under 1110 so whether a four plex or six plex it doesn’t pencil out after paying over $1 million for the lot.
Ross thinks with a little upzoning “poor people” can afford $628,000 condos with a monthly HOA of $1000 because insurance and maintenance are through the roof (if you want an affordable condo go to my old stomping ground in Miami although you might get hit with a $300k assessment — free tip DON’T buy a condo today).
Personally I don’t really care. I don’t want to fight over it. Most comp. plans are completed and out for 30 day public review and they change very little, and in cities like Kirkland and Redmond where there is some proposed upzoning there is a big public backlash. If voters don’t like their zoning get new leaders. That is what the SFH zone in Seattle did with Harrell and the Council.
It just isn’t worth you and Tacomee getting so animated over this when the cake is baked and you can’t do anything about it. There are tons of places to rent in Seattle with all different price levels and townhomes and houses and condos for sale if you have the down payment and financing to compete against other wealthy bidders, many of whom have two incomes.
So let’s let the upzoning discussions go because everyone gets too emotional, many have simplistic understandings of why things are zoned the way they are or what motivates builders, and see how the comp. plans look in early 2025.
> the cake is baked and you can’t do anything about it.
> see how the comp. plans look in early 2025.
The comp plans aren’t baked! That’s the whole point of arguing about it now! Seattle has a pretty meaningful election in less than 30 days!
As soon as the comp plans are finalized in 2026, people like you are among the first to say we can’t do anything and need to wait until the next 10-year update. And then, when the draft plan comes out and it’s still milquetoast, you’ll say it’s already baked. So, when should the advocacy happen?
> Personally I don’t really care. I don’t want to fight over it.
Says the guy who’s writing 500+ words every comment.
First of all, I think it’s important to think about jobs as mostly secondary to the really important things in life. There are lots and lots of jobs in Seattle, but with the high housing prices and low quality public education system, do you want to live there with a household income of under 100K? Doesn’t matter how many jobs Seattle is planning to have…. if the quality of life there keeps going down for folks of moderate income. I believe there’s a lot of angst on this board because the “Seattle dreams” of posters doesn’t match up with their “Seattle reality”. I’d just shrug and move on, and stop believing in a solution though politics or zoning or anything else. Seattle is what it is. I doubt voting will change the economic dynamics much.
After spending much of my life in East Tacoma, I can guarantee you that any talk about not living a house or living “car free” would not go over at a public meeting very well. The working class see themselves living in their own house with a big car in the driveway. I can’t believe posters here chirping on and on about housing and transit for poor people….. without even asking those poor people.
I’m not sure where the “delusions of grandeur” come from with the educated urban Left. Maybe university life? Posters see Seattle as “their” city…. a place that needs to provide from them. In reality Seattle is meaner than Hell and only provides for those with incomes of over 150K and/or property owners. Otherwise you’re screwed. Go ahead with your transit plans, your social housing dreams, the rezoning ideas….. these are going to change the nature of the City.
@Nathan
Both of them start from the assumption “apartments are bad” then will work backwards to justify it from anything.
WL,
My greatest gift is that I’m “uneducated”. I’m a simple, blue collar guy. I didn’t get brainwashed at some university. I have delusions that the world is going to change to accommodate little old me.
Life #1. Grow up and buy a house somewhere you can afford. Learn how to be a homeowner and a good neighbor. Work hard and save 15% of your income for retirement. Become a pillar of your community. Retire with dignity.
Life #2. Live in some impossible to afford Liberal city and pay an ever increasing rent bill. Put all of your faith for the future in political change. Work hard but let the “rent monster” eat up money you should be saving for retirement. Waste years…. decades even…….. on political change that never comes. Retire to a homeless camp.
Go ahead. Hate bomb me……. but just what road are you on?
Here’s a key to life well lived. Muncie, Indiana, the home of Ball State University. Move there, find a job, a romantic partner, buy a house like this one and grow. Or keep spinning your wheels in Seattle.
https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/308-N-Grande-Ave_Muncie_IN_47303_M49498-72488?from=srp-list-card
@WL: yep
@tacomee: I think we’ve been waiting for you to walk the walk and move to SLC for a couple years now.
Lol I really don’t quite understand why fact check and tacommee act as if more apartments is the end of American society. And if it’s added to Seattle it doesn’t even affect tacommee who doesn’t even live in Seattle.
@tacommee
lol so what was decided in the 1950s of freeways and then 1970s of single family homes is the pinnacle of zoning? We should freeze it forever?
You’re acting like this was some great ancient tradition when it’s only been one generation.
From the Census Bureau:
“The decline in household size continued. There was an average of 3.51 people per household in 1950, substantially higher than the average of 2.61 in 2019.
“ One factor: Fewer people lived alone. In 1950 just 9% of households had someone living alone compared with 28% in 2019.”
This is not a bias. This is a statement of the facts.
Anyone who gets nostalgic about the single family popularity of the middle 20th Century needs to get a good reality slap in the face about demographic realities of today.
https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2022/03/1950-census-records-window-to-history.html#:~:text=Households%20and%20Families&text=The%20decline%20in%20household%20size,factor%3A%20Fewer%20people%20lived%20alone.
“You’re acting like this was some great ancient tradition when it’s only been one generation.”
WL
For people like him it’s a stubborn unwillingness to accept that their generation’s own conventional wisdom on homeownership and the suburban experiment as they enter retirement has aged like milk in the modern era.
and has truly soured for many people younger than them who aren’t currently buying, as the market has shifted dramatically from where it was 30 to 40 years ago.
Where back then a single person’s income could realistically pay for a mortgage or most of the mortgage depending on the city. Alongside that housing was treated as a commodity to buy rather than an investment vehicle that it is seen as now. That’s not to say it wasn’t back then as well, but to the degree it mattered was very different back then.
My retired parents were later to home buying, they bought in South Tacoma in the early 90s for 78K on my dad’s decently paid for the time military income as my mom decided to stay home and take care of me. Their house currentlu values half a million now, adjusted to inflation it’s 3 times the original buying price to the current estimated value. My parents likely wouldn’t be able to afford their home now if they had to buy now.
The more salient and darker point I’d make here is that the older generations unrelenting stubbornness to change on housing is making them willfully unprepared for retirement.
As many will have to eventually during retirement stop driving a car and will be needing to rely on paratransit or public transit to get around. Something said seniors haven’t planned for as an inevitably and why the suburban experiment has come home to roost as now they’re stuck in car dependent suburbs and driving cars long past they reasonably should as they enter worse cognitive decline & impaired driving skills from age and decreased ability to react to their surroundings on the road.
Children being unable to live nearby their aging parents because of how expensive housing has got is another point they’re uncomfortable to deal with or perfer to ignore. They would’ve likely been able to have their children and grandchildren near or closer to them had they not kept fighting against new more dense housing being built. Something that’s important as people age and more older family members pass.
But that is the definition of hubris and pride blinding a person’s own ability to think with clarity to a situation that has changed dramatically over the decades.
I’ll end with a proverb that some people should take into account the next time they complain about new housing or more density because they believe “they know better” or “know what’s best for the neighborhood”.
“Pride comes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.”
Nathan, you write:”
“As soon as the comp plans are finalized in 2026, people like you are among the first to say we can’t do anything and need to wait until the next 10-year update. And then, when the draft plan comes out and it’s still milquetoast, you’ll say it’s already baked. So, when should the advocacy happen”?
I assume this is a typo. The ten-year updates of comprehensive plans for every city planning under the GMA are due Dec. 31, 2024. The original 10-year anniversary was Dec. 31, 2022 (the GMA became effective 1992) but Covid extended it 2 years. Many cities have completed their drafts or are about to in order to allow 30 days public notice and comments before final adoption.
The Urbanist has been warning since last January that Seattle might not meet its deadline although I haven’t seen an extension granted and don’t think there is an exception clause considering the ten-year update has been extended to 12 years already. However King Co. was delayed in issuing its guidance under 1220 which delayed a lot of cities’ plans.
Seattle’s/Harrell’s One Seattle Comprehensive Plan was issued March 5, 2024 and IIRC public comments were accepted until May. Progressive organizations like The Stranger were underwhelmed, but it isn’t clear they understood at the time how King Co. would apply 1220. Not surprisingly the city’s website was enthusiastic.
According to the city’s website the One Seattle Plan would be completed in early 2024 with council review and approval in the third quarter 2024. I haven’t seen much discussion at the council level and don’t quite know what kind of public comment will be allowed before adoption considering there will likely be many changes. Right now the council is pretty overwhelmed with balancing the general budget deficit of $260 million.
The Plan can be amended once per year, but usually those are discreet amendments, so when I say the cake is baked I meant for most other cities that have finished their Plans, and likely won’t make major changes over the next ten years unless required by state law. My guess is Seattle’s Plan will be similar to Harrell’s Plan released on March 5, but with guidance from King Co. on 1220 now finalized that requires new housing to primarily to go into the existing dense multi-family and commercial/office zones (including Seattle’s office core) Seattle like many other cities could make substantive changes to where they upzone their cities.
I wish some in this blog would not take housing and zoning so personally. The proof will be in the Plans themselves. None of us will be making the decisions so there is no need for personal insults.
Zach, half of young adults now live with their parents, mostly in single family homes. In Europe the percentage is higher. It makes sense because the parents have the room and the lack of rent allows the kids and their partners or spouses to save up for a down payment or to start a business. A lot of parents bought long ago so their houses are pretty centrally located which is good for the kids if they have jobs or are going to school. What is new is young people wanting to live alone outside the house and that is expensive if you don’t have roommates.
Many seniors stay in their houses because it allows in home care to live there, and they are terrified of assisted care living places. Plus they know it. My older sister cared for my dad from age 85 to 94 in his house, and it worked well for her because she was recently divorced and he needed help and didn’t want a stranger or to be alone at night. It also allowed her to have a covered parking stall for her car as she did most of the driving and all of it after age 90 and plenty of space for the two of them, and room for her dog to go outside. It is also good if they have grandkids who stay over.
Assisted care for someone my dad’s age can cost between $10,000/mo. and $40,000/mo. depending on the amount of care that is needed unless you go with a group home. Having a kid live with the parent and help with the care means it preserves the value of the house as an inheritance rather than going to an assisted care place and saves the kid helping out and living in from paying rent. Plus the parent stays in their home. That is what happened with my dad. Plus the family home kept the family together as it was the gathering space for holidays and other events.
If someone doesn’t have kids this might not apply, but then someone who is single or doesn’t have kids probably doesn’t want a house, and will end up in assisted care which are pretty awful places from what I have seen if you love your parent. Like putting your dog in a kennel forever.
I am still single so can’t afford to buy a house but I hope some day to get married and have kids and buy a house. When I am my dad’s age I hope I have a kid like my sister and the other kids who helped out. I don’t think that is a terrible thing like you claim. I found your proverb to be insulting and demeaning. My sister and family and dad were not proud or haughty and there was no fall. Instead my dad lived out the rest of his life in dignity surrounded by people he loved and loved him, not someone paid to care for him. You should be ashamed of your last comment.
Zach B.
What I hear in your last post is a young person who is so angry because he has no chance of being as successful as his parents. You absolutely deserve your own house. Believe it, Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Ask your dad. He thinks renting is for suckers.
And actually, I’m set up really well for retirement Zack. I own real estate worth $1 million dude. Pretty sure when I get old, I’ll just move into assisted living with assets of selling that. Won’t need that house when I’m dead. Now, if I would’ve rented, I would be in a terrible place financially.
Al S.
Living alone, long-term is the worst life plan you could possibly make. I don’t care what the demographics say, It’s just a shitty choice. What happens when you get cancer or just get really old and are not able to do everything yourself? Living alone a strain on your finances, it makes you emotionally unstable. It’s not the way that people have lived for thousands and thousands of years. Do so at your own risk.
“He thinks renting is for suckers.”
You don’t know my dad, so don’t put words in my dad’s mouth. He literally paid for my rent all through college with his military retirement pension, so I didn’t have to worry about having a roof over my head. He didn’t have to do that, but I am forever thankful he did that for me as it allowed me to get my bachelor’s degree.
So do not disrespect my father that way you are doing now in trying to speak for him, its rude and truly a gross thing to do to a man I respect and love. He is very aware and sympathetic to the reality around him in these times from the amount of homelessness he sees when driving in Tacoma. He grew up dirt poor so he knows what true poverty looks like to struggle and have little on the table. Which is why he donates to local churches and orgs who help with the homeless. Either through money or volunteering his time because he knows the struggle all too well, and if he can help someone get help escaping homelessness then that is worth it to him to help as much as he can.
we can talk around in circles for hours, but the main thing is that ‘fact check’ and ‘tacomee’ will not support apartments/townhouses and will contort any reasoning to stop it.
If it’s easy to build they’ll say it’ll destroy single family homes
If it’s hard to build they’ll say don’t upzone it does nothing
If poor people move in they’ll say it destroys the neighborhood
if rich people move in they’ll say it’s gentrification
etc…
They are not considering housing or jobs or anything all they are thinking about is “stop apartments” that’s it and working backwards to find a reason to justify it.
This video about housing costs showed up on my video feed. It’s interesting food for thought. Although it doesn’t discuss much about Seattle, Seattle is on several charts.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EZo9MKgYQ60
Here is a link to Seattle region’s place as #4 on the Wharton Land Use Regulation Index (#1 being the most difficult).
https://real-faculty.wharton.upenn.edu/wp-content/uploads/~gyourko/WRLURI/GyourkoHartleyKrimmel_NBERw26573.pdf
The video found a correlation between difficulty in building to average rent.
And note that difficulty is a different measure than density is.
I wonder why, given Seattle’s better performance in other charts, Seattle is considered such a difficult place to build.
Community Transit’s proposal to lower its reduced fares to $1 and honor the Subsidized Annual Pass is now open for Comment.
Look at how many mistakes SDOT made on RapidRide G:
https://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2024/10/report-repairs-underway-as-city-screwed-up-wheelchair-access-on-platforms-and-every-bus-shelter-on-new-rapidride-g-line/
– wheelchair uneven boarding
– bad welding and holes in shelters
– bad paint job
– signal timing
– not lining up the curbs
– bus bunching / service gaps
This is not going well at all.
“Children being unable to live nearby their aging parents because of how expensive housing has got”
I hadn’t thought of that. How much is this happening? I think most adult children still live in the same metropolitan area as their parents, even if not in the same city. If the parent lives in Bellevue (in my case), while I live in Seattle I could imagine a child/helper living in Auburn, Everett, or Lakewood, but how much does this happen?
There’s also a converse situation. When my relative needed to move to a Medicaid adult family home, we chose one in Bellevue because she’d lived there for 50 years and wanted to stay there and her volunteer-helpers and doctors were there. The best we could find on a bus line was in Lake Hills, closest to a coverage route (but doable from the routes on 156th). Other places in King County I considered were only on coverage routes (except one on the 106 in Skyway). Others I had to turn down because I couldn’t get to them: they had no transit or would be two hours away (e.g., Monroe).
All these homes are deep in single-family areas because that’s where the lowest-price houses are, and they need a house large enough for six residents and staff. That would be OK if these neighborhoods were more walkable and mixed-use and had more transit, but they don’t, because of how we’ve been building neighborhoods for the past eighty years.
The Urbanist reports that Metro is expecting a $500 million budget shortfall by 2028. Hopefully this is motivation for either/both a larger Seattle TBD and a county-wide TBD. I’ll be interested to see whether the county is full-speed-ahead on 100% electrification or if this is the reality check that service quality (frequency, span-of-service, reliability, etc.) matters far more than the type of vehicle, as long as it’s getting cars off the road and giving people more mobility options.
Metro managed to narrowly dodge massive service cuts 10 years ago, so hopefully they are able to accomplish that again given the years of warning.
Excellent video that caused me to wonder: then why haven’t we done any of these things? Answer: our transit boards are not elected. They are mostly comprised of hand-picked politicians who have primary jobs of serving their cities or counties, with the board position being akin to an aside. Their board decisions are based on whatever the transit staff tell then, but tend to be parochial, as they won’t be voted out of their primary office because of them. A better structure would to have these transit boards entirely elected, with each region represented (e.g., county council districts) and three riders on the board, such as many of you on this forum. The transit agencies will fight you tooth and nail to protect their fiefdoms, however. Intercity Transit (Olympia) is one kind of exception who, in addition to having three community members as board members, who hopefully are regular riders, despite being tied with Community Transit for having the highest transit sales tax in the state – 1.2% – offset that a bit by being fare-free (CT is not).