The Urban Village Reality
Seattle prides itself on racial and economic equality, but our city has a dirty past and a harsh present. Crosscut recently outlined the harsh reality for Southeast Seattle as old homes and storefronts get taken down and new townhomes and mixed use buildings go up. The real estate growth and rental prices are skyrocketing, pushing the community out. Part of this is because Seattle didn’t effectively prepare for a 20% population growth, the other part is because we targeted vulnerable areas for upzones.
The Past
In the 1920s a new zoning typology emerged in Seattle and other cities around the country. Single Family Zoning. This dedicated one house on a 5,000 square foot lot. Your white picket fenced, grassy yard Seattle neighborhoods were born. Prior to this change the city was zoned much more like Paris, where you could build to lot lines, build multiple stories, and efficiently utilize our limited space. This zone has a harsh racial history. The zone was a veiled effort to preserve the concept of redlining which segregated the city by race. Seattle had redlined Southeast Seattle to be the areas for Asian and African American populations until the late 1930s. Combined with the invention of Single Family zoning, this had a long standing impact as Southeast Seattle remained the concentration of our city’s minority populations for decades to come.
The Present
Our current city has what are known as Urban Villages, areas where density was targeted in the 1990s to accommodate housing and business growth. Unfortunately, we picked on Southeast Seattle.
The 17 square miles of our diverse neighborhoods took on 3.5 square miles of upzone, a whopping 20% of their land. The rest of Seattle’s neighborhoods, areas typically more privileged and white, also took on 3.5 square miles of upzone. Only 6% of their 55 square miles combined. Areas like West Seattle only upzoned 1 square mile, despite being nearly the same size as Southeast Seattle. North Seattle absorbed 2 square miles of upzone despite being double the size of Southeast Seattle. Queen Anne took a measly 0.05 square miles to upzone; Magnolia took on 0. As builders and buyers looked for new dense and available housing, you were as likely to find it in Southeast Seattle as you were everywhere else.
We currently look at our city’s planning efforts with a racial lens. If we had done this decades ago we would have upzoned proportionately. If Southeast Seattle were to take on 20% of upzoned land, so should the rest of Seattle. Rather than 3.5 square miles, the rest of Seattle would have absorbed 11 square miles of neighborhood upzone. In total, this would have given Seattle 25 square miles to handle future housing growth rather than the 17 we were served. With that much additional area for dense housing, would the 2010s have caused so much housing pressure? Probably not. Rather than having adequate housing supply, we are now constrained and this pressure leads to displacement and homelessness.
The Future
Seattle needs to abandon this imaginary bound strategy. Housing growth should occur equitably, where amenities are available.
We have built in 10 minute walk sheds to frequent transit, an attribute we designed for urban villages. They now cover the whole city. Only Magnolia misses the mark, but we can redesign that void too. Bottom line is, our whole city has become an urban village by amenities standards. We just need the upzones.
Seattle needs to provide equity in a way that doesn’t target our vulnerable areas. We need to upzone Magnolia, Queen Anne, North Capitol Hill, Wedgewood, Phinney Ridge, Greenwood, Laurelhurst, Broadmor, and every other neighborhood that has resisted change and profited on status quo.
