Creating Seattle’s Greatest Urban Village
Seattle’s single family neighborhoods are not growing. Nor can they. Knowing this fact, twenty five years ago Seattle created urban villages. These pockets of density are responsible of 75% of Seattle’s housing growth since their creation. If you’ve seen a new structure going up that houses more than before, chances are it’s within an urban village boundary. Clustering density helped the county inject transit to accommodate the new housing growth.
When you hear the NIMBYs at the Seattle Times reference “growth capacity”, nearly all of that capacity lives inside urban villages. A bundle of it in our most dense parts like South Lake Union and Downtown come at a massive cost premium to be constructed. Any 400 foot tower proposal that houses 300 to 500 units will require long schedules of approval, permitting, and massive costs upwards of $500 million dollars. In addition, much of that “capacity” needs to come with an asterisk as these dense urban zones do not require housing to be built. The zoning is complex, and allows for all housing, all commercial, or a combination of the two to be constructed. So do we have the capacity? Maybe. But it sure is expensive to build, and may never be built. In addition, most developers are not constructing anything family sized in these high rises. Your larger units are designed around roommates or a lifestyle of post-kid or no-kid accommodations.
Upzone after upzone, urban villages have taken the brunt of housing growth. When they were established, Seattle’s population was around 550,000. We’ve added 200,000 people since then! While urban villages have justified transit options, transit planning, and targeted city assets, we’ve grown to the capacity that justifies expanding these boundaries. Should we expand them to another 5 minute walk shed? No. They shouldn’t be bound. Urban villages shouldn’t be divided or hard-lined. The entire city, from Rainier to N 145th Street should be one giant urban village. Our city’s ADU legislation is a smart one, that finally addresses growth in single family areas (growth that has not occurred in 50 years, despite our 200,000 new neighbors). But that growth is modest at best. We need to add density and share the rest of our acreage. If urban villages, while taking up 18% of developable land, can handle this massive growth, imagine what an entire city as an urban village could handle? Paris is half the size of Seattle, and can entirely fit north of the Lake Union cut. Their urban population is 2.3 million, three times Seattle’s population.
The urban village model is proven successful. But it’s failure is in it’s limited boundaries. Let them grow from The Sound to Lake Washington. From White Center to Bitter Lake. We will still have our neighborhood identities, just like any major city does. But the difference is we will house more people. Just like the foresight in the 1990s, it’s easy to forecast the growth of Seattle’s urban population as our industries flourish, companies locate & expand here, and climate change causes a nation’s migration northward. Let’s build the city of 2050, not 1950. Urbanize it all, remove the boundaries and let’s make the entire city one urban village.
