The Stranger must be taking its Olanzapine again, publishes thoughtful article about why neighborhoods aren’t happy with development.

Wow, I found this story “It’s Ugly, Stupid” linked from urbnlivn.com and couldn’t believe it was actually written by The Stranger. Usually when The Stranger reports about neighborhoods taking exception with proposed building projects, their first response is to cry ‘handwringing NIMBYs’, but today they actually looked at some of the deeper issues - like recognizing that the neighborhood’s issues are with buildings that are boring and ugly! Of course they do get in one of their ‘The Stranger’ digs against the secret armies of Seattle’s blog and flyer-armed NIMBYs,

While Seattle does have more stringent requirements for construction than other cities, Seattle’s lack of quality control only gives NIMBYs more ammo against development.

I actually really appreciated this article because my neighbors and I have been working to reduce the scope and improve the appearance of a large retail/condo building in our neighborhood. And our concern isn’t with redevelopment (’cuz it will replace a crappy building to begin with) but it’s with all of the power that the developer holds in deciding whatever they want.

Since it appears that Tom Rasmussen wants to improve the quality of these projects via the land use process, here are some of my ideas:

* The Design Review Board (DRB) is a non-paid group of volunteers whose influence is too limited, but whose judgments are relied on too heavily. (A very bad combination, like Red Bull & Vodka & Venus Velasquez!) The DRB really only has the power to chip away at the edges of a bad project by recommending that a developer add cornices, change design colors, and other small cosmetic changes. Give the DRB the ability to bump significant incompatibility issues up to an independent city group of arbitrators. This will help force developers and neighbors to the table before things get out of control.

* Land use decisions used to be appealable to the city council, but the council dropped that ability to appeal. The city council should reclaim this power because at the very least it puts developers on notice that the public has some last-chance political options.

* It’s time to go through and update city zoning. It’s not good neighborhood planning for anyone to have high density zoning slammed against single family zoning. Build transitional medium density between the two.

* Strengthen the land use code to demand more energy efficient, pedestrian friendly, green built, and neighborhood friendly building elements. It’s time to require more quality built into these projects. I know they’ll make the projects more expensive, but they will make the projects better.

These are just some of my ideas, if you’ve got some, please let me know!