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.

Obama and the Middle East, urban sustainability and detente

On By Chuck WolfeIn everyday urbanism, housing, infrastructure, Israel, myurbanist international, placemaking, politics, sustainability, transit oriented development, urban administration, urban views2 Comments

Could sustainability principles pave the path to peace?

President Obama’s strategic statements about the Middle East last Thursday (and as clarified to AIPAC on Sunday) were not city-specific, but took me back one year to Jerusalem and in-person perspectives on the city’s prospects.

My 2010 reflections, reproduced below, capture individuals still in the news, and the issues of today’s urbanism, boundaries and ecosystems in Jerusalem—considerations well worth heeding in response to the President’s focus on borders, and his call to embrace the choice “between the shackles of the past and the promises of the future.”

In Jerusalem, a municipal administration rides a pendulum between sustainability and geopolitics.

Greenbelts, light rail, complete street-making, and the storied demolition orders for Palestinian homes in a floodway: all live on a world stage.

Last week, addressing Pacific Northwest professionals visiting with Seattle-based i-SUSTAIN, Deputy Mayor Naomi Tsur prescribed the ultimate sustainable urbanism, drawing from a Hebrew phrase. Jerusalem must “emerge from its [many] walls,” old and new, she argued, and enhance the city’s diverse, public areas largely already shared by all.

The Jerusalem of gathering spaces and neighborhoods is already present, she claimed, and should no longer grow out in rings of settlements, but should preserve compact neighborhoods based on affinity, interlinked by public transit and defining connectors such as the Jaffa Road and the Street of the Prophets.

The tools? Public process, for one, even in areas annexed after the 1967 Six-Day War, to help define a collective local voice.

Her systemic analysis of the city is familiar and compelling, as she simultaneously seeks to avoid a Nicosia outcome (a reference to the divided Cyprus to the northwest). Arguably, she is peacemaking on a platform of the sustainable city.

For instance, Tsur thinks at night about the infrastructure lacking in East Jerusalem, and how the city should rise above the intractable and remedy untreated eastern watershed drainage, which flows directly to the Dead Sea. It would be feasible, she says, to pump this sewage to the state-of-the-art treatment plant that already treats the western watershed sewage, and create drinking water through sustainable technology.

Meanwhile, in the East Jerusalem village of Silwan, along the Kidron Valley, just below the City of David and Hezekiah’s water tunnel, Fakhri Abu Diab thinks at night about other things — like what to tell his children about the potential fate of the family house which still “carries the smell of his mother.” As recently reported by The New York Times’ Ethan Bronner, the Abu Diab house was one of several that received a demolition order, because it was expanded without a permit and is the potential location of an archaeological park at the base of excavations already mired in the complexities of political archeology — a search not only to document biblical events, but seen by detractors as a Jewish land-claim process in disguise.

In Abu Diab’s view, the post-1967 municipality has ignored him before, and he lacks confidence in the proposed relocation offer, which is under negotiation for a move to higher ground.

Walls, sleepless nights, conflict, water, and a future for children. The human condition speaks loudly in this most urban of cities, as the debate over the future of Jerusalem brings a reality-television aura to local land-use administration.

The original article also appeared in Crosscut, here.

Portland: framing the question of place

On By Chuck WolfeIn everyday urbanism, infill development, infrastructure, pedestrianism, placemaking, sustainability, transit oriented development, urban views14 Comments

Visits to other cities can easily create “grass is always greener responses” which are hardly complete analyses of a place and its problems.

Yet these human, spontaneous gestalts are worth noting, because they say something about the immediate look and feel of location, and can constitute authentic perceptions of the best of urbanism.

My role in Portland, Oregon last Friday was to present the results of my recent, co-authored study on transit-oriented and urban center development to a meeting of the American Bar Association’s State and Local Government Law Section—and then to co-lead a bus tour on specific, local examples—from the Lloyd District to the Pearl District and beyond.

In keeping with the spirit of gestalt, something very human happened along the way.

For the past few years, Portland has inspired urbanist writers because of an advanced transportation system (including light rail, streetcar and bicycle), a highly walkable downtown, and development practices which have captured the imagination of a new generation of city-oriented populists.

In particular, two of the best urbanist articles about Portland, William Fulton’s summary of why Portland works and Dan Bertolet’s comparison with Seattle, led me to my own gloss.

From a fundamental, “read the city” perspective, downtown Portland and its close-in neighborhoods capture the best of an urban experience. The scale, street surfaces and sidewalk furnishings occur amid integrated, yet appropriately separated transportation modes and supportive green spaces. Innovative business and community groups have leveraged proximity to transit and managed parking through successful development strategies.

All lead to irresistible memories of examples from elsewhere and a universal question:

How can we capture this experience in my city?

Perhaps such a fundamental human response is the best metric of all, and the key to achieving a livable place.

All images composed by the author. Click on each image for more detail. Cross-posted in The Huffington Post and Sustainable Cities Collective.

a postcard of compact development

On By Chuck WolfeIn compact development, postcards, urban views2 Comments

It appears that a reduction in the size of residential basketball courts and equipment goes hand in hand with emerging compact transportation modes.

a land use postcard: no public hearing needed

On By Chuck WolfeIn everyday urbanism, politics, postcards, urban abstractions, urban views2 Comments

No matter what the Code says, it looks like the people have spoken.

the timeless advice of universal urbanism

On By Chuck WolfeIn everyday urbanism, placemaking, politics, urban administration2 Comments

People often ask why, as a lawyer, I have chosen to spend spare time writing about urbanism. “Osmosis and irony” is the best answer I can muster.

While many of my friends monitor, message—and often preach—changing approaches to urban development, I write because I am seeing many things in the popular press and blogosphere recalled from childhood as obscure, meal-time conversations in an urban planning professor’s family.

I am reminded of one of many of Mark Twain’s attempts at characterizing the human condition:

“Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen.”

So, in a sense, the meal-time conversations of childhood continue. In the interim, words have changed, but the ideas are constant. Regulations have attempted to cement what was selective policy. And a sense of urgency—borne in “pollution control”—now centers on mitigation of climate change.

How distinct are the urban policies of yesterday, today and tomorrow?

By way of example, the Seattle City Council 2011 Priorities address an agenda with several sub-elements (click here), built around the following, which are understandable and appropriate topics for the 21st century city:

  • Foster safe, just, and healthy communities for all
  • Build a livable city for our future
  • Invest public resources fairly and effectively

Maybe such topics are generic, modern city-speak, regardless of exact era, technological advancement or regulatory system.

Over 40 years ago, my father (the professor) was asked for advice about contemporary urban issues of the day relevant to Seattle.

In response, he focused on issues of regionalism, infill development, equitable transportation systems, housing, education, natural systems, storefront vitality and community involvement.  He frankly approached the pitfalls of merging land use policy with politics and the need for a bold vision at the juncture of the public and private domains.

Ironically, change the date, update vocabulary, and the following abridged advice might provide a helpful, timeless and universal road map in whatever urban direction we choose to travel.

June 5, 1967

TO: Mr. Jack Robertson

Random Notes: Planning and City Development With Regard to the Seattle City Council

Urban and regional issues that could be expected to concern a Council.

1.  A metropolitan orientation: awareness of the city region, the interrelationship of the problems and willingness to view them in the context of a central city and its hinterland.

2.  Inner city rejuvenation: the changing core – urban and human renewal utilizing all aid to facilitate a vigorous business and industrial center – but not to ignore housing and other community facilities as only the very rich, very poor and disadvantaged are left.

3.  Transportation: varied means and choices inherent in systems that would be efficient and subsidizing public as well as private means, mass transit as well as individual.

4.  Services and facilities: provided beyond a “minimal” level–underground as well as over, for the aged as well as the young, for the aesthetic as well as the athletic, for the indigenee as well as the transient or the tourist, for the disadvantaged (racial, economic, etc.) school child as well as those of the affluent, etc.

5.  Amenities: the scenic, the historical, the cultural, the recreational etc. — the quality element, particularly in an area such as Seattle, where a concerted effort should be made to conserve and enhance existing elements and moreover to promote more in developments for the future.

6.  Attitudes and actions for a viable environment:

a.  To encourage and initiate demonstration projects and doings to show what can be done, to innovate in response to problems unique to the area, to freely engage in experimentation as needed in a dynamic, and growing area and to expect and admit some failures.

b.  In emphasizing community action, to really deliver services not only those of health but also of social welfare at the neighborhood and “store front” level.

c.  To provide a vital planning and development function where goals and priorities are publicly discussed, where priorities are asserted based on evaluations of the costs and gains (economic and social) and those are revealed as the basis of decisions, where policies are tested in forums involving community participation, and where public strategies consider the repercussions of private actions.

…