Northwest Environment Watch, a Seattle-based environmental group, has some smart things to say about last week’s “Mossback” column in the Seattle Weekly.
The column, titled “The Manhattan Project,” charged that pro-density “Manhattanizers” like Mayor Greg Nickels aim to turn Seattle into New York City, by “promoting high-rise development that will clutter the skyline, block the sun, and benefit mostly the well-to-do.” Never mind that Berger’s claims are histrionic (the changes Nickels is pushing would raise height limits by 160 feet downtown, not throughout the city): The urban ideal he cites - Copenhagen, Denmark - is nearly three times as dense as Seattle, even without downtown highrises.
NWEW’s Clark Williams-Derry writes: “[T]he European-style low-rise density that Mr. Berger supports would mean changes every bit as momentous, and far more widespread throughout the city, than a strategy of concentrating growth in the middle of downtown.” Without higher density downtown, Williams-Derry argues, Seattle will sprawl at the edges, “locking residents into an auto-dependent lifestyle” and displacing rural farmland with suburbs. The real model for smart civic planning? Vancouver, B.C., whose rural hinterlands have stayed mostly intact even as its population has grown substantially.