Thread by @holz_bau, there are so many instances we have had in and around seattle [...]

there are so many instances we have had in and around seattle to tackle our affordable housing crisis, where we could have build dense, mixed use, social housing-laden ecodistricts w/ ample open space, schools...

regional leaders have routinely punted and said:

townhomes!

greenbridge a 40 ha redev that, in the end, will have ~1000 homes, 1/4 affordable

it's almost all *townhomes*

imagine if it had been 5000 homes, w/ 6-8x as many social homes. more open space. jobs. adequate transit. and a car-free center, like this https://www.karresenbrands.com/project/am-alten-gueterbahnhof

high point. 1,600 homes on 120 acres (48,5 ha). mixed income, some open space.

but this is suburban housing in a city.

same area as schumacher quartier in berlin. 100% non-market housing. 5.000 homes. open space. jobs. schools. cafes. kindergartens...
https://www.tegelprojekt.de/en/schumacher-quartier.html

rainier vista. 900 townhomes & apts (2/3 affordable) on 80 acres (32 ha). directly adjacent to light rail.

could build an entire car-light merwede (54 acres) leaving 26 as open space. 6,000 homes! imagine 3k affordable homes here instead of 600. shops. kindergartens. grocery

it gets better.

ST2... let's look at the zoning near some light rail stations about to come online...

roosevelt.

we've got single family zoning less than 2 blocks to the station. this area was upzoned w/ MHA, but there's no planning - and little social housing planned

there's going to be a massive open space gap for this neighborhood once it's built out.

and that 17 acre reservoir? could leave half as open space, and had 1000 homes, all or most affordable. literally an 8 minute walk to the light rail station.

another missed opp.

judkins park.

this one's in the middle of a freeway, surrounded by parks.

i mean WTF are we even doing

we love our highway-adjacent transit in this city.

northgate? goes to single family zoning within a quarter mile. it's a little better than others, allowing 240' buildings near the station... but planned projects are less than half that right now.

¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

$we love our highway-adjacent transit in this city. northgate? goes to single family zoning within a quarter mile. it's a little better than others, allowing 240' buildings near the station... but planned projects are less than half that right now. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯$

we're probably going to infill a station here at 130th... between a golf course and a highway. don't even get me started on the visionless crap the planning dept. dropped on this a few weeks ago. it's virtually all single family zoning.

climate crisis? they've never heard of it

mercer island?

another station situated in the middle of the highway. to the north, it's zoned for (drumroll please): single family zoning with 8,400 sf lots!

to the south? those buildings are limited to max 6 floors.

whooo boy what a great f*cking investment.

oh hey i forgot tukwila.

at least there's a giant parking lot next to it...

but again, with the highway adjacent sh*t.

just constantly amazed at the lack of coordinated planning in this region.

ST3 is equally inspiring...

smith cove/interbay offers the best opportunity for a euro-esque dense brownfield redevelopment opportunity

alas, not likely any housing gonna be built here. but we'll spend >$400M so 5k millionaires shave a minute of their commute in an SUV

ST3 is equally inspiring...smith cove/interbay offers the best opportunity for a euro-esque dense brownfield redevelopment opportunityalas, not likely any housing gonna be built here. but we'll spend >$400M so 5k millionaires shave a minute of their commute in an SUV

this is 200 acres (80 ha). a brownfield redev in a european context? here's vienna's sonnenwendviertel: 32 ha. 5,500 homes, many of them social. massive open space. schools. kitas. shops, cafes, transit...

we don't build car-light communities like this

keeping this land as industrial? in the long run, most industrial sites are switching over to commercial.

what if instead we preserved light industrial work, combined it in mixed use projects w/ housing. use the waste heat and large roofs to heat & power homes...

that's the entire idea behind the 'productive city' - dozens of examples of what these could look like from @EuropanEurope, here: https://issuu.com/europan/docs/20200804_catalogue_e15_web_ld_pap

i proposed ecodistrict for eastern half, that was in effect just this.

gonna end up w/ big box commercial sh*t all around this instead, and then run hundreds of millions of dollars worth of light rail infrastructure through it.

it's so f*cking moronic https://www.theurbanist.org/2019/03/14/lets-build-a-dense-climate-resilient-ecodistrict-in-seattles-interbay/

Let’s Build a Dense, Climate-Resilient EcoDistrict in Seattle’s Interbay

On Tuesday, My Ballard published that the state was looking for input on a nearly 25 acre parcel of land that it owns, adjacent to the BNSF railyard in Interbay. The site is presently utilized by t…

https://www.theurbanist.org/2019/03/14/lets-build-a-dense-climate-resilient-ecodistrict-in-seattles-interbay/

so there's the literally hundred thousand plus homes we've prevented from being built just in seattle around light rail, with our zoning for climate arson...

then there are all the other missed opportunities. for affordable housing

fort lawton. 34 acres (13.8 ha). 235 homes

235 homes. and it was like a 15 year fight (that no one from SCALE showed up for)

in vienna? this site would have been 2,000 homes. 50% affordable. open space. grocery store. kindergartens. cafes.

they'd run transit to it, maybe through magnolia's non-existent urban village

munich's kirschgelaende is a small development underway at outskirts. 30 acres. 1,300 homes - 40% affordable. of various types & sizes. 5 kindergartens. cafes. primary school. a mobility hub. a sports hall. half site green/open space.

just... wtf are we even doing?

and yes, i said magnolia's *non-existent* urban village.

for racist & classist reasons - there's almost no multifamily housing in business section of magnolia. a whopping. with library, pool, schools, grocery store, and park...

this sh*t should be illegal in the 21st century.

and just massive swaths of city w/ frequent transit access, just zoned to exclude everyone but those who can afford million dollar homes.

i can't imagine why we have an affordable housing crisis in this city. or why we can't meet climate goals. honestly, it's perplexing AF.

here's what city of oslo is planning for their waterfront project norra djurgårdsstaden: 20k homes. 35k jobs. massive amount of open space. cultural activities. plus energy buildings...

sure seems better than f*cking townhomes and 65' buildings.

https://www.adept.dk/project/royal-neighbour

equally ambitious is hamburg's oberbillwerder - a car-light ecodistrict planned on s-bahn line at outskirts of town.

7.000 homes. 5k jobs. shops, cafes, restaurants. schools, kindergartens. massive open space. https://twitter.com/holz_bau/status/1360112142381248514?s=20

https://twitter.com/holz_bau/status/1360112142381248514?s=20

last year, in @UrbanistOrg, i wrote that spending so much time pushing for ADU/triplex bills was waste given how deep in hole we were on housing.

still holds up.
decades of sh*t planning and no land use/transpo coordination = climate bomb * housing crisis https://www.theurbanist.org/2020/01/29/housing-action-on-a-truly-massive-scale/

A Triplex Bill Is Fine, But We Need Housing Action on a Truly Massive Scale

We need homes. A lot of homes. Not just affordable housing, but also middle-income ones, and even luxury homes. I agree with virtually every word of Hayley Bonsteel’s excellent piece for The Urbani…

https://www.theurbanist.org/2020/01/29/housing-action-on-a-truly-massive-scale/

and yes, it's possible to build a dense, open space-laden ecodistrict next to a highway - or even between a highway and railway...

just... probably not in the US https://twitter.com/holz_bau/status/1387426942052290560?s=20

https://twitter.com/holz_bau/status/1387426942052290560?s=20

note this isn't just limited to rail - we're seeing this with buses as well. here's thread from a few months ago on Kirkland's 85th st station in *middle* of freeway v. what it might look like in germany https://twitter.com/holz_bau/status/1347246224085188608?s=20

https://twitter.com/holz_bau/status/1347246224085188608?s=20

and it should be noted that all of these european projects have a good deal of community input.

difference is their input is on improving quality of life for new and existing residents.

in US, community input is means for people to prevent or restrict changes to neighborhood

they also incorporate things that aren't even on the radar of most US planning teams:

circularity. biodiversity. mitigating noise pollution. car-free centers and green mobility. etc etc

it sucks. i feel like a fish out of water here.

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