
Boomtown Seattle: Why we move here – and how we’re all in it together - wallflower
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/boomtown-seattle-why-we-move-here-and-how-were-all-in-it-together/
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taurath
I moved here and I enjoy it. Its getting expensive very quickly though, and
there are almost zero houses or condos on the market, so most likely I will
never be able to buy, even on an engineers salary. All the new construction is
luxury apartments, not condos.

All after is from a 20-30-somethings perspective: there's also very few areas
within the city that are "city-like" in terms of having people around and
things to do after work. Belltown, Cap Hill and Fremont are the hangouts - if
you live far away from those its very much like living in the suburbs. South
Lake Union (Amazon City) is a GHOST town after dark - Amazon has failed pretty
hard at creating any sense of culture or livable space as the only thing to do
is get gouged by restaurants that are paying far too much in rent.

SLU has:

* No cheap food

* No entertainment

* No "hangout" spots except inside of the expensive restaurants

Even a beer garden or some food stalls around one of their courts would be a
huge improvement.

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lev99
It's a great feel good article by Evan Bush, in a publication that usually
talks about growing pains more than benefits of growth. I hope this article
makes recent transplants feel a little more welcome during the dark cloudy
winter.

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neonate
[http://archive.is/zA04x](http://archive.is/zA04x)

~~~
ssalazars
Thanks for sharing!

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maxharris
I've been in Seattle for three years now, and I'm moving out of state in a
month. Why?

first, they're doing everything wrong. (Here's an article that explains what
most towns in America get wrong: [https://granolashotgun.com/2017/11/13/mind-
the-gap-2/](https://granolashotgun.com/2017/11/13/mind-the-gap-2/))

\- South Lake Union could have been rebuilt with narrow European-style streets
([https://twitter.com/SteveDombek/status/593997707481481217](https://twitter.com/SteveDombek/status/593997707481481217)).
but instead they left all of their old regulations in place, which meant that
they ended up building it for cars instead of people.

\- all of the activated alley projects have failed. the one in Chinatown
failed because most of the street died from a museum they put in. another one
in the university district only has a single coffee shop in it

\- Tokyo offers people nice 1BR apartments for roughly $900-1000 a month,
because they are pro-development. that same apartment costs me $2k a month in
Seattle

\- _spending_ by the city of Seattle has doubled over the last few years, but
the population did not double. this means that taxes will eventually be raised
to fill the gap. I'm not my brother's keeper, so I'm moving to another low-tax
state.

\- the city just put in an income tax on high earners. one of the things that
helped me choose Washington state was the fact that there is no state income
tax currently. the city's attempt to impose one bothers me because although I
don't earn enough presently to have to pay into it, all they have to do is
tweak the brackets to get me later on in the future.

\- the city has done next to nothing to remove restrictions on the heights of
new buildings downtown. it also has made it nearly impossible to do mixed-use
arrangements inside towers.

\- a massive 9.0 or greater earthquake is an eventuality. there are a large
number of old buildings in Pioneer square that will not survive this
earthquake without being retrofitted with base isolation technology. this is
an extremely expensive undertaking, and absolutely NOTHING is happening on
that front. at the same time, the city is increasing spending on handouts for
the poor, on bailing out failed bikeshare companies (that happen to be
politically connected to the city council...), etc. they shouldn't be
providing these handouts or spending millions on bailing out their friends.
instead, they should be cutting back spending and certain regulations (again,
see [https://granolashotgun.com/2017/11/13/mind-the-
gap-2/](https://granolashotgun.com/2017/11/13/mind-the-gap-2/)) so that people
can rebuild Pioneer Square and save it from the coming catastrophe.

\- taxes on ridesharing? why?! if you want to get rid of cars, as I do,
hurting ridesharing won't get you there.

\- they should be selling off surface street lanes to streetcar startups so
that we have better ways of getting around, and not taking 25 years to do it
(Ballard won't get a train running to it for another 25 years, according to
the latest ST3 plan). spending billions on digging tunnels as they do now, on
projects that will not be completed for decades, is a waste. the Boring
Company can do in a week what Seattle can do in a year.

\- I attended a city council meeting last year. Sawant ran it like a socialist
political rally - it wasn't a place where opposing views were at all welcome.
she _lusts_ for ever more power.

~~~
kridsdale1
It feels like some of this is a few months out of date. A massive city wide
rezoning plan was just enacted that will increase heights and density in many
of the ‘urban villages’. This will concentrate people and add more power to
efforts to accelerate transit spending. ST3 is currently funded for sequential
development but could be done in parallel with more money. Income tax was
struck down.

I’m an optimist (who stands to be very well rewarded by the new train line)
and I’m hoping the rezoning and accelerated influx leads to a big income boost
that can be forced by the voters to prioritize transit.

Sure, I’m all for Musk coming in and digging us out.

~~~
taurath
I have yet to see any changes in my urban village - the upzone feels like
it’ll just bring more luxury apartments and do nothing for housing stock. Gosh
if I could afford one of these $1,000,000 townhomes though.

