seattle

29 Aug 09

Seattle Channel Video Player: POPOS (Privately Owned Public Open Space)

QUOTE:
Seattle's Privately Owned Public Open Spaces: A Walking Tour
8/26/2009: Councilmember Nick Licata defines POPOS: Privately Owned Public Open Space. Under Seattle city zoning laws, building developers can engage in zoning tradeoffs that may allow them to build bigger or higher, if they provide a specified amount of space for public use. Landscape architect Guy Michaelson, representing Seattle Architecture Foundation, leads a walking tour highlighting POPOS buildings, historic landmarks, public art and other public amenities. For more information on POPOS and monthly tours offered by SAE, visit:seattle.gov/council/issues/public_space.htm, seattlearchitecture.org
UNQUOTE

www.seattlechannel.org/...video.asp - Preview

seattle urban_amenities urbanplanning urban_parks architecture

02 Jun 09

DfD: Design for Disassembly in the built environment: a guide to closed-loop design and building (PDF)

This is a 69-page PDF, self-explanatory title, prepared on behalf of the City of Seattle by Hamer Center for Community Design, Penn State U. Haven't had time to read through yet, but the table of contents includes: Introduction; Principles; Design Process; Case Studies; Components & Materials; Model Deconstruction Specification; References.

seattle.gov/...LatestReleased_DPDP_021860.pdf - Preview

dfd design design_for_disassembly seattle buildings pdf

18 Apr 09

Ignite Show: Monica Guzman on Being an Awesome News Commenter - O'Reilly Radar

Fabulous short video clip of Monica Guzman explaining how to be an awesome news commenter

radar.oreilly.com/...e-show-monica-guzman-on-b.html - Preview

local_news blogging business_model newspapers ignite seattle monica_guzman news o'reilly

19 Jul 08

A design-savvy city defined, by Knute Berger (Crosscut Seattle)

For future reference: Berger's article about a report by architectural firm RMJM, which identifies America's top 10 best-designed cities. His article focuses on the aspect of heritage preservation, which factors into RMJM's weighting and criteria, and he notes that Portland seems to beat out Seattle.

From there, Berger segues into whether or not (or to what extent) citizens are "pleased with their urban architecture," and observes that only LA residents are "less happy with their city" than Seattlites. (I'm not sure how he manages the leap from heritage preservation to 'being pleased" by contemporary/new architecture, but there you have it.)

Anyway, the really useful thing about this article is that Berger lists the 7 categories RMJM used to answer the question, "what makes a design-savvy city?", and also summarizes each aspect (with commentary of his own, in italics). All in all, the list makes a great framework for thinking about urban design.

www.crosscut.com/...A+design-savvy+city+defined - Preview

urban_design urbanplanning seattle crosscut knute_berger heritage preservation designsavvy

Public transit and urban infrastructure: Public transit systems can't stand still, even in mature transit cities like Boston and New York.
Portland was off the charts in transportation favorability, rating a higher approval than any of the top 10 cities at 79 percent.
6 more annotations...
- Sustainable design: It's important to make things greener and some cities, like Seattle, have ambitious greenhouse goals, but the report found that in the top-10 designed American cities, only 45 percent of people surveyed were even aware of their city's sustainable initiatives. Those numbers were higher in Seattle (59 percent) and Portland (64 percent).
  - - if residents aren't aware of it, that indicates that city planners (staff) aren't articulating it clearly enough for the elected politicians to convey the message to residents/ voters. It's a failure of leadership on both sides. - on 2008-07-19
  Add Sticky Note
- Art and design education: "Creative schools, especially at a university level, spawn creative businesses and endeavors and, in turn, elevate design sensibilities in their local communities," the report maintains. Boston, with top architectural programs at Harvard and MIT, is an exemplar. The gist: Break the barriers down between city and classroom.
- Innovative architecture: The report says the "Bilbao effect," where one stunning building can put a city on the map, actually dates back to the ancient Greeks. The Parthenon was the first Guggenheim. World's fairs and the Olympic games are occasions for creating legacy structures which act as statements "of investment in a city, demonstrating commitment to the future and driving up tourism."
  - - in his aside, Berger asks, "How do we overcome our tradition of hiring great architects to do mediocre work (Frank Gehry's EMP, Robert Venturi's SAM). Do the ephemeral Rem Koolhaas library or Olympic Sculpture Park get us off the hook? Or should we be satisfied that the Space Needle will make a great ruin one day?" - on 2008-07-19
  Add Sticky Note
- Creative community: Great cities, it seems, are filled with idea people, the creative class who, if they are not lucky to be architects are perhaps their social and creative equals. San Francisco is cited as being "one of the most well-known havens of the creative economy."
  (Great cities, in other words, need to have a high tolerance for over-educated trustafarians and a capacity for vigorous self-regard.)
- Art, galleries, theater spaces, and museums: All the places where the creative class does its business are important, but so is bringing art to the masses. The study points to Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper's public art initiative, timed to coincide with the 2008 Democratic National Convention there in August and featuring, according to a press release, "10 site-specific art installations catalyzing public discourse in neighborhoods" throughout the city. "Catalyzing discourse" is always good for bonus points in a "savvy city" competition.
- Preserving historic buildings: The report says, "How a city treats the past says a lot about its values for the future. And anecdotal evidence suggests that cities that take care of their old landmarks are likely to embrace new ones." In addition, the study encourages sustainability through preservation by touting an effort in Boston to "revitalize the existing City Hall in Government Center as opposed to relocating it to the South Boston waterfront, claiming adaptive reuse would provide more environmental benefits than building a new sustainability designed building."

07 Jun 08

YouTube - Final Cut#2: West Seattle Blog

- great video, some interesting info.

youtube.com/watch - Preview

seattle youtube local_news blogs bloggers west_seattle_blog hyper_local

Crosscut Seattle - Neighborhood blogs: the mom-and-pop news business

- note the ref to the "instant journalist" blogging software: this could be really useful for setting up a MC blog...??

www.crosscut.com/...+the+mom-and-pop+news+business - Preview

crosscut local_news blogs hyper_local seattle neighbourhoods

22 May 08

Paul Krugman Joins Team Density | hugeasscity

danb comments on Paul Krugman's recent NYT column, which he wrote while in a Berlin mid-rise/ low-rise neigjborhood. I posted a comment back about amenities, and whether it's possible to create architecture w/ amenities when you're building on small (10K) city lots and trying to stick to low-rise (or low mid-rise at best). File under "commentary."

noisetank.com/...aul-krugman-joins-team-density - Preview

hugeasscity density seattle paul_krugman james_kunstler commentary low_rise mid_rise high_rise

to achieve viable densities in Seattle with midrise we’d have to take out a whole lot of single family, which isn’t likely to happen any time soon

12 May 08

The painful cost of booming growth | Seattle Times Newspaper (Local News)

"Puget Sound is a funnel. Anything that we do at the top end of the funnel comes out at the bottom end." Sometimes painful reading, this article looks at the effect of bad wastewater runoff management and its deleterious effect on the environment. "Barbie Doll" housing colonies are the worst offenders, not least because old bylaws & regulations haven't kept up (or up to date) with new developments in treatment and approach.

seattletimes.nwsource.com/...985_growth_stormwater20m0.html - Preview

seattle puget_sound sprawl growth planning water run_off

The way we grow is undermining our promises to protect and restore Puget Sound, and could hobble a new rescue plan on which we may be asked to commit as much as $18 billion on top of the $9 billion we already expect to spend by 2020.
- Given Victoria's upcoming $1.2b+ sewage treatment issue, it would be interesting to know how to compare $18b plus $9b cited for cleaning up Puget sound: who is involved, who is ponying up the resources (money), how big are the horses (i.e., the population) contributing to pull this along? - on 2008-05-12
Add Sticky Note
It happens one creek at a time as bulldozers and pavement disrupt the natural flow of water through the ecosystem, destroying habitat and sending billions of gallons of polluted runoff into the Sound.
16 more annotations...
- Even as we continue to push to protect Puget Sound, the entire effort is up against the fact that we also need to make room for as many as 4 million more people who could move here this century.
  
  And as we do, we are gradually eating away at the Sound's finely tuned water-cleaning system by leveling as much as 10,000 acres of forest every year.
- There's no overt conspiracy to hurt the Sound. Instead, the damage is happening in the pursuit of cheaper land and economic development, a longing for big backyards and a resistance to urban density, and a need to keep home prices within reach of average people.
  - "resistance to urban density"? "longing for big backyards"? Well, couple this with the reality of much higher gasoline prices, and those far-flung suburbs are going to face sticker shock. - on 2008-05-12
  Add Sticky Note
- we still struggle to protect Puget Sound and at the same time make room for everyone to live the way they want.
- state officials have balked at tougher, more costly controls
- developments we allow lag behind the latest stormwater designs, because many county and city goverments are still using 16-year-old rules
- newest engineering standards, some of the strictest in the country and ones that could add thousands of dollars to the cost of a home,
- developers who try promising new approaches to addressing stormwater face red tape that creates costly delays or hurts effectiveness
- Today, stormwater flowing into Puget Sound is a slow-motion oil spill, amounting to millions of gallons a year.
- But the state didn't make them mandatory. So most local jurisdictions haven't made changes.
- At McCormick Woods near Port Orchard, Kitsap County commissioners promised in 2003 to require builders to follow the most up-to-date stormwater standards. At the same time, they approved what will amount to a small city with a business park, shopping, and more than 4,000 homes and apartments, ranging from big houses along a golf course to modest ones aimed at first-time buyers.
  
  Yet they didn't change any county stormwater rules. Kitsap County still follows the 1992 manual.
  
  That's not unusual. Snohomish, Skagit, Pierce, Thurston, Mason and Island counties all follow the 1992 manual, and so do countless cities.
- "Until it's mandated, most organizations don't really act," he said.
  - Bingo. - on 2008-05-12
  Add Sticky Note
- Ignored, developers say, is the cost more regulation adds to the price of new homes, putting them further out of reach of average people. Builders complain that the newest stormwater requirements will add thousands to the costs of building each house. They point to a new study from a University of Washington economist saying land-use regulations have already added $200,000 to the price of an average Seattle home.
- Environmentalists and some developers say low-impact development is one answer. The state is starting to promote it, and some local governments say they want to change their rules to allow it.
  
  It turns out it's easier said than done.
- the concept runs up against decades of habits and rules: the assembly-line methods of major developers, concerns that low-impact methods are unproven and bureaucrats wedded to old methods.
- only a few adventurous developers dare to try new approaches. But many complain of costly delays, roadblocks and outright opposition from government officials resistant to trying something new.
- But some of the area's top low-impact experts say the builders are copping out, and low-impact methods can still work with customized approaches to each project, instead of cookie-cutter formulas.
  
  "It's way easier for those guys to come in and do what they've always done until there's some regulation that comes in and tells them to do something else," said Curtis Hinman of Washington State University, who has written a widely used manual on low-impact development.

01 May 08

In Defense of Townhouses — Sightline Daily (formerly Tidepool)

- great article by Eric de Place on why so many new TH developments are so ugly. As his lede says, "How parking laws make housing expensive. And ugly."

daily.sightline.org/...in-defense-of-townhouses - Preview

sightline_daily seattle urban_design urbanplanning cars parking architecture

Some of the new townhouse developments are pretty bland, and many seem divorced from the street. But why are the designs so flawed?
Here's one explanation. Nearly every townhouse in the city is required by law to provide offstreet parking. Since cars don't fly, the practical effect of the minimum parking regulations is that each and every townhouse has a garage on the bottom floor. And these garages are often the prime culprit in walling off the townhouses from the street, and of sending the residents upstairs.
8 more annotations...
- because the garages are small and the driveways are tight, the residents who have cars often end up parking on the street anyway. All this puts city planners in a lose-lose situation.
- One obvious solution would be to strip out the parking requirements, which would revolutionize the design possibilities. But so far, the city's modest attempts to remove minimum parking mandates in a few urban areas have been greeted with howls of protest from angry mobs wielding pitchforks and torches.
- Contrary to the screeching of some neighborhood activists, the reason that townhouses are sprouting up everywhere is not because developers are part of a notorious cabal dedicated to ruining Seattle's aesthetics. No, the reason is because people want to buy them.
- Not only are single-family homes about 25 percent more expensive, on average, but the single-family homes are more often older, requiring expensive fixes and upkeep. (Believe me, I know). Meanwhile the townhouses are sparkling new, very energy efficient, and often within walking distance of services and transit. As a result, the true price differential is much greater than the sale prices suggest.
- But now there's a push to subject townhouses to more extensive permitting, increased design scrutiny, and more neighborhood input. And while those may or may not be wise public policy decisions, they are precisely the sort of regulations that -- bit by bit -- increase the price of housing.
- Another possibility is simply to downzone neighborhoods, so that it's illegal to build townhouses. But that kind of supply-side restriction -- already common throughout much of Seattle's land-base -- is likely one big contributing factor to unaffordable housing.
- minimum parking requirements -- the ones that foul up townhouse design -- they may also make the townhouses more expensive. In fact, it's been estimated that parking requirements can add tens of thousands to the price of a condo, and it's fair to think that a similar price hit happens with townhouses.
- And free parking is ugly too.

19 Apr 08

Site-Specific

4culture and other arts orgs in Seattle / King County have teamed up to create an online site where you can find out what's going on in the arts, site-specifically, so to speak. They have a forum (albeit still under construction), but the Schedule part seems functional, and has an "attend this" feature -- quite cool.

www.sitespecificarts.org - Preview

sitespecific seattle 4culture local_news

26 Mar 08

Seattle's historic contradictions - Crosscut Seattle -

Sparked in part by the designation of a "googie" (a Denny's diner) as a heritage landmark structure (a designation that the deep-pocketed owner, the Benaroya company, is going to fight in court), Berger reports on subsequent repercussions and discussions among "representatives from the state Department of Archaeology and Historic Preservation, Historic Seattle, the Washington Trust for Historic Preservation, and others." The comments thread is pretty interesting, too, and there are parallels to what Victoria is facing in its considerations around "landmarking" modern buildings.

www.crosscut.com/...le%27s+historic+contradictions - Preview

architecture crosscut heritage historic_preservation knute_berger seattle

Skolnik argues for a major revamp of historic preservation in Seattle. He is asking the city to appoint a citizen's task force to study the landmark processes and wants a moratorium on all landmark nominations and designations until they report. He believes the process needs to be more open, voluntary, incentive-driven, and re-organized to better represent the interests of property owners and developers. If not, he fears a backlash that could undo decades of preservation work.
Perhaps most infuriating to preservationists, he has said the current process results in property takings, implying Seattle's rules aren't simply misapplied, but illegal. His critique goes to the foundations of a system that has been at work in Seattle for decades. As it is, he says the process is "victimizing property owners." The debate is whether landmarking should be voluntary, or regulatory, like zoning.
Defenders of the current system are equally adamant. Larry Kreisman of Historic Seattle argued that the ordinance was established with "great wisdom" and said that if Seattle only had voluntary landmarking, "the city would have lost some of its most important vestiges of city life," meaning places like the Pike Place Market and Pioneer Square. And Historic Seattle's Pete Mills said the landmark law was "One of the few gems that allows us to preserve what's important in the city."
9 more annotations...
- Linda Larson, a former Landmarks Board appointee from the Charles Royer years and a longtime library trustee, emphasized that historic preservation is "a core value of the people of the city." Everyone seemed to agree on that.
- Stepping back a bit, both Skolnik and preservationists make thoughtful points. Skolnik worries that the preservation process is out of touch with regular folks. He says that after too many years, the city's preservation office is another entrenched bureaucracy that is running rough-shod over people. He says for a property owner who opposes the landmarking of their building, it may cost as much as $100,000 to fully fight through the appeals process. Most don't have the money to fight a designation and give in. Very few, like the Benaroya Company, have the money to take a further step and sue, which is why their lawsuit over the landmark designation of the Ballard Manning's/Denny's diner is unusual. Skolnik says "I'm a believer that preservation should be a positive process for everyone."
- Landmark proponents say the reason there have been so few lawsuits over the years is that the process does work, in part because it is selective. Architect Susan Boyle, one of the busiest preservation consultants in town, told the committee that she has prepared at least 100 landmark nominations and that 60% of them were successful, 40% failed. That, she said, showed the board is very discerning. And Karen Gordon pointed out that in the city's controversial survey of downtown buildings, they looked at 387 that were old enough to be eligible as landmarks (built before 1966), and determined that 45% were clearly not of landmark quality. In other words, those owners are now off the hook. The city only proactively nominated 37 structures and identified scores of others that are maybes.
- "'The greenest building is one that's already built.'" Recycling buildings, says Peter Steinbrueck, is the ultimate in sustainability.
- The area of conflicting policies poses a bigger problem for the city council and the Planning, Land Use and Neighborhoods committee as it looks ahead to possible changes in the city's development rules and comprehensive plan in the year ahead. How do you manage all the moving parts of a complex city yet keep the contradictions to a minimum?
- Skolnik is right that landmarking can't do it all, and shouldn't. Steinbrueck is correct that the city we love won't survive if the rules don't have teeth.
- mhays
- The general population supports preservation of what they consider historic: brick and stone buildings from the 30s or before. They don't support preservation of modern buildings unless they're especially cool in some way, like the Science Center's arches. An office building built in the 50s or 60s? That's just another box.
  
  The AIA did a national survey of the general public a year ago. They asked people to look at a long series of photos and rate the buildings in them. The list was massively skewed toward older buildings. This was an utter shock to many architects. In Architectural Record and elsewhere they came up with all sorts of lame excuses. For example, the older buildings had been around long enough to grow on people...as if a building from the 60s hadn't had ample chance to do the same. They refused to believe that people like older buildings more.
- Codifying what a preservation board should use as criteria seems impossible. Americans spend millions every year to visit European cities that have preserved and even rebuilt ancient buildings. They eat in Cafe’s in 500 yr. old buildings. Tourists like old stuff and pay dearly for the privilege.
  
  In attempting to render some judgement as to what a historic building might be leads us to ponder still another abstraction. Should appearance be be a major criteria for deciding what buildings should be preserved and which should be replaced with something new? It seems hard to overlook what the building under consideration was used for. Did things of value to our culture happen there? How did it serve those who occupied the building? Were important decisions made there? Did it serve just a few, or many, over it’s lifetime? Did it in some way symbolize something good about the American culture? Did it open it’s doors to all or just a select few who could afford it? Could it be used again to serve in the same way?
  
  An even greater abstraction that must be considered is what would replace it? Would the replacement be just for profit, just one more new building with unaffordable rents built with sub-prime loans?
  
  In our struggle to assign values to things I’m reminded of a comment made by a friend as we noticed an older little house with with a MUP. board in front. It would be torn down and replaced with 4 new townhouses. The friend commented that this trash house was a tear down. Going through my mind was that it was almost exactly like the converted two car garage I lived in for years with my mother after my dad died. It was warm and dry and it was home to me. They used to call it affordable housing.
  - - this speaks to the "embodied energies" within/of "heritage"... - on 2008-03-26
  Add Sticky Note

11 Mar 08

How to marry a Canadian - Crosscut Seattle -

"When a Seattle writer tried to recruit some north-of-the-border help in her fight against cancer, she learned how different our countries really are." Seattle cancer blogger Jeanne Sather writes about the differences between Canadian and American health care (including, especially, cost, and access to). Her blog, The Assertive Cancer Patient (http://www.assertivepatient.com/) provides real time details and updates.

www.crosscut.com/...How+to+marry+a+Canadian - Preview

breast_cancer canada cancer crosscut health health_care jeanne_sather seattle usa

04 Mar 08

Huh? As fortune declines, newspaper readership rises - Crosscut Seattle

Great article by Douglas McLennan (of http://www.artsjournal.com/). I've had this open in a browser tab since the end of February -- postponing bookmarking it because I felt I needed to annotate it / comment on it appropriately. But now I'm bookmarking it with just one bit of advice: just read the article, especially if you're interested in newspapers and news media.

The issue McLennan addresses? From the lead-in to the article: "More people are reading newspapers than ever before — on the Web. Yet publishers in Seattle and elsewhere continue to lament their decline. Why are they failing to capitalize on all these new eyeballs?"

Figure it out, Mr or Ms Newspaperperson.

www.crosscut.com/...%2C+newspaper+readership+rises - Preview

crosscut newspapers seattle

Nobody's reading newspapers anymore.
And yet they are. And in record numbers. Look at this report in Editor & Publisher. The online audience is soaring, and here's the growth rate and numbers of unique readers for newspaper Web sites in January 2008:
NYTimes.com 20,461,000 45.1%
USAToday.com 12,314,000 19.4%
WashingtonPost.com 9,902,000 14.6%
WSJ.com 6,962,000 81.4%
LATimes.com 5,715,000 4.7%
Not only are these huge audiences, but the growth rates continue to be spectacular. By far, more people are reading newspapers than ever before. As just one example, scroll down the list to No. 16, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which has a Web audience of 2.2 million people per month. The P-I's print circulation, when it was considered healthy in the previous century, was in the low 200,000s.
As the paper's content has degraded, the perception of it in the community is one of declining influence and quality.
- ...a scenario repeated all over North America... - on 2008-03-04
Add Sticky Note
8 more annotations...
- Conventional wisdom says that newspapers are caught in a business model which doesn't support the changes to digital media, and despite huge efforts, the newspaper industry is in decline. Maybe there's no longer a place for traditional newspapers.
  The conventional wisdom is crap.
- It's hard to take claims that newspapers are taking the Digital Age seriously when they have so under-invested to compete in it. Consider:
  Most digital operations are seriously under-staffed and under-resourced. They don't employ even the basic traffic-building strategies that independents are using with great success.
  Newspapers have declined to innovate as eBay, Craigslist, Monster.com, Google, and myriad ad networks have sprouted, thrived, and stolen customers.
  Digg, Reddit, Newsvine, and others are experimenting with community selection of news, while newspapers pay little more than lip service to reader involvement.
  Hundreds of small Web operations have sprung up to compete with traditional newspapers, while news organizations remain mired in old conventions.
  Social networking has changed the way young people interact, yet newspapers have failed to meaningfully take the plunge.
  Pretty much every online initiative in the traditional news industry has been me-too-ism rather than bold invention. The back-end digital news production structure at most newspapers is a mess. Many papers still bizarrely consider their online and paper versions separate operations.
- High-paid editors who ought to be spending their time on content spend their days snarled up in uploading images and navigating other technical mazes. Reporters and editors are pressed to add digital duties — blogs, podcasts, etc. — as add-ons to their "regular" jobs, instead of incorporating the digital world as essential tools that should make their ability to gather and tell stories and interact with their communities easier. This shouldn't add to the workload (but always seems to). Instead, these things ought to make reporting easier.
- Finally, most Web operations are seriously understaffed and technically deficient, making what should be even basic tasks difficult to impossible.
- And all that lip service about how newspapers want to listen to their readers? Not really true. Sure, comments sections have given readers places to vent, but what newspapers are actually treating their readers as communities to be interacted with rather than loud voices demanding to be heard? What's interesting about that?
  - - how true, as I noticed via my recent participation in a "sound off" -- it's way too easy to lose your voice, and the many-second delay confounds having an actual conversation... - on 2008-03-04
  Add Sticky Note
- These things (and many more) have combined to poison the business. Meanwhile, social networks have amassed millions of users, and prominent bloggers have begun making so much money that they're madly hiring editors and reporters and winning awards. Some "small" editorial operations now have more daily readers than The New York Times.
  - - be nice to figure out how that's happening; aside from say, Huffington Post and blogs of that size/ influence, are there really many (any?) making "so much money"? - on 2008-03-04
  Add Sticky Note
- Let me focus on one area in some detail: ads. Say I want to advertise on the Web site of my local paper. How about those 2.2 million P-I readers? I go to the Web site. Look for how to do it. Not easy. I have to call someone, negotiate a deal. Can I advertise on the newspaper's blog that I know all my customers are reading? No. No one's advertising there. So how much will it cost? Not worth it to me.
  Now go to any large blog. Next to every ad there's a link that says "advertise here." Click the link, you get rates, you can specify where it runs, and for how long. You can upload your ad online. If there's space, your ad can be up an hour from now. And the price drops if the space is under-utilized. Easy peasy.
- At a time when Internet advertising can get ads to readers with incredible accuracy, why aren't newspapers on board? Last week, several newspaper companies announced a new ad network. This is only eight years late in happening, and it's not at all clear how this new network is going to make things better.
  A local example: Here in Seattle, art galleries don't advertise in the local papers. Why? It's way too expensive, and it's probably not hitting the art-buying audience. Yet the popular online visual art blog of the P-I's art critic, Regina Hackett, is a place where the city's visual arts community increasingly logs in every day. Make the ads cheap enough, and galleries would be clamoring to buy space. The paper's Microsoft blog and venture capital blog have substantial, highly-sought-after audiences, yet the paper doesn't look to be even interested in attracting new advertisers for it. You don't think startups looking for funding wouldn't flock to the place where the VC's check in every day?
  There are plenty of small businesses that would be micro-advertisers if the rates were right. And who has a bigger local audience online than the local newspaper? Traditional advertisers are falling away? Then start exploiting non-traditional advertisers. Hard to take newspaper execs seriously when they say they're trying everything they can to keep up their revenue. Meanwhile, they're not doing even what any savvy blogger can.

26 Feb 08

Here's one reason students Barack the vote: respect - Crosscut

Wow, and wow again! U-Dub communications prof David Domke describes how his citizen-journalist blogger students were treated by the politicians campaigning for president, and the difference between Hillary & Barack are astounding.

One of Domke's students, Jennifer Ware, describes it like this: "John McCain spoke in Seattle (the same day) to about 500 people at the Westin Hotel’s conference room. Clinton spoke to a gathering of 5,000 at a waterfront pier (on February 7). Obama spoke at Key Arena, home to the Seattle Supersonics; it seats 18,000 and it wasn’t nearly big enough. People were sitting on the stairs, in the aisles. Seasoned reporters were smiling and nodding softly as he spoke. Some people had tears in their eyes when he came on stage. There’s all kinds of spin out there, but you simply can’t spin those numbers. Or the stark contrast to the others in the race."

Domke adds, further down: "It seems that the take-home point here is this: The Clinton campaign has made the case that Obama is nothing but rhetoric; he’s supposedly all words, while she’s all action. Our experiences showed us that their campaigns — at least in Seattle — were exactly the opposite. In their treatment of my students, Clinton’s campaign was all talk, while Obama’s was all walk."

Obama for President!

www.crosscut.com/...nts+Barack+the+vote%3A+respect - Preview

blogging citizen_journalism clinton obama politics presidency respect seattle

And along the way we learned some important things about the Obama and Clinton campaigns. We didn’t set out to learn these pieces — but the campaigns taught us loud and clear.
6 more annotations...
- When I called the Clinton campaign to ask for a contact at their Washington state campaign office, one staffer tried to tell me that Washington was where their campaign headquarters is. "Yes" she said, "Washington, it’s right next to Virginia."
  - Holy cow... - on 2008-02-26
  Add Sticky Note
- Every single person I’ve dealt with from the Obama campaign was upbeat, positive and helpful. Even when the press couldn’t initially get into the venue on Friday for Obama’s speech, and a reporter from The Seattle Times was yelling at one of the volunteers, she handled it with poise and kindness. It was almost so good it looked staged, but she was real. She said, 'I’m just a volunteer from Shoreline, I’ve never done this before, please bear with me.' Even as Obama volunteers managed mobs of people at KeyArena, they did it with purpose, not burden.
- John McCain spoke in Seattle (the same day) to about 500 people at the Westin Hotel’s conference room. Clinton spoke to a gathering of 5,000 at a waterfront pier (on February 7). Obama spoke at Key Arena, home to the Seattle Supersonics; it seats 18,000 and it wasn’t nearly big enough. People were sitting on the stairs, in the aisles. Seasoned reporters were smiling and nodding softly as he spoke. Some people had tears in their eyes when he came on stage. There’s all kinds of spin out there, but you simply can’t spin those numbers. Or the stark contrast to the others in the race.
- When my students had trouble reaching the Clinton campaign in the run-up to the caucuses, I made a call to her national office. I figured that maybe they’d respond to a UW professor better than a student — which would be an error on their part, but still one that we might use to help our coverage. I told them we were having trouble reaching people — anyone — on the ground in Washington state with the Clinton campaign, and I implored them to make sure my request on behalf of my students for press access to Clinton’s event in Seattle received a response. They assured me I’d hear from them. I emphasized my point a second time. They kindly repeated that I would certainly hear from people on the ground here.
  I’m still waiting for that call.
- The Obama and Clinton campaigns weren’t the only ones to come to town. On the Republican Party side, Ron Paul held a rally on the UW campus. Janet Huckabee held a rally at Northwest University, and her campaign team reached out to my students covering her husband’s candidacy — returning calls and making sure they had press access. McCain’s campaign aides went out of their way to let my students know about his press event at the Westin, and to get them in. For those scoring at home, five presidential campaigns came to town — and four reached out to my students, treating them like what they are: journalists and citizens.
- It seems that the take-home point here is this: The Clinton campaign has made the case that Obama is nothing but rhetoric; he’s supposedly all words, while she’s all action. Our experiences showed us that their campaigns — at least in Seattle — were exactly the opposite. In their treatment of my students, Clinton’s campaign was all talk, while Obama’s was all walk.
  It suggests to me that the Obama campaign’s appeal to younger people is not just because of Obama himself. It’s a campaign that treats young people like full adults. And across Washington state, Obama crushed Clinton, defeating her in every county in the state. It’s been a pattern repeated in every contest since.

20 Feb 08

Tear down a viaduct, and then the wars really begin - Crosscut Seattle -

LOL, this sounds like Victoria, BC, too...

www.crosscut.com/...and+then+the+wars+really+begin - Preview

crosscut redevelopment san_francisco seattle urban_renewal viaduct

Once the viaduct was demolished, part was replaced by a four-block boulevard for commute and local traffic. A small neighborhood park was built, and then it came time to award four empty lots along the route to architects and developers who submittied winning designs. Those lots are still empty.
What ensued is fairly typical of cities with many well-educated, articulate, and empowered citizens. Utopian demands. "Nobody's shy about gumming up the works if he doesn't get what he wants." High-minded guidelines that keep getting higher. All kinds of hard-to-mesh visions (quality architecture, affordable housing, restrictions on parking, ever-higher developer fees) that eventually produce stalemate, fleeing developers, and glorious mud-slinging opportunities between mayor and council.
- With the exception of "mud-slinging opportunities between mayor and council" (which we don't seem to get to similar degrees because of Canada's inherent "weak mayor" system vs the "strong mayor" system in place in many US cities), this sound exactly like Victoria... - on 2008-02-20
Add Sticky Note
1 more annotations...
- The mantra for the game in San Francisco, according to the reporter, is: "Always push for more, and never feel qualms about changing the rules." Gee, we could have told them that one.
  - - That's a mantra here, too, except we often don't even bother pushing for "more," if more means "fabulous." We'll push for mediocre, because even pushing that far is too far here... - on 2008-02-20
  - Oy, that's a viral mantra here, too... - on 2008-02-20
  Add Sticky Note

Hitting close to home on affordability - Crosscut Seattle -

Great article by Crosscut's Knute Berger on affordability/ housing costs in Seattle, with much to be gleaned for us (BC, Southern Vancouver Island, Lower Mainland), too. "You can blame many factors for the high cost of housing in Seattle, from growth management to infrastructure expansion. But we often overlook another reason: personal taste."

www.crosscut.com/...close+to+home+on+affordability - Preview

affordability affordable_housing crosscut knute_berger seattle

Part of the demand side of the equation is, of course, growth: more people. But what is it that those people want? They want bigger houses, bigger condos, and bigger apartments. It's tough to meet density goals when the number of people per home is shrinking and the size of the homes is increasing. It means more and more people are eating up more space — and space costs more. This is a national phenomenon.
Builders respond to market demand. What is it people want?
In 1970, the average new single-family home was 1,500 square feet; in 2005, the figure swelled to 2,434 square feet — an increase of over 900 square feet.
In 1970, 36 percent of new homes were under 1,200 square feet; by 2005, only 4 percent were. In 1970, only 10 percent of homes were over 2,400 sq. feet; in 2005, 42 percent were.
2 more annotations...
- American homes are bigger, taller, and with more amenities than the houses of old. The result: a large increase in the number of new two-story-plus homes (17 percent in 1970 vs. 55 percent in 2005), the number of bedrooms (four bedroom homes grew from 24 percent in 1970 to 39 percent in 2005), the number with 2-1/2 baths on the market has doubled, and the number of homes with two-car garages has increased from 39 percent to 64 percent — with an additional 20 percent of new homes sporting three-car garages. Size has mattered, too, in new multi-family housing, where the number of units over 1,200 square feet has doubled since 1990, from 20 percent to 43 percent.
  America could be scaling expectations to bring about a lower-cost reality. We have not. But don't blame it all on the sprawling suburbs. You can see this upsizing in Seattle neighborhoods where bungalows are being remodeled and renovated by new buyers. Often, you'll see buyers take a small, 1,000-square-foot home, expand it, add granite countertops and a professional chef kitchen, add a deck, a bunch of bathrooms and walk-in closets, and flip it for high-end resale. A perfectly habitable small home that cost cost $500,000 has now been upgraded with completely optional lifestyle amenities, and the price more than doubled.
- Another issue is the economic profile of the people who live here now. Part of the run-up in home prices has to be well-paying job generators like Microsoft and other tech enterprises that have produced so much instant wealth.

18 Feb 08

We are not 'the next Silicon Valley' by Margaret Pugh O'Mara (Crosscut Seattle)

Really interesting article from the historian's perspective on what it takes to "be" Silicon Valley (hint: certain historical confluences helped) and why it's unlikely that another place will "be" just like that. On the other hand, great places can build on their core strengths, and there are lessons to be learned in this. As O'Mara writes: "In this worldwide network, the most vital innovation centers are those that know their own strengths, provide exciting and dynamic environments for people and firms, and have the resources and institutions that provide a home for new and exciting ideas." I added a comment to this article, particularly as it jives with something Richard Florida also posted today.

www.crosscut.com/...+%27the+next+Silicon+Valley%27 - Preview

business creatives crosscut margaret_o'mara seattle silicon_valley technology

Seattle should build on its local strengths while remaining a key part of the global network of technology industries
Silicon Valley resulted from a combination of powerful local institutions, savvy real estate development choices, immense capital investment by the Cold War military-industrial complex, and the simple good fortune of being on the right side of national economic and demographic trends. The repeated failures of other places to replicate that success – much less seize Silicon Valley's high-tech mantle – attest to the trickiness of getting this formula right.
The lessons of the tech industry's Cold War-era infancy still hold true today.
8 more annotations...
- You need lots of money that can be spent (somewhat) recklessly. Military grants and contracts provided the capital needed for Valley pioneers like Hewlett-Packard to survive in their earliest, leanest years and created a demand for sophisticated technologies before there was a sizeable commercial market. As military contracts declined in the late 1960s, private venture capitalists and angel investors rose to take their place, giving smart but untested people repeated opportunities to innovate and develop new products.
- Like the Bay Area and other gold- and silver-rush cities of the American West, it has a long tradition of supporting innovators and iconoclasts. But it is only very recently that the local venture pool has reached critical mass – thanks in large part to the individuals who benefitted from the boom days of Seattle's first tech wave in the 1990s.
- Stanford University was not solely responsible for building Silicon Valley, but it had a great deal to do with it. But the mere presence of a big university is not enough – and this is one crucial fact that so many would-be Silicon Valleys have gotten wrong. A university or other research institution has to have strong programs in the disciplines that matter to high tech. It needs to have the budget and willingness to engage in things like university-industry partnerships and to encourage technology transfer rather than hobbling it. And strength is in numbers: It's important for a region to have one of these institutions, and it's even better for a place to have many of them.
- You need to be a place that attracts talented people and retains the ones you've already got. Silicon Valley grew because it was a place with qualities that attracted people who had the education, economic resources, and social advantages to live anywhere they chose. It was located in an economically booming state in a prosperous nation, within commuting distance of a major city, but with open land available to build suburban houses, research parks, and highways. It has been able to create an environment that allows white-collar high-tech workers to live, work, and network in something of a self-contained bubble.
- Retention of talent also matters. Cities like Philadelphia and Baltimore have some of the top-ranked research universities in the world, but the alumni of schools like Penn and Johns Hopkins often hop the first Amtrak out of town after graduation.
- Seattle has excelled at attracting talented people; its high proportion of college-educated residents attests to this. It hasn't done as well at producing them. The people who went to college here make up a relatively small part of the tech workforce. In Silicon Valley, Stanford and Berkeley pulled talented students to the Bay Area from across the country and the world. Many of the builders of the Valley, from Hewlett and Packard to Google, are products of local universities. A region's students are essential to its future economic success.
- You need to build on existing strengths, not follow the next big thing. This is another one that many Silicon Valley wannabes get wrong. As the eminent urban scholar John Friedmann puts it in his book The Wealth of Cities, "cities are not containers." The perpetual pursuit for outside capital – and transplanted ideas and innovations – is a far less productive strategy than building on core competencies. Thirty and 40 years ago, regions around the world were trying to emulate Silicon Valley by building semiconductors; today, nearly as many places are fixated on becoming the next biotech hub or the next capital of nanotechnology. Simple rules of economics dictate that few of these aspirants will meet their goals.
- Silicon Valley succeeded not because of the "silicon" but because it was doing something that complemented existing regional strengths. The area had been a hotbed of amateur tinkering with radio technology since the 1910s; faculty and students at Stanford had been working on transistor technology for a generation. Similarly, Seattle was launched onto the global economic map by technologies and companies that built on things local people and firms already did well. Nordstrom injected a new level of customer service to selling shoes; Starbucks did the same thing years later in selling a cup of coffee.
  - Ha, no kidding with the tinkerer aspect: think of Doc Searls and his "IT Garage"... - on 2008-02-18
  Add Sticky Note

Place Wars - Seattle vs. Silicon Valley (Richard Florida and The Creative Class Exchange)

Florida points to two techologists, one SV-based (Michael Arrington), the other now once again Seattle-based (Glenn Kelman), having a bit of a dust-up over whether one region/ city is better than the other. Robert Scoble also weighs in, as do several others. Of particular interest is that Crosscut today also published Margaret Pugh O'Mara's article on the Seattle - Silicon Valley comparison. I commented here (and in Crosscut).

creativeclass.typepad.com/...place-wars---se.html - Preview

business creatives richard_florida seattle silicon_valley technology

14 Feb 08

5th-and-Columbia---South on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

Hmmm, what do we think of this overhang? The rendering was posted by someone in the comments board to David Brewster's article in Crosscut about this development.

www.flickr.com/...2262536103 - Preview

architecture crosscut flickr seattle urban_development

Genuflecting to the high rises by David Brewster (Crosscut - Seattle)

Crosscut's publisher, David Brewster, calls out the Seattle P-I and the Seattle Times for their gushing endorsements of two major downtown Seattle development proposals (Fifth Ave. twin condo towers by Ishmael Leyva Architects and, also on Fifth Ave., the United Methodist Church block by Zimmer Gunsul Frasca). Brewster points to the curious alliance btw developers and eco-density champions, which is wearing a bit thin in Vancouver, acc. to an article by Frances Bula, which Brewster references (see http://tinyurl.com/333ehj ). In Vancouver, there's talk of putting density & height in formerly sacrosanct areas, like Gastown & Chinatown, too. Some interesting comments showing up in the comments board, too.

www.crosscut.com/...Genuflecting+to+the+high+rises - Preview

architecture crosscut development downtown eco_density seattle urban_design

We get a shower of superlatives: $900 million, according to the New York financiers, 550 feet tall, 200 hotel rooms, and 400-500 condos.
But not to worry: These massive buildings will be "designed for neighborhood," meaning shops along the streetfront. The developers, with the engaging name of Hummingbird Advisors, are going to take a pretty dead block and "make it into a vital, vibrant pedestrian area." Of course, much of the lower level will be a blank wall concealing hotel ballrooms, but that's OK because the Monorail already blocks those views. (The architects' drawing artfully turns the Monorail into gossamer.)
5 more annotations...
- The developer deserves credit for coming up with a scheme to save the old sanctuary (no uses have yet been found), but one wonders at the tradeoffs. A few years hence, if not already, we are going to wonder why downtown Seattle has become such a lightless, windswept, glassy canyonlands. But more vibrant? The office tower will be mighty quiet evenings and weekends. And the amenities of the new condo-hotel towers (open-air arboretum, lots of recreation space) may turn these abodes of "urban aspirationals" into self-contained zones.
  - I think Brewster is on to something in asking after the amenities. They have to be first-class and work well, especially if these aren't residential towers (and therefore dead after hours, as he points out). - on 2008-02-14
  Add Sticky Note
- The reason for all this genuflecting is the alliance of environmentalists, enchanted by the density created; developers eager to cash in on Seattle's "underpriced" real estate market; low-income housing advocates, who get millions in mitigation payments from these luxury towers; and City Hall, salivating over the tax receipts.
  - ...interesting... - on 2008-02-14
  Add Sticky Note
- But now there is some sign that the ecodensity coalition is beginning to feel some internal splits. A good illustration is Vancouver, B.C., where residents are grumbling that the amenities supposed to make all this density tolerable (libraries, transit, affordable apartments) are just not showing up.
- We're tired of our city being raped, razed and regurgitated as just one more homogenized, condo-canyoned McCity stripped of our unique character, style and gritty working class charm.
  - Oh brother... this sounds familiar. Define "charm," please... - on 2008-02-14
  Add Sticky Note

Yule Heibel's Library tagged seattle → View Popular

Seattle Channel Video Player: POPOS (Privately Owned Public Open Space)

DfD: Design for Disassembly in the built environment: a guide to closed-loop design and building (PDF)

Ignite Show: Monica Guzman on Being an Awesome News Commenter - O'Reilly Radar

A design-savvy city defined, by Knute Berger (Crosscut Seattle)

YouTube - Final Cut#2: West Seattle Blog

Crosscut Seattle - Neighborhood blogs: the mom-and-pop news business

Paul Krugman Joins Team Density | hugeasscity

The painful cost of booming growth | Seattle Times Newspaper (Local News)

In Defense of Townhouses — Sightline Daily (formerly Tidepool)

Site-Specific

Seattle's historic contradictions - Crosscut Seattle -

How to marry a Canadian - Crosscut Seattle -

Huh? As fortune declines, newspaper readership rises - Crosscut Seattle

Here's one reason students Barack the vote: respect - Crosscut

Tear down a viaduct, and then the wars really begin - Crosscut Seattle -

Hitting close to home on affordability - Crosscut Seattle -

We are not 'the next Silicon Valley' by Margaret Pugh O'Mara (Crosscut Seattle)

Place Wars - Seattle vs. Silicon Valley (Richard Florida and The Creative Class Exchange)

5th-and-Columbia---South on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

Genuflecting to the high rises by David Brewster (Crosscut - Seattle)

Selected Tags

Related Tags

Sponsored Links

Top Contributors

Groups interested in seattle

punkbands

we all like travel

ecycle

Seattle Central Library

races

NYTimes.com	20,461,000	45.1%
USAToday.com	12,314,000	19.4%
WashingtonPost.com	9,902,000	14.6%
WSJ.com	6,962,000	81.4%
LATimes.com	5,715,000	4.7%