
The new Seattle, where everything looks the same - jseliger
http://crosscut.com/2015/04/the-new-seattle-where-everything-looks-the-same/
======
natrius
In a housing shortage, you don't have to build a nice building to make money.
If people are stretching to find a place in a neighborhood they want, you
can't charge higher rent for a nicer building.

Our priority in boomtowns has been to use our government to create exclusive
neighborhoods for the wealthy. People feign surprise when more and more people
get excluded from our cities while they fight for laws that exclude people
from every single neighborhood.

If we care about ending the disgusting practice of government-imposed income
segregation, we must make our neighborhoods inclusive, especially near jobs,
parks, and transit. In inclusive neighborhoods, we don't exclude people by
declaring the neighborhood full by law. You can always add more homes to
include more people. Cities full of inclusive neighborhoods will be affordable
to all, especially if we use our tax dollars to subsidize homes for those
whose needs the market might not meet.

Our current practice is to decorate exclusive neighborhoods with subsidized
homes and pretend we care about inclusion. It's a lie. Providing homes for
everyone in our cities near the things they care about is possible. Building
homes that people can afford to make look nice is possible. We've chosen to
enforce exclusivity instead. It is unjust.

~~~
int_19h
>> You can always add more homes to include more people.

Can you, though? Any given neighborhood has limited space to build things. At
some point, you have to start building high-rises all over to pack more people
in. This also has a limit, so beyond that you'd have to start building over
parks etc.

Of course, without government-imposed zoning laws, you will also have
residential units competing with commercial and industrial ones, too...

Oh, and who will take care of the extra infrastructure that is required for
more people?

So it would seem to me that this approach would result in extremely densely
packed neighborhoods with poor infrastructure, and undesirable placement of
(cheap) residential units next to, say, an industrial park.

It would also be pretty effective at inducing more rich flight from urban
areas into the suburbs, which is likely to hurt the cities even more (by
reducing their tax base).

I don't think this is all that simple.

~~~
natrius
> Any given neighborhood has limited space to build things.

That's fine. A neighborhood full of high rises that no one wants to pay to
knock down to build taller is naturally full. The government hasn't declared
it to be full the way we do today.

> Of course, without government-imposed zoning laws, you will also have
> residential units competing with commercial and industrial ones, too...

Zoning isn't terrible. Density restrictions are terrible. They are explicit
exclusion. They are the direct cause of our increasing economic segregation.

> Oh, and who will take care of the extra infrastructure that is required for
> more people?

Urban infrastructure is cheaper than suburban infrastructure. We're spending
more money on infrastructure today than we would if we stopped excluding
people.

> It would also be pretty effective at inducing more rich flight from urban
> areas into the suburbs

This just isn't true. Tons of wealthy people want to live in dense urban
neighborhoods. That's why they're so expensive. What we should change is
allowing people with different amounts of wealth to live in the same
neighborhood. Density restrictions make mixed-income neighborhoods illegal:
only the highest bidders get scarce homes, so families are forcibly sorted by
income into separate neighborhoods.

If rich people truly don't want to live in mixed-income neighborhoods, they
are the ones who should leave. We shouldn't force others out for their
benefit. We used to do that. Now we're doing it to even more families. We
aren't repeating the mistakes of our forefathers, we're outdoing them.

~~~
lintiness
everybody needs YOU to tell them where they can live and what they can live
in!

~~~
natrius
I am saying the exact opposite. Our governments are segregating people by law.
We should stop doing that.

------
quotemstr
I wish people would get over their fear of "manhattenization" or whatever.
Manhattan is a _good_ place. There should be more places with similar density
and infrastructure, not more artificial restrictions on construction.

~~~
Analemma_
Fear of Manhattanization is just NIMBYism and pulling up the drawbridge,
nothing more. "I've got _my_ lovely two-story single-family house in an urban
core, so buzz off." I agree that people _should_ get over it, but telling
people to "get over" being a NIMBY has never worked before and isn't about to
start now, unfortunately.

~~~
quotemstr
> telling people to "get over" being a NIMBY has never worked before

Sure it has: you just outvote the NIMBYs. One of the big problems is that
cities no longer annex their suburbs. In the Bay Area, the City of San
Francisco really should be everything from Golden Gate Park to San Jose. Once
you set up coherent governance, you can enact coherent policy.

In general, if you feel like society just isn't working like it used to work
and you can't figure out why, try to see what's actually _done_ differently
now and think about why it might have changed.

------
walrus01
Wood framed condos. Ugh. Vancouver learned its lesson the hard way with these,
and Seattle will too, in about 20 years. There's a reason the vast majority of
buildings in Vancouver are now fully concrete or steel framed.

~~~
scurvy
Worried about earthquakes? Or city-wide fire? Or termites?

~~~
walrus01
Noise through floors and ceilings. Creaks and steps and thumps. These
buildings all loosen up over time, and if you walk through one under
construction you will understand when you see the C grade plywood,
particleboard and chipboard.

~~~
cperciva
And the worst thing about Vancouver's 1990s lowrise condos: Water damage.
Unfortunately someone imported building plans from southern California which
had never been tested in a climate with six months of rain...

(But this problem at least Seattle can probably avoid, since it's entirely
possible to withstand the climate; you just need a different design.)

~~~
aomurphy
If you read the article there's a whole section on how Seattle had a similar
problem. That's why all the new condos look so similar, there are very few
materials that don't leak.

~~~
hx87
Leaks are fine--they happen to all buildings sooner or later. The key is to
let the leaked water out of the building, which synthetic stucco of the late
1990s was terrible at. Today, if you want stucco in a wood framed building in
BC you have to include an air gap between the stucco and the building itself,
and that setup has no issues.

~~~
chiph
Same with brick and stone facades. If you have a sprinkler system where water
gets directed onto the building (intentionally or not), there's a phenomenon
called "Vapor Drive" which is essentially capillary action. Without the air
gap between the facade material and the wood framing, that moisture goes in
there and rots the wood.

[http://mattrisinger.com/understanding-vapor-drive-in-
reservo...](http://mattrisinger.com/understanding-vapor-drive-in-reservoir-
claddings-stone-brick/)

------
jseliger
There is a related point about housing affordability that I discuss in more
detail in "Do millennials have a future in Seattle? Do millennials have a
future in any superstar cities" ([https://jakeseliger.com/2015/09/24/do-
millennials-have-a-fut...](https://jakeseliger.com/2015/09/24/do-millennials-
have-a-future-in-seattle-do-millennials-have-a-future-in-any-superstar-
cities/)). Which, oddly enough, started out as a Reddit comment in a
discussion about housing costs and the relationship between housing costs and
the economic strain many people feel.

------
keithpeter
UK: no use of wood frame buildings to my knowledge, all new construction of
apartment style housing seems to be concrete floor plate with steel skeleton
and concrete central utility/fire exit 'cores'.

Styles can still be very boring and samey though. You can almost see the
catalogue numbers on the photos.

~~~
arethuza
Wood frame houses can be found in the UK, although they are fairly rare and
usually pretty expensive.

As for the styles of modern homes - blame the "volume housebuilders", it's
like complaining that all Fords look the same.

~~~
nemo44x
Many of the old listed homes are in fact wood frames. My wife's parents have a
home with parts built in the 1400's! Extensions were added on over the years
(and they were able to add on their own tasteful extension) but the wood
supports and frame are obvious as they show. And they're beautiful, massive
pieces of wood that have supported the structure for hundreds of years and
will for hundreds more.

However, it would be impractical to use those techniques today.

~~~
arethuza
Of course, I'd forgotten about old houses! I guess that wooden frame style is
what "mock Tudor" is imitating.

------
saosebastiao
After reading this blog post [0], I remain completely unconvinced that
seattle's generic design problem is caused by anything _except_ zoning.

[0] [http://seattleurbanism.blogspot.com/2009/10/townhouses-
part-...](http://seattleurbanism.blogspot.com/2009/10/townhouses-
part-2-problem.html?m=1)

------
chrismealy
Portland's architecture is at a much higher level than Seattle's. It can be
done.

------
Spooky23
I wouldn't blame building codes. It's more to do with how the building
industry has changed and consolidated, and has had more regulation pushed at
it. (Workers comp, ADA)

As information and transport gets cheaper and cheaper, common building plans
and prefabrication are replacing architects and buildin crews with factory
built material.

Also, as liability and labor costs have risen, more and more machines are
used. A dozen masons a few years ago are replaced by a boom lift,
glassroc/faux finish and 4 guys.

That trickles down to other places. You cannot get the variety of bricks that
you once could, for example. You cannot build classical building elements
because the tradesmen are gone.

~~~
lukeschlather
"building codes" is an oversimplification. Some building codes are necessary.
But some, like height limits, parking requirements, and setbacks, conspire to
make it very difficult to profitably build architecturally interesting
buildings.

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ared38
Honestly I find his "well done" picture better representative of the sameness
I see in new seattle buildings. All the new upscale apartments and condos have
the same trendy contrasting blocks of colors and materials. The angles make
this one interesting but most use that pattern as a facade over a flat wall.

But there's nothing wrong with a city having an architectural style -- in a
few decades people may be flocking to see the classic seattle architecture
like we go to Miami for art deco.

~~~
trgn
Art deco was probably the last period before the triumph of utilitarian
architecture. A lot has changed since the 30s, the loss of craftmansship, but
also the "engineerifying" of the architecture profession.

That loss of finesse has been acute, and one way to address this regression,
and it's an approach that's been waxing and waning since WW2, is by looking at
the building as a sculpture in itself, as opposed to its own art form that can
accommodate other fine arts like sculpture or ornamentation.

The "well done"-picture is a case in point. The whole building is shaped to
pop from a distance, but it will look uninspiring up close. Great
architecture, like Miami's art deco, doesn't have this, it looks good at all
scales. Smaller buildings get away with simple forms, if you use high quality
natural materials that are pleasing to the touch. But generally, the larger a
building gets, the more care it requires the architect to introduce a
hierarchical order, that gradually refines as you approach.

So I don't think Seattle's style will endure, because it isn't sensual up
close, and mostly drab from a-far.

------
ryporter
I just moved from downtown Seattle over to Bellevue, and the sea of cranes
certainly got on my nerves, but the design of the buildings did not. Many of
the new building exteriors have a lot of glass, and I find it rather
attractive.

I'm far more concerned that we are overbuilding and could end up going the way
of Miami circa 2007 than I am about what we are building.

~~~
xenihn
Can you expand on 2007 Miami? I'm curious.

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PhasmaFelis
The post title is an inaccurate mutation of an article title that already
didn't describe the content.

