What does the iconic Placa in Dubrovnik, Croatia have in common with an auto-eyed view of the Bravern in Bellevue? Access to retail.
it’s probably not the time to discuss radical restructuring of regional transit decision making, but…
wind power, indigenous culture and another Sound
News from Massachusetts and a proposed wind farm’s impact upon visual access to Nantucket Sound shows the role of the Federal government in balancing energy needs against the rights of two Native American tribes.
The dynamic of “traditional cultural property” consultation under the National Historic Preservation Act is not new, and often occurs with transportation infrastructure (including locally in the context of environmental review for initial light rail link ten years ago).
Nonetheless, Abby Goodnough’s article below summarizes the dilemma in particularly modern terms for the Obama administration: Should Nantucket Sound be listed on the National Register of Historic Places to honor the cultural traditions of “the people of the first light”? If so, what impact would such listing have on an already controversial Cape Wind project?
winter amenity urbanism redux, live from Vail: a walkable, yet fantasy world
Often efforts to reinvigorate commercial centers are theme based, and in the winter resort context, a common goal is to achieve the look and feel of an European alpine village amid expensive condominium residences and retail opportunities. Here, the redevelopment of the Lionshead area of Vail, Colorado provides an almost cartoon setting to a slope-side environment.
How could alternate designs and materials achieve a cohesive sense of place without imposing a fantasy upon the preexisting setting? Is this another instance of the issues first raised in the “nothing can come of nothing” discussion recently reposted from seattlepi.com?
urbanism by design v. the demolished, unplanned xbox artifact
A fascinating narrative, borrowed from a planetizen link:
new year’s retrospective, part 3: learning how to grow–”nothing can come of nothing”
We complete our new year’s retrospective with a compendium which first appeared in seattlepi.com on June 19, 2009, with updated links and enhanced photos added.
Eight blog entries later, some trends, concerns and observations have complemented almost 25 years in the trenches of environmental and land use law.
Four points emerge from what began in April entries focused on an inventory of “lessons learned from the development boom” amid 2009’s unprecedented attention to integration of transit and land use and provision for compact and walkable communities.
• “Who pays” for new infrastructure, innovative forms of development and placemaking, and public/private development features surrounding transit will rank highly–competing with attention to climate change as a determinant of how we will grow in the future.
• Overuse of buzzwords such as “sustainable” and “green” must yield to meaningful and implemented end-goals. Political spin or business generation hyperbole will not guarantee financing to accomplish a shared vision towards avoidance of urban sprawl and global warming.
• Silos must go. Laudably, the increasingly savvy Obama administration’s Sustainable Communities Initiative continues to lead the charge to marry land use, transportation and environmental issues.
• When we envision compact, walkable communities close to workplaces as the new ideal, we are imposing a particular point of view on many who either do not want or cannot afford to live in this manner.
Recent travels documented last week yield a fifth point. Let’s be careful with inspirational examples from overseas. We may want walkable cities, vibrant urban spaces and the allure of hilltowns…

The quintessential urban space, Campo di’ Fiore
….yet adaptation of development forms from other contexts or places in history risk Las Vegas, Leavenworth or facades not built to last. Our malls and commercial spaces are not Rome’s Campo di’ Fiore, nor are new urban centers Rome’s Pantheon.

Las Vegas: The Paris, context askew

Las Vegas: The Venetian, replete with the automobile
We should emphasize the qualities and characteristics we seek, but remember our history is short and contextual and cannot recreate what evolved over thousands of years.
In summary, in this time of opportunity, substance, please, and to quote Shakespeare in King Lear, “nothing can come of nothing”.
new year’s retrospective, part 2: what can new urbanism learn from Battlestar Galactica?, French edition
We add to our new year’s retrospective with observations which first appeared in seattlepi.com on June 7, 2009, with a photo added of the Frejus, France weekly market.
As noted on May 25, when discussing the role of streets and managing the impact of the automobile: “This has all happened before. And it will happen again.”
It did not take long to prove the point. A current visit to France shows that even in a society that prioritizes the pedestrian, especially on market day, the eternal dance of human and machine remains.
Yesterday in Frejus on the Cote d’Azur, while sipping coffee watching a street closed off to pedestrians in time-honored market routine, friends told me how the previous market day had featured an altercation of sorts, just adjacent to our vantage point.
Despite the presumptive nature of the weekly market preempting cars, and mechanical pylons closed in unison, an upscale Mercedes made its way down the closed cobblestone street flanked by vendors and musicians. When the driver reached the closed pylons, she realized she could go no further.
For the next 40 minutes, while the driver panicked in frustration, passers by conferred and some let loose insults premised on pedestrianism and some took the side of the driver, seeking to help. After all, as the driver apparently exclaimed, she lives in the town center, whether closed for market day or not, and she had the right of passage.
Almost an hour from the altercation’s start, the police arrived, and lowered the pylons. The pedestrian market returned to its historical place, while, inadvertently, the automobile had won a round in the public/private balance of control of the street, and the rights of adjoining property owners.
The moral: The new forms of growth, land use and transportation currently on center stage in our region have and will be played out across the world for generations. They cannot simply be imposed without a careful understanding of the rights at issue.
As Frejus reminds us, even where traditions rule, the battles remain.
new year’s retrospective, part 1: what can new urbanism learn from Battlestar Galactica?
We begin the new year with observations which first appeared in seattlepi.com on May 25, 2009.
To quote a Cylon or two in Battlestar Galactica: “This has all happened before. And it will happen again.”
Not unlike the new urbanist and smart growth dance to reshape the role of the automobile in urban areas, the recently concluded remake of the 1970’s television space opera entertained us from 2003 until this year with the eventual union of arch-enemy human and machine to seek a common framework for a better tomorrow.
In our much-reported post-Growth Management Act local dance rendition, our region seeks locally walkable and transit linked communities in order to reduce carbon footprints and redefine the role of the automobile.
As noted on May 7 and May 14, this utopian quest is often expressed primarily in design terms, with a de-emphasis on particular land uses in favor of desirable and appropriate building forms for a given urban sub-area.
Let’s not forget that public rights of way, (particularly streets, underlying and adjacent infrastructure and how they relate to surrounding uses), are also at the center of our attempts to tame automobile dependence and bring European pedestrianism and transit-oriented centers to Puget Sound. Many urban designers conclude that the key focus rests with wide and malleable sidewalks as the precursor to successful redevelopment.
Indeed, throughout recorded history, governments have used streets as a versatile private property management tool. With utilities flanking and buried under streets since ancient times, such conduits have often been seen as more important than the property on both sides.
Scholars trace the role of streets as the central regulating determinant of surrounding land use to Greek boundary stones which defined public space with inscriptions such as “I am the boundary of the agora”, to the layout of Roman military camps. Similarly, the reappearance of the wheeled vehicle and public marketplace in medieval times demanded, in modern parlance, adequate surrounding infrastructure. The industrial revolution demanded rectilinear transit patterns and yielded the late nineteenth century Garden City precursor to today’s green ideals.
Early twentieth century American planners struggled with how to assure new alternatives to simple gridded urban development. The neighborhood unit theory and examples from the New York City region in the 1920’s and 30’s were rediscovered in the past 20 years and spurred renewed debates about the value of curvilinear streets v. gridded streets, and neighborhoods which look inward on themselves with an internal open space focus.
Today’s planners must continue to use the street as a legal and planning tool to govern neighborhood form and appearance but also assure a functional layout that integrates pedestrians and multiple types of vehicles. Topics for continued consideration and merger include determination of: 1) desirable and appropriate building forms and interaction with public rights of way; 2) hierarchies of public rights of way; 3) the appropriate separation of pedestrians and vehicles; and 4) how to manage speed and noise with traffic control devices, public education, law enforcement and vehicle redesign.
We remain at a literal and figurative crossroads as we struggle to preserve quality of life and safety, and to achieve energy conservation and offset climate change.
We are not the first in history to attempt a reorientation of human and machine, nor will we be the last. “This has all happened before. And it will happen again.”
The costs of winter amenity urbanism
As the season of ski towns begins another year, the cost of living close to such winter meccas remains high, pricing out many local workers and necessitating long commutes for members of the service sector. In such places, urban amenities such as pedestrian ways, efficient transit and vital retail and restaurant centers are often tourist-driven and remake historic towns for winter sports, summer festivals and competitive image. Is prohibitive cost for residents an inevitable outcome of such commercial success?
comparative urbanism, part 13 (clouds and urban places edition)
Our perception of urban places as welcoming, deterring, intriguing or alluring is often influenced by a framing sky.
Here, a false urban setting in a Las Vegas mall contrasts with the former cave dwellings of Matera in Italy’s Basilicata region and a sepia-toned St. Kilda beach in Melbourne, Australia.
Does the bright blue and false Las Vegas sky confirm the ideal urban street? Do the Italian and Australian clouds serve another purpose in alternatively diverse settings?
inadvertent urbanist weekend examples (Albany, NY edition)
A weekend stroll down State Street in Albany, New York reveals American history at a glance–the evolution from the first European settlement in the Thirteen Colonies to the iconic statement of New York State infrastructure and Empire State Plaza. The transition from colonial street to a late twentieth century statement of public place on a grand scale creates a true contrast in pedestrian experience.
street scene complexities: “what was and what will be”
The complexities of a street scene–with often divergent and seemingly incompatible features–reflect the layers of social and cultural influence over time and place.

How else could a very British phone booth in a former colony contrast with the vernacular splendor of a church square?

Why else would an abandoned watering hole of British sailors still advertise the name of a distant London gathering place?

Is it inevitable that McDonald’s and a traditional religious center would mix on the French Riviera?

And must American ice cream from Vermont merge with gelato in the Mediterranean?
In the words of France’s Luc Gaudet, “[w]e are only but a mixture of what was and what will be”. The challenge going forward is to plan for such inevitability, and create places that successfully capture legacies, current trends and a sense of the future.
How do Seattle examples such as Ballard, Fremont, Capitol Hill, Columbia City and Belltown align with Gaudet?
the quotation for Copenhagen: “What is the use of a [fine] house if you haven’t got a tolerable planet to put it on?”
On the way to Copenhagen and current focus on climate change, the familiar Thoreau quotation has been renewed by many. Images can remind us of past relationships of housing, changing modes of transportation and the planet, and provide backdrop for current progressive norms which advocate for a more sustainable future.
In Seattle, housing still graces the path of the cable car that ascended Yesler and ended in Frink Park above Leschi, from 1888 until replaced by buses in 1940:


Across the world, two Italian images from former donkey trails–now walking paths–show a farmhouse between Monterosso and Vernazza in the Cinque Terre, and an abandoned stone structure on the Sentiero degli dei on the Amalfi Coast. 

Going forward, as we adapt transportation and land use patterns to continue goals of emission reduction, can we use these “anachronistic landscapes” (about which J.B. Jackson and others have written) in concert with Seattle’s pending Comprehensive Plan update and companion plans and programs in order to craft a vision of the post-Copenhagen future?
storefronts we want on our streets, part 1
From Lucera, Italy, Carlo Cozzolino says it all.


street vending and street dining urbanists
We can take back the street with new right of way permitting schemes, new forms of licensing, some revised insurance and simple inspiration from afar…








comparative urbanism, part 11 (density can be fun edition)
Urbanized portions of Malta are the most densely populated in Europe. Below, the morning shoppers of the capital city of Valletta contrast with an autocentric Fremont street in Seattle. Which experience inspires you? Do you feel safer among the crowd, or with the cars?


comparative urbanism, part 10 (crusader port and venetian realm edition)
Sometimes, to add gloss to the urban density and compact development debates, there is no harm to escaping to Akko (Acre) in Israel, Sveti Stefan in Montenegro or Dubrovnik and Rovinj in Croatia…




U.S. to unleash millions for streetcar, bus projects to reduce pollution | Oregon Environmental News – – OregonLive.com
mayoral urbanist, part 5 (confessions of a transitional ambassador)
As noted in the post below, Seattle’s Mayor-elect McGinn is holding three town halls this week, beginning tonight. The Mayor-elect’s “open source transition” is predicated on such inclusionary outreach, with three questions in mind. Prior to the town halls, several “ambassadors” parlayed these questions to representative groups throughout the city. Selected myurbanist alter-egos served as a bridge to largely “downtown” interests, as well as non-governmental organizations and peer professionals involved in land use issues. Here’s what we heard:
comparative urbanism, part 10 (highly disputed real estate, urban snow edition)
For Seattleites, will December 2009 echo our sometimes divisive 2008 experience with urban snow? Or might snow provide a basis for new unity of purpose?
In one of the most documented, and most disputed urban places, sometimes it snows, bringing to mind the interconnectedness and universality of snow implied for a divided Ireland in James Joyce’s 1914 short story, “The Dead”. When I read of the 2008 snow in Jerusalem, I searched for new images to update photos from long ago, and in the process rediscovered Amit Cohen’s touching words describing how an earlier Jerusalem snow event brought a feeling of unity to an often divided Middle Eastern urban fabric:
“The flakes combined as they touched ground, forming a thin, crystalline layer on the surfaces of the city. From Saladin Street in the east to Jaffa Road in the west, the whiteness was gathering. It was early evening, and in the light of dusk, snow was falling in Jerusalem.”


Photo from Daily Mail, January 30, 2008:
Photo from onejerusalem.com, January, 2008:
comparative urbanism, part 9 (signage redux)
Is signage an enhancement, or a distraction? A guide, or a deterrent? A caption to a view, or a demand for attention? Here are some thoughts from here and there…







comparative urbanism, part 8 (directional signage edition)
Are our senses of direction and place enhanced by signage?



comparative urbanism, part 7 (MLS Cup edition)
As major league soccer crowns its champion in Seattle tonight…

what could be more appropriate than to share this view from the stadium of the gathering place of the people…

and to provide perspective from the stadium before it fills?
transformational Seattle, late 2009
It was clear to me by late October that the Seattle mayoral election would inspire a rich analysis on the evolution of the city and the possibilities of urban politics. Grant Cogswell’s November 17 piece in The Stranger is well worth a read for a thoughtful portrayal of the post-grunge Seattle in transformational times.









































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urbanists at work



