Where will Seattle head? Promise and Peril

This week, the Seattle City Council will make decisions that are indelible and nearly irreversible about our future here in Seattle. The Seattle Waterfront is a magnificent example of research, dedicated stewardship, long-term collaboration, and sustainable planning. In my personal capacity, I submitted the following comments- residents here are astonished, and not in a good way.

I work on a team where we routinely work on long-term integrated planning, extensive collaboration and engagement, girded by research and goodwill. Perhaps the Council will consider that approach.

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I am writing you, Council members, in possibly the most momentous occasion you will ever have in your political lives. In this moment, you have to use your skills, with your colleagues, to craft a sustainable community plan for Seattle.

It is hard to see this at all in your Comprehensive Plan Amendments or in your Missing Middle Bill that accompanies it. It’s as if you don’t really understand the physical world of heat, water flows, flooding, beauty, pollutant pathways, temperature, and visual patterns, and ALSO that you don’t understand people need healthy and visually beautiful conditions to live—and want to live-- here (yes, and housing of course).

It is inconceivable that we live in city awash in high-net-worth individuals, yet we cannot manage to fund communities that have housing for everyone, wrap-around services, care, and are beautiful and respectful. We don’t keep our beauty promise as the city is trashed (literally). Shame on us.

 We need cottage developments, stacked flats, social housing, small retail hubs in every neighborhood and we need trees, flowering plants and shade vegetation--- fully distributed across the city in every nook and cranny, not consigning nature to parks and Rights of Way where a deficit of O&M staff and care has led to poor conditions (despite best and good efforts), and which could never cool the city as a whole. In some places, we may need very tall buildings to protect natural infiltration, trees, and gardens. Vote for Amendments 93 and 102.

After the City’s departments were disentangled in 2015, isolating and weakening the Department of Neighborhoods and giving leading power to SDCI, we became even more beholden to private sector interests, where construction and only construction was the main focus (outside the Waterfront, which is an example of certain city departments doing an outstanding job of research, care and collaboration).

This happened when the national narrative arc was that was by only encasing communities in pavement, would be able to supply and demand our way out of the housing crisis. Even though we have tons of housing, most of it is unaffordable, and I question this economic theory (which it is- a theory, a model, many of which are flawed).

 ·We decimated neighborhoods we claimed to care about in our floral race and justice initiatives, yet we took out one of the last tree groves in South Seattle and all I read was the snotty-ass developer who told us to go talk to you. And so?? We claim to support environmental justice initiatives, yet we continue to have policies that undermine people, affordability, environmental health, human health and ignore the climate crisis we find ourselves in.

 In the last 10 years (we have lived here for over 30), you have chosen to ignore the real dynamics behind price increases (2nd homes, speculative investment, material and labor increases, REITs taking a center stage, price fixing and just pure greed in the bidding market). While there may be less single family homes than we would like, we are awash in condos, townhouses and apartments, many (possibly up to 1,000) vacant. Why have you not seriously looked into this? Why aren’t we levying major fees on 2nd homes and using that to fund truly affordable housing?

Rather than cultivating a culture of care, we have made money monsters of our neighbors, turning them into rapacious developer- selling entities, who sold out their neighbors and turned blocks into ravaged masses of dark speculative monoliths- and it was because we made Seattle ugly and unlivable, and therefore worthy of leaving. 

In the meantime, you missed the mark on ADUs/DADUS which apparently have no legal requirement for people to actually live in them (I asked your departments and in our neighborhoods, they are garages and empty places for the occasional Range Rover crowd). You thought that taking out older/larger apartment buildings and historic buildings was a great idea, replacing them with hideous black monoliths, primarily occupied by people of wealth. Your Missing Middle ideas don’t comply with the Bill’s intent AT ALL. It’s an overreach and uses the wrong tools.

Then came the developer-written Tree code which meant killing 4,000 plus trees- many of them conifers—so we could build 4 houses on one lot- many of the applications in violation of the law and rubber-stamped by SDCI in many cases. This is happening at a time when we are getting hotter and hotter, ranking 5th in the nation for heat island index ratings---with real human consequences.

Trees are like a savings account- masters of coolness, wildlife, shade, oxygen production, wildfire smoke attenuation and places of refuge. Oh, and the seedling myth is full of cowpie- you could plant 1,000 seedlings to replace some of the giant 70-100 year old conifers we cut- massive, beautiful trees- and it STILL would not be enough in a short window of climate cooling time, and they will not shade anything except an errant squirrel. Of course, we need seedlings but you are all specious in your prose about how great we are about planting seedlings to “replace” those conifers. They are no replacement (let’s replace the UW Physics Department with three, 2-year olds).

Your plans to pave over every inch of every neighborhood and ignore all the communities we heard from today that they had no idea what was going on, is unacceptable and a clear breach of your public trust obligations to the people who live here. 

 When you first rolled out your draft Comprehensive Plan elements, all the boards that contained drawings and information on parks, trees, and open space VANISHED (because I attended these in person). Next time around and all of a sudden, the Comprehensive Plan become one devoted to construction only.

I am a researcher and policy analyst, and I see scores of cities in the United States and across the world that manage to walk and chew gum at the same time (implementing good, smart, and respectful integration strategies) by bringing creative, smart ways of envisioning and seeding the future. We can do it too, but not if your hands are in the cookie jar and you don’t listen to your public.

Vote YES:

• Amendment 93 → Stops developers from paving over 95% of private lots

• Amendment 102 → Closes loopholes and brings Seattle up to national standards

• Eliminate setback reductions if that removes essential survival space for trees.  The issue isn't so much setbacks as the essential survival space for existing trees.

• Follow Portland and other cities to require a dedicated tree retention and planting area.

• Eliminate the ineffective and 'convenient' (for developers) Tree Point system.  Instead, expand and enforce tree requirements on new developments.

• Remove section 25.11.070 and retain the flexible guidelines under 25.11.060.

• Encourage shared exterior walls and clustered homes (stacked flats, etc.) to provide usable exterior space that can preserve trees on these development lots

• Follow Washington’s GMA mandate that requires retention of urban tree canopy.