seattle townhomes

We have a widespread perception in Seattle that the land use code regarding multifamily design is broken, as evidenced by the rapid proliferation of the same townhouse design all over town like a cancer (probably more like measles--not fatal, but might leave some scarring).  

I just got back from a 'charette' (a design brainstorming session) with about 40 architects, talking about fixes for the code to allow greater flexibility, and therefore diversity in new developments.  Sadly, I have to report that there are few new ideas out there, mostly deviations that game the existing land use code, or throw backs to traditional forms.  Not that that is bad, I wish we could build up row houses, courtyard housing, etc., but is that going to be palatable to Seattle neighborhoods? Probably not in the short term, although row houses in some shape or form were the subtext of just about every scheme presented.    

The only thing that is going to radically change the code, is the reduction in the importance of the automobile.  Right now, parking, access, and garages dictate the design, and if the solution to larger problems in the city is mass trans and higher density, the car is going to need to be stricken from the equation.  

With gas topping $140 a barrel, and gas at 4.50 a gallon  (this will probably seem like a sweet deal in a month), we may be on the verge of a massive shift in thinking in the public realm about planning for the future.  But I remain cynical enough people will be willing to make the sacrifice necessary to evolve the city on a large scale.  The breaking point is still some years away. 

In the meantime, we should just agitate for a row house plausible by code, because it seems to be on everyone's brains, as a transitional form to a more dense urban environment.   

  

posting

being new to blogging, I didn't realize I was limiting comments on the blog to registered users.  I switched it up to allow anyone to respond, so comment away!! 

things I've tried to convince my wife of recently:

Michael J. Fox was a Navy SEAL before his breakout role as Alex Keating on TV's Family Ties.
The 'J' stands for Jackal.
His specialty was wet works, y'know, real black bag covert ops stuff. His military record is still highly classified, but I heard all sorts of innuendo when I dated Justine Bateman back in the 80s. He'd disappear off the set for two days and the next thing you know, Yuri Andropov drops dead from a heart attack or whatever.

community is

We just watched a little movie called Be Kind, Rewind: a story about a old school corner video store in a beat down Jersey town, on the brink of demolition when all the tapes get erased and they reshoot the movies with a cam corder and home made props and special effects. The real plot is about the neighborhood, about living together in the city, with your neighbors and freaks, quirks and favorite old spots--the lore of the block becoming the blood that runs through your veins. It is a very earnest, idealist movie, and damn near made me cry.

It was so powerful for me personally not because we live in a tightly knit neighborhood now or have any particular nostalgia for a place in misty hindsight, but because it was made by people who clearly believe in the power of film to bring people together. That their art, their craft, their work had a greater benefit, that it wove the people together into a common experience, and that was their real purpose.

This is especially poignant for me because I have been working to rebuild a public plaza in a nearby park for two and half years. Many times I thought that there is no way this is going to happen. The inertia of doing nothing, the resistance from the powers that be, the endurance required to overcome the bureaucratic obstacles--it has seemed like a bridge too far. But people in the community have been driving and driving, fund raising, hounding various public officials, and now I really feel like we're going to get it built this summer. If I'd known the heartache and pressure and persistence and madness required to do this kind of work, I'd probably never have volunteered.
And we have a long way to go yet. But something tells me when we finish, I'll be able to feel a pride that will never fade, and that we'll have given something to the citizens and the city that, while very small, is worth it all and more.

wiped out

I have been too wiped out from each successive wave of project induced madness, one after another, to do much more than sleep.

I don't have the desire to read, so it might be a couple a weeks before I crack the next book.

the radio landscape

it is Saturday night and we just got back from Iron Man, the movie (exactly what you'd expect and worth the price), and we're listening to the Swing Years on KUOW and I am just feeling warm and fuzzy about having a couple solid radio stations in town (or it might also be the Johnny Walker Red).

I think it is shocking that too many cities have nothing like KEXP. It is tragic. I can only hope KEXP doesn't ever lose the dj's voice and personality (Mrs. 8 is partial to Quilty 3000, me--leon berman, the 'proctologist of rock and roll').

Funny thing, the homogeneity in radio has lead to the explosion of independent programming over I-Tunes (Iranian ambient, anyone?), and that has lead to the weakening of really cool radio like KEXP. I'm a little ashamed to say, when the pledge drive is on (like last week), we flip the office stereo to Boot Licker over the web.

the quiet american, graham greene

next up on the world book tour: The Quiet American, by Graham Greene

Graham Greene's descendants should thank George Bush for the recent royalties associated with this 1955 novel of intrigue and betrayal in Vietnam during the end of the French era, because the he has been bumbling around the world stage like Alden Pyle. You could look at this book as a prescient critique of American foreign policy aspirations, but I'd say that is overselling it by quite a bit.

Alden Pyle, the quiet American in the title, is a naive do-gooder ready to solve the vietnamese problems with equal doses of rhetoric and plastique. His only experience is gleaned from one or two books on the region (two more than Bush used in researching Iraq). The problem is than Alden Pyle is worse than a caricature: he is breathtakingly earnest, forthright, and stupid. No human being is as deaf and dumb as this guy and that undercuts him as somehow symbolic of the US. I mean, he falls in love with some other guy's mistress in the first ten minutes he's known both of them then the next day asks him permission to steal her away. What? Really? No.

I like the book much better emptied of all the applied symbolism. A love triangle, a broken down man, and a new bull in the ring. But the world weary tone has become a cliche--a cynical reporter? check? Personal vice and broken relationships? check. An exotic locale? check. A crooked cop with a weakness for protagonist? check. It is one of those books, where you'd like to travel back in time, so you could spread the book out against the cultural landscape, and understand it with a little more perspective. But it reads like a movie, and has been twice--in 1958, and 2004. What is vietnamese for Casablanca?

If we're going to go the route that Pyle is the US, then Fowler is old Europe and Phuong is everybody caught in the crossfire of both region's brands of colonialism. I think it is only fair to criticize the author for the opaque rendering of Phuong: she barely has feelings, emotions, thoughts. She is a slave, just she might get to choose a master. If anything, the book equally highlights the decadent and dehumanizing attitudes of old world powers that created some the messes we are still trying to clean up today. Like Iraq's ersatz creation as a British Protectorate post WWI.

If we're going to blame Pyle for Vietnam, we should be able to blame Fowler for Iraq.