21 pages of changes Seattle needs to make to its zoning code. Lots of photos of ‘zoning gone wrong’.
Last month Seattle Metropolitan published and article talking about development in Wedgwood and Phinney Ridge. In it DPD director Diane Sugimura was quoted as saying, “We hear a lot of concern about what is happening with neighborhood character.” and “Change is hard to accept.”
In the article this comment was actually directed at neighborhood activists like myself, but in reality, Sugimura is the one most resistant to change. And what she’s resistant to changing are the broken elements of our zoning code which permit really bad infill development. (And this goes beyond just townhomes and condos, our land use code is being abused to allow bad single-family development too).
So…what does this change that the city is avoiding look like? Well..the good news is that a group called ‘Livable Seattle’ has done this work for us by publishing a 21-page commentary on the Multifamily Update draft that Mayor Nickels is using the Department of Planning and Development to push forward. (quick note: this was first reported on the Seattle Community Council Federation’s blog)
Why this update is bad for Seattle is because it expands (and doesn’t fix) the scope of our current zoning problems while also significantly removing neighborhoods’ voices from the discussion table. And removing these neighborhoods from the discussion takes out an important element of the process which has had some success at preventing many more of the kinds of problems detailed in Livable Seattle’s report.
Anyway…getting back to change, maybe the change that Sugimura should start making starts with accepting what the City Auditor wrote last year and was reported by the Seattle PI as neighborhood neglect.
“The City made a commitment to the neighborhoods when it adopted the Comprehensive Plan – that in exchange for accepting growth and density, the neighborhoods would be engaged to participate in designing mitigating measures to make their communities more livable. This kind of engagement requires an ongoing City commitment to provide the resources to draw all interested community members into the process.”
Visit Livable Seattle and grab a copy (or you can click here and grab it).
Here are just a few visual examples and comments from the Livable Seattle’s report where broken zoning codes are causing problems:
There used to be yards, and kids, and trees. Then the code writers decided that townhomes would make affordable “starter homes” for young families, and now yards, kids, and trees are gone.
Where’s the back door? Instead of using alley access to put the parking in the back, the developer used stock plans, tried and true, and fenced off the unpaved alley. No gates. Developers are allowed to reduce the rear setback to almost nothing when facing the alley. Maybe the City can plant trees or make a playground in this now useless city-owned alley for some real open space.
7 comments
An excellent argument for better zoning–and for citizen input in the process. It’s also a good argument for computer modeling before building takes place so you can test for unintended consequences like you’ve shown us so bitterly well here.
No doubt the results have led to a lot of unhappiness and they portend for poor run-down communities in the future.
We have enough zoning to last to 2030. What we need is citizen involvement in the ongoing urban villages planning process - and that means holding the Mayor’s feet to the fire so promises made in 1982 comprehensive planning are kept. Great write-up, Greg!
HI Greg - I call these the townhouse farms… pretty bad design and it wouldn’t have taken much more thought to really design something that would have been better in the long run. Sad:(
Townhouse farms. I like that. Another one that Livable Seattle’s response used was having all the character of buildings in a coal mining town.
Most of the stuff in these images is driven by the current multi-family zoning code. The proposed code changes are intended to address these problems. In particular, the increase in allowable curb cuts is meant to reduce the need for internal alleys like those you see here. The FAR system replaces the width/depth/lot coverage restrictions which virtually mandate that buildings like these awful townhouses get built that way.
The current code is badly broken, and it’s wrecking Seattle’s lower-density multi-family neighborhoods. This re-write is intended to fix that problem.
Nor was this a “stealth” or surprise process. It’s been in the works for three years, with many opportunities for public comment and involvement.
[...] issued an “alert” that was picked by several neighborhood blogs, see here, here, and here. And so I spent a little quality time with SCFF’s screed, as well as with the City’s [...]
[...] from neighborhood groups about the multi-family zoning updates in progress, I generally tend to get one or two responses saying, “Whoa, this process has been 2-3 years in the planning, how can it be a surprise to [...]
Leave a Comment