Apr

10

Regulatory Reform

Filed Under Land Use, Parking, Policy | Leave a Comment

Regulatory reform goes in front of City Council tomorrow morning. A directory of some of the recent commentary on the proposal, beginning with Publicola’s Erica C. Barnett:

Just in time for tomorrow’s 9:30 am public hearing on legislation that would institute a number of regulatory reforms at the city level—including, most 72 Comments and 7 Reactions, a proposal that would lift minimum parking requirements on new residential developments within 1,300 feet of frequent transit service—two national writers linked PubliCola’s coverage of the parking issue today…

More via Seattle’s Proposal to Lift Parking Minimum Gets National Attention | PubliCola.

ML King County Labor Council Executive Secretary David Freiboth:

Seattle is beginning to emerge from the longest, deepest recession in the last 60 years. We can see signs of this across the city. Projects that were stalled during the recession, leaving empty holes and vacant lots, are again under way. Hard hats are starting to go back to work. As a result, Seattle’s growth is outpacing the rest of the region. Businesses, builders, and working families want to live and innovate here.

But there’s a long way to go before we’ve built a broadly shared prosperity. More than 30% of construction and building-trades workers are still out of a job. Some of them have been out of work for three or four years. We need to look at ways to accelerate our economic recovery and help build a more sustainable city.

Unfortunately, the pace of recovery is being slowed by outdated and obsolete regulations. These rules are making it difficult for people to build sustainable projects and are keeping workers from bringing home a paycheck…

More via Regulatory Reform Will Strengthen Seattle’s Economy | citytank.

The Capitol Hill Seattle Blog:

Inside a sprawling set of legislation designed to overhaul the laws Seattle uses to regulate growth and development is a plan that would impact Capitol Hill’s residential, business and restaurant environment like nowhere else in the city. For some, the proposal to open more of the neighborhood to mixed-use development — putting restaurants and stores mid-block in areas that are now entirely residential — is the stuff of urban planning dreams. Others are asking where we draw the line when it comes to mixing business and every day life…

More via Seattle ‘Regulatory Reform’ could push mixed-use deeper into Capitol Hill | CHS Capitol Hill Seattle.

Our own board member Chuck Wolfe:

Analyses of Seattle’s downtown rebirth seem to be in vogue of late, both from here and afar. From Jon Talton in The Seattle Times to Richard Florida, writers are holding up small mirrors to the central city-scape — like the “Claude Glass” used by landscape painters of old — to create motivating and exciting images of the evolving economy of the city I call home.

These perceptions showcase a walkable, creative-class city where transit meets the commerce of the future. However, in reality, Seattle’s recovery is uneven. Widespread rebirth in this city will not happen without policies and regulations that allow for a changing marketplace, with flexible zoning to allow for land use consistent with new patterns of urban redevelopment and transportation.

In that spirit, early last year, Mayor Mike McGinn convened a roundtable group of Seattle business, environmental and neighborhood representatives (and I should fully disclose: I am a member of the roundtable) to consider land use regulatory reform with jobs in mind. The goal? Embrace immediate, simplifying measures intended to reduce complexity and increase flexibility, in turn decreasing the costs in time and money of starting and maintaining businesses and building new, more affordable housing…

More via The Quest to Make Regulatory Reform Work in Seattle – Politics – The Atlantic Cities.

What’s your take?

Apr

3

MyUrbanist: The legal footprint of form-based codes in Washington state

Filed Under Land Use, Zoning | Leave a Comment

What is a “Form-Based Code?” Chuck Wolfe explains.

Form-Based Codes, with emphasis on built-environment form over land use elements, have been used successfully in a number of American cities, but have not been implemented on a widespread basis in the Seattle area. Professional speculation has identified a range of factors for this lack of adoption, including challenging terrain, lack of a traditional, vernacular “look and feel,” and a reluctance to limit permitted uses or compromise property rights.[1] In addition, with some exceptions, limited local familiarity with drafting, adopting, and implementing Form-Based Codes may have led to maintenance of more familiar land use regulatory practices.[2]

Some local government officials may also fear that “over-regulation” or “new forms of regulation” could stifle redevelopment or revitalization. But Form-Based Codes are built on familiar legal principles, and so long as local governments proceed with reflection and purpose in a willing marketplace, enactment of Form-Based Codes could reposition a city for compact, less automobile-dependent growth and redevelopment and revitalization of appropriate urban areas.

In addition to the implied, general police power that provides local governments the authority to regulate land use, the Growth Management Act (GMA) and the State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA) add their own, Washington-specific gloss…

…More via the legal footprint of form-based codes in Washington state.

Aug

11

The Agile City

Filed Under Land Use, Transportation | 2 Comments

We are big fans of ASLA’s The Dirt, and big fans of thinking big-picture on climate change. Instead of simply looking at new technologies that will allow us to do more of the same (use lots of energy in our daily lives driving everywhere we need to go and living and working in inefficient buildings – minus the pollution) we think the inefficient land use and transportation patterns of modern life are not only problems worth solving to save the earth, but also to improve our quality of life. As this book points out, transportation and buildings are the number one and two sources of climate-disrupting emissions. Transforming land use and transportation will make our cities not only more sustainable but more adaptable, according to Bloomberg’s architecture columnist. Read on for more.

Out with the Old: The Agile City

08/11/2011 by asladirt

The agile city would evolve out of innovative policies that “deploy regulations straightforwardly, balancing them with incentives. Rules will reward performance (energy, water, and emissions saved) rather than prescribing what lightbulbs we’ll use and what cars we’ll drive.” These regulations will also boost well-being and produce economic values that gross domestic product (GDP) fails to measure, like increased real estate values from repaired natural systems and health care costs saved from reduced rates of cancer.

In The Agile City: Building Well-being and Wealth in an Era of Climate Change, James S. Russell, architecture columnist for Bloomberg News, argues against taking a mainstream, business-as-usual-approach to addressing climate change in the U.S.  The current global warming debate focuses on harnessing “alternative energies” strategies, like hydrogen-powered cars and biofuels, clean coal, and reinvented nuclear that Russell calls speculative technologies that may not prove viable, require significant investments and have large environmental effects. He proposes a different approach, one that could have manifold benefits and achieve faster and more effective results than making massive alternative-energy investments that amount to tax gimmicks. There is just one sticking point: they would require the U.S. to move away from the “normalcy” of overconsumption.

Russell’s solution for adapting to climate change and achieving carbon neutrality is based on proven efficiency measures and some renewable energy. He targets buildings and transportation, the two largest sources of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions that respectively account for 40 percent and 28 percent of emissions. Addressing them simultaneously with denser, energy conservation-oriented and transit-centered development, Russell says, could result in more agile cities, those that are able to adapt to constant change, simultaneously reducing greenhouse gas emissions while coping with climate-change effects  …More

Aug

9

Where is the TOD?

Filed Under Brownbag, Housing, Land Use, Transit, Zoning | Leave a Comment

Great City’s Leadership for Great Neighborhoods meets tomorrow at GGLO’s Space at the Steps to discuss the future of station area planning efforts. Our friend Roger Valdez opines on the state of local Transit Oriented Development, or the lack thereof, on the Seattle Transit Blog:

Amend Seattle’s land use code to get real Transit Oriented Development

by Roger Valdez

Roosevelt Night Life (Photo by author)

This summer has been good for land use and transit in Seattle largely because of the discussion—some would say argument—over appropriate density around the Roosevelt station area. Wednesday this week is a big day for Roosevelt, the Seattle City Council’s Committee on the Built Environment (COBE) is having a hearing on the subject and later that day Leadership for Great Neighborhoods is having a brown bag lunch discussion. The discussion in both places ought to include something about amending Seattle’s toothless station area overlay designation in its land use code.

Seattle hasn’t encouraged or even allowed true Transit Oriented Development. Any visitor to Beacon Hill will attest to the bizarre sight of a light rail station sticking out of the ground like the monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Other station areas have yet to deliver on the promise of dense, walkable, housing and retail built around light rail stops. Why does Seattle lag so far behind places like British Columbia and Vancouver where there is lots of new housing around light rail?

Part of the problem is our single-family focused culture and economy. It’s easy to forget that one big private property interest in Seattle is single-family homeowners who benefit from attenuating the supply of housing. That’s not a slur, but a simple economic point. If housing is in short supply, then those who already own it benefit by keeping that supply limited. Diminished supply and increasing demand means existing homeowners can watch their property values increase …More

Mar

10

If the most fertile land in the country produces cars and chemicals, what do we eat?

Filed Under Cities, Food System, Land Use, Zoning | Leave a Comment

Out of India, where government investment can result in the conversion of agricultural land into office parks, comes a fundamental question relevant to the global smart-growth movement:

If the most fertile land in the country produces cars and chemicals, what do we eat?

via Don’t just develop land, develop future – India – DNA.

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