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Jun

3

Open Letter to Seattle City Council

Filed Under Food System, Zoning, walking | 2 Comments

Dear Seattle City Councilmembers,

Great City firmly believes that active, pedestrian-friendly streets are essential to a safe and vital city. To that end, we are excited about the opportunities mobile food vending can bring to Seattle.

We see a multitude of benefits offered by mobile food vending, including:

Enhanced street life: Mobile food vending offers opportunities for people to use streets and sidewalks as public space, not merely as transportation corridors. Activity is created by the draw of economical and nutritious food and the potential for human exchange and interaction. In addition, mobile street vending has the possibility to extend the “normal” hours and season of street use, thereby increasing the sense of safety and comfort of all street users.

Economic opportunities: The economic opportunities provided by mobile food vending are two-fold – not only do they offer a relatively inexpensive entrée to business, particularly for immigrants, but the foot traffic they can bring to a street can increase the economic vitality of the areas and bring opportunity and value to all levels to commerce.

We support the proposed modifications to the existing ordinance which would diversify the types of food that can be sold, expand the permissible locations for food vending, facilitate a streamlined street use permitting process, improve public noticing requirements, and eliminate the 200’ park setback. Aside from theses administrative aspects/issues, we encourage adequate consideration to the logistical issues that will affect the day-to-day operation and functionality of the carts, especially where they are to be placed in more constricted public rights-of-way.

We strongly encourage your support of the proposed ordinance allowing mobile food vending in Seattle, and we look forward to seeing our streets grow more activated and dynamic.

Sincerely,

Joshua Curtis

Executive Director, Great City

Oct

7

Great City’s Position on Council’s Backyard Cottage Legislation

Filed Under Great City, Housing, Neighborhoods, Zoning | Leave a Comment

Cottage Housing in South Seattle

The Seattle City Council’s Planning, Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee is meeting at 2:00 pm in Council Chambers at City hall this Thursday to discuss their proposed backyard cottage legislation. Members of the public are invited to attend and submit comments.

Great City has taken a position on the issue. We generally support the effort but would like to see a few improvements to the proposed legislation. Our letter summarizing our position on the proposed legislation to Council member Sally Clark who chairs the Planning, Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee after the jump.

Read more

Sep

18

aLIVe: a Low Impact Vehicle experience

Filed Under Parking, Public Art, Transportation, Zoning | Leave a Comment

PARK(ing) Day 09.18.09

SAM Downtown
Hosted by Great City
Organized by Cheryl dos Remédios

Thanks to 4Culture, Cascade Bicycle, greenmuseum.org, Anne McDuffie, Seattle Art Museum, Seattle Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs, Seattle Parks & Recreation, Seattle Summer Streets, Perla Sitcov, SvR Design, Talking Box Media and all of our wonderful volunteers!

ABOUT aLIVe

A Low Impact Vehicle experience (aLIVe) rethinks our transportation system by focusing on the human body. Right now, we design our street grid around 40 ton trucks, but what if we designed around our bodies instead? A bicycle is a low impact vehicle. It’s designed around the human body and doesn’t take much space. The organizers of aLIVe are inviting artists, inventors, designers and community members to create everything from prototypes to poetry.

Artist Peter Reiquam designed and built the Walk and Roll. Inspired by a picture he remembers seeing of a modern dance troupe performing with large diameter bicycle wheels as part of their costumes, he tried to imagine how the devices might be used and how he could interpret this stage prop to create a low impact vehicle that would conserve energy and be fun to ride. The prototype he is displaying is entitled Walk and Roll. . . . Two large wheels, five and a half feet in diameter are linked by an axle. The rider stands between the wheels, the axle attached to a hoop that encircles the rider. When walking, the user pushes the vehicle around with one wheel on the rider’s left side and the other on the right. The rider can then bend his/her legs, sit in a sling-seat suspended from the central ring, pick up his/her feet and begin to roll. . . .

Artist Vaughn Bell’s Vehicles for Slowness is not an object but a series of instructions and actions. Ask for a copy of Vaughn’s instruction booklet at the aLIVe table.

The DIY LIV Table allows you to make your own LIV model! Imagine new types of vehicles and new ways to use our roadways.

JOIN US

Be a part of aLIVe by posting your ideas and comments. Visit my.greatcity.org and choose the aLIVe group. By joining the group, you can also receive updates about when and where aLIVe is happening next.

BACKGROUND

The multi-phase Low-Impact Vehicle experience (aLIVe) seeks to address the scale of our transportation system. Our built environment is increasingly defined by and designed around high-impact vehicles such as cars, trucks, semis, and even motorcycles. As the scale of our built environment has increased, so has its impact on our economic, environmental and cultural health. Vehicles must be designed to withstand high-speed collisions, which significantly increases their cost and the resources required to manufacture, operate and store them. They rely on fossil fuels, they pollute, and they require extensive transportation infrastructure and economic subsidies to be effective.

aLIVe is looking for new ways to reduce the impact of transportation on air and water quality, in terms of vehicular emissions and land use. Our hope is that by creating low-impact alternatives to existing modes of transportation, we can decrease our use of fossil fuels, reduce vehicular emissions, and prevent unchecked growth of the transportation network. In Seattle, for example, 40% of the city’s total land mass is used to move and store private vehicles on roadways and in parking lots, garages and alleys. Of that, 26% of Seattle’s land is in the public’s “right-of-way,” which is, with the exception of transit and freight, primarily given over to single occupancy vehicles. These paved surfaces contribute to climate change in several ways: they radiate heat; they eliminate portions of the tree canopy; and they increase storm water runoff, which is the largest source of pollutants flowing into Puget Sound, annually flushing 22,580 tons of oil and pollutants into its waters. A greater diversity of transportation options would allow us to re-examine land use both locally and nationally, which is key to improving air, climate and water quality.

How do we define a low-impact vehicle (LIV)? The simplest example of a LIV is a bicycle. Bicycles are designed to be easily propelled by the rider. They offer a low-cost alternative to cars, and they require fewer resources to manufacture, operate and store. They contribute minimally to pollution. For safety, a cyclist relies on specially designed protective gear, which also requires fewer resources to manufacture and purchase, and offers greater flexibility than features built into the vehicle itself. Bike-only or bike-friendly routes are typically also pedestrian-friendly, and do not adversely affect the air quality, tree canopy, or sensitive habitat areas.

In general, a LIV:

  • is designed around the human bodyhas minimal impact in case of collision.
  • has a standard operating speed of 20 mph or less.
  • has a small carbon footprint to manufacture and operate.
  • has a small land-use footprint—it does not take up much space to drive or store.
  • promotes the use of mass transit by providing an effective way to complete trips (In Seattle, for example, Sound Transit light rail stations are being placed 2½ miles apart on a north/south grid—the perfect setup for a commuter solution that involves LIVs.)

What do we mean when we talk about designing LIVs around the human body? Research shows that humans are designed to travel at a top sprinting speed of 20 miles per hour. After that, the risk of fatality increases exponentially, which is why designing cars, trucks, semis and motorcycles to be on the road together consumes so many resources. Designing vehicles to run at lower speeds and creating specialized gear for user protection allows LIVs to have smaller footprints and to be lighter and easier to propel. A LIV could even be collapsible. Ultimately, aLIVe proposes we repurpose portions of the existing street grid for LIVs so they can be used safely. This will also reduce the amount of pavement needed, allowing us to reduce carbon emissions, reclaim space for the tree canopy, and preserve watersheds.
LIVs may encourage the use of alternative energies for propulsion and offer more human-powered options, for significant environmental and public health benefits. LIVs may also dovetail with the goals of green business development. aLIVe aims to foster the design of production systems that can be replicated across regions to stimulate the economy through locally sourced materials and the creation of local green jobs.

Right now, a bike is the only LIV that is permitted on our roadways. Not everyone can ride a bicycle, and most people can’t use a bike as their only form of transportation. We need more LIV options to make low-impact mobility available to all.

aLIVe focuses on new thinking about LIVs—what is possible when we design around the human body? We’re asking artists, inventors and designers to create their vision of LIVable vehicles and LIVable communities that will enthrall, amaze, amuse and inspire.

As much as our transportation system is a physical reality, it’s also a metaphor for our way of life. As a culture, we’ve internalized the myth of freedom on our freeways and failed to recognize the economic burden and environmental damage incurred. We fail to see the inherent paradox of a “faster, safer” vehicle. Worse, subsidizing our vast transportation networks shifts resources away from the things most central to preserving our culture and way of life, such as education, health care and the arts.

To paraphrase the essayist Rebecca Solnit, as we risk losing our natural world to pavement, we also risk losing the world of our imagination. In Greek, “metaphor” means to travel, and as humans, we need to travel outside our immediate experience and out into the natural world to free our imaginations. If we only experience manmade environments, we begin to lose touch with our cultural language.

aLIVe aims to repurpose existing resources and redefine the basic unit by which we design our communities. aLIVe is a chance to begin establishing a vision for systemic change. Imagine LIVs driving down LIVable streets, where the right-of-way extends to children playing beneath a LIVing infrastructure of shade trees. With LIV’s the opportunities for LIVable communities truly come aLIVe.

Sep

9

I ♥ Copenhagen

Filed Under Cities, Copenhagen, Innovation, Sustainability, Transit, Transportation, Zoning | 1 Comment

I-Sustain Report on Transportation in Copenhagen

Continuing along with our recent theme of Copenhagen sustainability envy, we want to give a shout out to our friends at International Sustainable Solutions (www.i-sustain.com), a local non-profit that strives educate urban professionals and decision makers about the best sustainability practices happening around the globe.

I-Sustain has loaned some reports documenting some best practices from their recent sustainability tours that took place in, you guessed it, Copenhagen! We’ll be posting on our blog over the next few weeks.

The first one focuses on transpiration. You can download it here:
Solutions at a Glance: Can Reliable Efficient Transit Limit the Numbers of Second Cars? (PDF, 353K)

Thank you I-Sustain for lending us your report and hooray for Copenhagen!

Jul

20

A 12th Ave Streetcar Gains Some Ground

Filed Under Uncategorized, Zoning | 7 Comments

Its been a few months now since I wrote a couple of posts about placing the new streetcar line from the ID to

Loop Map

Loop Map

Capitol Hill on 12th Ave instead of up on Broadway. Well, I am happy to report that the movement has only taken off since then:

  • A number of city council members have met with The 12th Ave Streetcar Group to walk and talk about the 12th Ave alignment. Richard Conlin said their arguments were “persuasive” and promised to make sure that the City Council was involved in choosing a route.
  • SDOT has also taken notice of 12th and has actually started using the 12th/Broadway Loop images in their presentations!
  • Lest we forget that 12th Ave is a critical cycling route, the International Bicycle Fund will be studying the route and hopefully giving us some great design ideas on how to make sure that cyclists and streetcar goers both have a happy commute.
  • The 12th Ave Streetcar Group has also joined the Seattle Streetcar Alliance and has been engaging various other neighborhood organizations to get more people on board. The group will be presenting to the 37th District Democrats in the very near future.

If you are interested in getting involved 12th Ave business owner Tri Nguyen has started a facebook group which now boasts over 100 members.

Also, if you are interested in learning more it looks like a number of neighborhood groups on Capitol Hill will be sponsoring a public form to explore the various alternatives. Dates are tentative but it looks like it will be in September.  So stay tuned!

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