Author: Chuck Wolfe

Charles R. (Chuck) Wolfe, M.R.P., J.D. provides a unique perspective about cities as both a long time writer about urbanism worldwide and an attorney in Seattle, where he focuses on land use and environmental law and permitting. In particular, his work involves the use of sustainable development techniques and innovative land use regulatory tools on behalf of both the private and public sectors. He is also an Affiliate Associate Professor in the College of Built Environments at the University of Washington, where he teaches land use law at the graduate level. He contributes regularly to several publications including Planetizen, CityLab/The Atlantic Cities, The Atlantic, The Huffington Post, Grist, seattlepi.com, and Crosscut.com. He blogs at myurbanist.com.

uncovering embedded patterns of place in the city

On By Chuck WolfeIn everyday urbanism, infrastructure, placemaking, urban views12 Comments

[showtime]

Amid the roads, sidewalks and places that you have visited before, there are often embedded patterns to uncover, read and reinterpret.

This exploration is an archaeology which involves more than unearthing distinct artifacts from another era.  For me, it includes observing the place-based impacts of four interactive factors:

  • The intersection of the built and natural environments;
  • The evolution of transportation modes;
  • The application of associated land use plans and regulations; and
  • The continuation and/or evolution of surrounding land uses.

Documenting this evidence in your neighborhood is one aspect of “creating the urban diary” that I suggested here and described last month:

[R]ather than merely watching someone else’s video, might you further develop and understand your relationship to place, as well as other similar interactions which you observe?

Personal documentation of the journey from place to space—crossing and intersecting the public and private realms—may be the best way to understand where we live, the choices we make and those that are made for us.

Through such urban diaries, each of us can learn more about cities as they are and could be.

Depicted above and below is an sample urban diary of a Seattle walk from the city’s Madrona neighborhood to Lake Washington and back, across both the public and private domains.

As illustrated here, recreational access to water, motorized, bicycle and pedestrian transportation all take place today within the context of the Olmsted Brothers’ park and boulevard designs of over a century ago. The historic intent and uses of the public and private spaces (largely recreational and residential) continue, while land and water-based transportation modes evolve—and the dynamic City of Bellevue skyline provides a visual offset to the traditional ambiance of Mount Rainier.

An urban diary effort can also uncover longstanding urban gems. In this case, two items provide precedent for the often unfunded aspirations of today’s urbanists for more walkable places and green opportunity.

First, stairways and sidewalks transect public and private greenery (which bear street names that begin far westward in Seattle’s downtown). In addition, the .17 acre “Madrona Briar Patch” provides a parklet with picnic table—an incidental path-adjacent space predating today’s similar “pop-up” city venues.

The bottom line? Based on embedded patterns of place, you can read and document the city around you, and rediscover forgotten opportunities along the way.

For a full screen slideshow, and/or to see more detail, click the slideshow, above, or individual images, below.

All images composed by the author.

assuring sustainable third places in the city

On By Chuck WolfeIn everyday urbanism, infill development, placemaking, politics, sustainability, urban administration23 Comments

Last week, while the Seattle City Council gave final approval to more street food vendors in public places, Borders Group Inc. began its liquidation of most remaining Borders bookstores, including locations in destination American downtowns.

This is related news, because both items are about how public and private uses and spaces mix in urbanized areas. Both raise questions of “no net loss” of urban, and downtown “third places” and how to make a more livable city.

In my view, despite the today’s international focus on urban street food vending, the paradigm left behind by Borders leaves bigger questions for back-to-the city devotees.

Some definitions are in order. “Third place” is a decades-old term championed by sociologist Ray Oldenburg for venues which bring people together in the tradition of the American colonial tavern or general store. The idea remains central to urbanist thinking, and describes those places, other than home or work, where we gather, debate and trade. “No net loss” is a term borrowed from the vocabulary of wetland conservation, and allows for replacement of lost assets with equivalent resources.

“No net loss” is the essence of sustainability.

In the last decade, as forms of home and work evolved, conceptions of third places changed as well—from larger footprint commercial spaces such as Borders, to mid-size bookstores (e.g. Third Place Books), to back-to-the-commons public spaces and the pop-up agora. Street food vending is somewhere in the mix as an expanded place of ambience and employment—and to all but certain bricks and mortar restauranteurs—a likely urban benefit.

In response to the Borders news, some pundits, like Josh Stephens in Planetizen, have called for a better, non-Walmartian reinvention of the bookstore. In his view, big boxes—even when urban— destroy Mom and Pop purveyors. Amazon and Kindle aside, he makes a good case for a new, post-recessionary wave of independent urban bookstore startups. For those bookstores, I hope that he is right.

But as to third places—and I am going to assume that “big books” uses can play such a role—there is something bothersome about the final demise of Borders’ urban core locations. While perhaps an opportunity for the independent competitor, what of the potential loss of third place uses in high-value urban downtowns?

Will the prime square footage occupied by Borders have similar, third place potential once reclaimed? Will replacement uses provide the equivalent, fusion business purposes of books, coffee, lecture and song?

Last week, CNN Money was also abuzz with the the re-realized location efficiencies of heading back downtown. In that spirit, let’s hope that downtowns retain dedicated uses of value to those soon to arrive.

Both the private market and public policymakers should work together on the potential prize of livability: assuring the sustainable, no net loss of square footage devoted to urban third places.

All images composed by the author.

fusion businesses and the cities of tomorrow

On By Chuck WolfeIn compact development, everyday urbanism, infill development, placemaking, urban views21 Comments

When a small branch of a local ice cream business opened within the laundromat up the street, it was evidence that today’s land use regulations are becoming more in sync with changing urban reality.

Recently, I have been focusing on the potential artifacts of urban life in cities as they grow more dense. Last week, I asked about the fate of the front lawn.

Today, in the spirit of the ice cream laundry, I’m switching from what we may lose to what we may gain: the looming fusion businesses of tomorrow.

For instance, what is the fate of technology of convenience such as individual washers and dryers? In what central places can we share, combine and “fuse” their use?

My neighborhood is not alone. Consider Copenhagen’s celebrated Laundromat Cafe, which has fused more than ice cream with laundry, and inspired a trend. Note also some American spin-and-dine examples, such as San Francisco’s Brain Wash.

In order to enable fusion businesses, land use regulations may need more flexibility. In this case, conventional zoning often segregated food service uses from more “industrial” uses such as laundries. In addition. smaller start-ups may have been prohibited within existing uses, with walk-up service limited in scope.

Reform efforts can and should reinvent such conventional impediments to the more efficient, compact city life, and allow the flexibility of innovation and redefined urban traditions. As currently proposed Seattle efforts illustrate, reforms aimed at more livable places can be evolutionary rather than revolutionary, and can enable more employment closer to home.

Beyond regulatory reform, in today’s sustainable city, it’s good to foster shared consumption lifestyles and functional, multi-purpose venues, whether fad, fancy or emerging reality.

Want to track shared consumption examples and the fusion dynamic? I highly recommend shareable.net for a one-stop check on the latest on bike-sharing, car-sharing and prognostication on the next sustainable recombination of the way we live.

Image composed by the author.

saying goodbye to “Leave it to Beaver” urbanism?

On By Chuck WolfeIn compact development, everyday urbanism, placemaking, sustainability, urban views9 Comments
Cleaver Residence, Universal City Studios

After suggesting last week that policymakers should plan for urban density’s inevitable displacement of less efficient, but important land uses, I began to focus on specific elements of the American city and suburb with a high risk of loss.

So began an exploratory tour of the iconic front yard and lawn. Long protected by cultural position—and zoning setbacks—is the classic Leave it to Beaver lot configuration really part of a sustainable future?

Density advocates would suggest otherwise. Seattle blogger Roger Valdez, who has both entertained and exasperated with his recent, often satirical tour of Seattle’s Land Use Code, wrote yesterday: “Yards should be next on our list after parking in terms of code reform.”

Further exploration provides context.

Last month, Connecticut’s Charlie Gardner provided an outstanding, one-stop analysis of the “addiction” to the American front lawn, complementing an earlier examination of mandatory setbacks and their history.

As an attribute shared by “England’s colonial children,” Gardner argues the front lawn as socially and environmentally wasteful, yet often still required based on an outdated landscape tradition. He suggests that unlike numerous international examples, “alternative single-family residential designs may simply have been scrubbed from the collective imagination” in the United States.

Speculations by Valdez and Gardner are not new to the planning profession or to land use lawyers and developers.

However, Valdez shows us that discussions of what city space is needed for private landholders is now beyond professional debate, and part of the popular urbanist dialogue.

Meanwhile, Gardner has a particularly good range of visuals from across the world, and his examples show that small patios, simple window greenery, hedges and trellises may be the only front yards that people really need.

In those cities where urban density increases, and American “castle grounds” actually redevelop and contract, will anything tangible really be lost to future generations?

My guess is that many will find new forms of functional private space, and their front yard will expand to include the neighborhood, or, perhaps, the city as whole.

All images composed by the author. Thanks to Christopher Leinberger for his occasional contrasts of urbanism between the traditional “Leave it to Beaver” and more recent “Seinfeld” models.

pondering artifacts of displacement in the sustainable city

On By Chuck WolfeIn compact development, everyday urbanism, infill development, infrastructure, placemaking, sustainability6 Comments
What happens when the bicycles beat the big box?

Last week, George Monbiot of The Guardian sounded the urbanist alarm.

The cause? In order to offset strains on infrastructure, an Australian provincial initiative is offering stipends to Sydney residents who leave town.

Monbiot’s response included a headline which was nothing short of an international clarion renouncing this short-term fix. “Sustainable cities must be compact and high-density,” he said, while arguing for strong planning laws to stay the course.

Monbiot joins a legion of many who embrace the thesis of David Owen’s New York City-based “Green Metropolis“— and aptly suggest that the compact, less auto-dependent city is our necessary, sustainable future.

Monbiot’s tout towards planning is appropriate, but just what does it mean? For one thing, we must ponder the impacts of displacement, because there may no longer be enough room for life—or death—as we know it.

If our cities are to become more dense, what will become of uses and properties which do not present optimal uses of urban land? As the disfavored car dealerships, warehouses and low-rise strip malls reconfigure and yield to more concentrated uses, policymakers should be forward thinking in their prescriptions for the changing city.

Will some positive or necessary, low density urban traditions also be dispossessed? Where will they go in a gradually reshaped, sprawl-free urban system?

My choice of Latin words above— “clarion,” “legion” and “thesis”— are not accidental. In classical precedent, there are thought-provoking lessons, still visible at will.

Consider Rome, and learning from the landscape of an iconic walk in the Appia Antica Park on its outskirts.

Opened in 312 B.C., the Via Appia (the “queen of the long roads” of ancient military transport and commerce) traversed ancient Italy from Rome to the Adriatic port of Brindisi.

All along the walk today, over original paving stones, ruins flank the roadway—remnants of burial monuments, statues, tombs and towers.

Sometime after 200 A.D., burials were banned in the city, because of crowding and land values. Catacombs on the periphery offered mass internments to the growing religious population. Along the main thoroughfares, further beyond the city walls, the wealthy adorned the roadsides with personal and family tributes— now an outdoor museum of bygone sprawl.

In ancient Rome, density drove out the dead, and changed the landscape in unanticipated ways, still visible today. It’s a legacy worth noting after two thousand years.

If our cities must be dense to be competitive and sustainable, we must also look with care to the potential displacement of uses, institutions or traditions—not to mention the artifacts we will leave behind.

All images composed by the author.