Who Stole Seattle's Message?
Cascade, the village
Seattle's Zoning Futures— Retaking the Lead
Chuck Wolfe, lawyer, planning professor & blogger thinks Denver may have stolen Seattle's message. Truth is, a whole lot of places in addition to Denver have by now stolen Seattle's message. And worse than that, thanks to the City of Seattle, most people no longer have any idea what Chuck is talking about.
The City of Seattle extends rhetorical commitment to the interface between urban design and zoning addressed in the attached files that Google insists on alphabetizing. Nonetheless, the files are easiest to understand if reviewed is the following order:
1. Urban Village Origins, mini-history of the message-worth-stealing.
2. Gary Lawrence: The Seattle Approach, Director's recall Urban Village Strategy rationale.
3. Governing's "Urban Village War, an approximation of how the Council rewrote the Mayor's Pan in a digestible size and so as to avoid defeat made designations conditional to neighborhood directed neighborhood planning.
4. Other Places Update, a list of places known, as of this writing, to have stolen Seattle's message, including how the contexts noted in the Zoning In Context file are being applied.
5. Citywide Design Guidelines, March 30, 2010 Nissen comment letter on the City's Update review draft. Seattle has nevermore elegantly expressed intended urban design goals: "Fitting comfortably with the existing fabric, standing the test of time, and a common language," yet the road to hell is paved with the stuff. Actual fruition depends upon details, fair application, and the growth of citizens, not economies.
6. Zoning in Context, Plain English adjunct to Team 3 presentation Sept. 24, 2009 to the Planning, Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee of Seattle's City Council. Three different teams were requested to partially test the proposed update of the lowrise multifamily code. The zones tested failed but the legislation was passed irregardless. The archived meeting video: http://seattle.gov/council/clark/2009townhomes-mcuvideos.htm may or may not be available even by special request.
7.Peter Steinbreuck's Urban Village Strategy Assessment, is 30 MB and called by another name—too big to load here—for city filing at Markets vs Management @ Navigation, left.
For the historians among you: Sacramento, not Seattle, was first to borrow the phrase "urban village" from Herb Gans' The Urban Villagers, 1962/1982 (see http://books.google.com/ ). Seattle's 1994 contribution was to adopt it as a strategy for sustainablity. Here is how Sim Van der Ryn in his 1986 Sustainable Communities, a New Design Synthesis for Cities, Suburbs, and Towns G explained Governor Jerry Brown's urban village plan for Sacramento:
"Conservation meant more than simply saving a few worthy buildings.... to fit meant that buildings contributed to a coherent whole rather than standing autonomously. It meant that they must maintain the scale and intensity of the place rather than constantly redefine the neighborhood."