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1

Charles- Nice post. Well done. Awesome images.

Posted by Big Sven | August 21, 2007 2:39 PM
2

Regarding the third picture... no wonder nobody wants to build a bridge to replace the Viaduct... it would interfere with the flight path of the X-Wing Fighters.

Posted by JMR | August 21, 2007 3:17 PM
3

Hell, yeah!

Posted by Gitai | August 21, 2007 3:19 PM
4

Shouldn't that be George Jetson's car in photo #3 instead of an X-Wing?

Posted by COMTE | August 21, 2007 3:22 PM
5

LMAOOOOOOOOOOO! That final picture is ridiculous.

as for the post. seattle still is a regional city. Nasdaq would be mistaken for a coffee blend here. Nikkei might be mistaken for a sushi place.

Seattle can't break from its regional outlook so long as its region is the entire thing preventing it from growing to the neccesary size and density of a world city.

Posted by Bellevue Ave | August 21, 2007 3:24 PM
6

Why is there a giant grasshopper eating the Space Needle?

As for Bellevue Ave, I hope you're right. I wouldn't want to live in a post-regional Seattle.

Posted by Wendy | August 21, 2007 3:32 PM
7

i am beginning to accept seattle for what it is and what it isnt. This is the kind of city where you're almost happy to see bad things happen.

Posted by Bellevue Ave | August 21, 2007 3:35 PM
8

Rural disconnect? We're way beyond that - half the people in this city don't even recognize (or realize) that parts of town like Ballard and West Seattle are part of their own.

A hyperdrive-equipped spaceship is practically what it takes to get typical Seattle citizens to areas out of the mainstream, like Greenwood or Georgetown. It's a decidedly small-town, provincial attitude, hardly the stuff of a Cloud City.

Posted by Explorer | August 21, 2007 3:39 PM
9

The hinterlands from which Raban supposes Seattle to now be divorced from no longer resemble themselves either. My hometown (3 hours due east of Seattle) has tripled in population in the past 15 - 20 years, and is more likely to be populated by a relocated RN from California than a farmer or migrant worker.

Posted by chris | August 21, 2007 3:46 PM
10

Visual rhetoric is precisely what's at issue here, Charles. Sure, a picture can make it look "as if" a city ever exists without a thousand little subterranean connections with its lived environment. But what you're arguing sounds like a variation on Platonist reification or the cartoon of Cartesian dualism where the mind exists sui generis. It merely illustrates that we can abstract foreground from background in terms of our attention. The clouds and fog display mental limitation, not a freedom from the brute world.

Posted by MvB | August 21, 2007 3:48 PM
11

I think it's a good thing to be a regional city. The idea of a metropolitan archipelago is nice and all, but it ignores the fact that cities are places. They are the places that take the resources, physical environment, and people of a larger region and distill it into an urban culture that is the culmination of what that region has to offer. Cities can then broadcast their distilled regional culture to the global metropolitan archipelago.

A city that is disconnected from its hinterlands has nothing to distinguish itself. Similarly, a city that is entirely provincial and inward looking misses out on the global exchange of culture and ideas. A good city looks both inward and outward, and enjoys its identity as the nexus between regional and cosmopolitan culture.

(There are a few cities, such as New York, that are not regional in this way. On the other hand, arguably the hinterlands of New York are the rest of the world. In any case, Seattle is not one of these few exceptions.)

A big problem with Seattle is that we are disconnected from our hinterlands, yet we don't fully engage the rest of the world either. We are becoming more generic and losing our soul without the capacity to become a world city that stands on its own, with something to offer the rest of the world. I'd argue that the two things are linked. Before we can openly embrace the ideas and energy of the urban archipelago, we must reconnect to our unique regional character. We must learn to inhabit the provincial and cosmopolitan realms at the same time.

I think the same is true of the country as a whole. Our division between red and blue, rural and urban, is destroying our national soul and what we have to positively offer the rest of the world. We have to find a synthesis before we can move forward.

Posted by Cascadian | August 21, 2007 4:05 PM
12

hey!

thanks for using my picture...

puj*

Posted by Puja Parakh | August 21, 2007 4:13 PM
13

There are no regional cities in the United States anymore; an economy divorced from its productive capacity by the globalization of manufacturing and extractive industries has no economic connection to its geography. No economic connection means no social connection. The urban archipelago is exactly that; cities and large towns now function in almost complete isolation from regional manufacturing and resource harvesting. One of the depressing inaccuracies of the rural perspective on all this is that rural factory workers imagine urbanites owe them something because they (the factory workers) make our cars and our computers and so no. The reality is that most of the goods manufactured in the United States go to markets in developing countries, while most of the goods consumed in the United States come from a few powerhouses like mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, and Southeast Asia. Rural economies feed into the global market while urban economies feed off of the global market.

Of course, the tragedy is that none of this is sustainable in the long term. The environmental consequences of pollution by proxy in China and India will catch up with us very quickly. Likewise, the cost and waste of shipping goods and food around the globe. Sooner or later, Seattle will need to turn to our river valleys and the plains of Eastern Washington for food, clothing, and building supplies. And that will be a rough day for everybody.

Posted by Judah | August 21, 2007 4:20 PM
14

If you consider the ratio of natives (as in seattle born and bread) to non-natives currently residing in this city, I think you'll discover why we're so disconnected. Cobain and Novoselic came from Aberdeen, mere minutes away... where do you come from? I myself am an East Coast Transplant who spent the greater part of life in the mid-west. I'm so god damned disconnected and I bet you are too!

Posted by apttitle | August 21, 2007 4:35 PM
15
I'm so god damned disconnected and I bet you are too!

I was born in Oregon and I've lived in California and the United Kingdom, but I've spent 24 of my 35 years living in Seattle, on Capitol Hill or in Ballard. I've got a pretty good view of what's going on here and why, and plenty of things to compare it to.

Posted by Judah | August 21, 2007 4:45 PM
16

Love you Mudede, the marriage of the absurd philosophy, star wars and the progress of Seattle

Posted by vooodooo84 | August 21, 2007 4:59 PM
17

The original article is one that most of the Stranger staff could probably pick a fight with. It's full of bizarre assumptions and I find it fairly annoying. Does Seattle really regard the "rise of China" as a good event more than the rest of America and we are more afraid of North Korean missles than the rest of the continental US (because Seattle is closer)? Those are weird things to say.

Posted by brappy | August 21, 2007 5:06 PM
18

no you dont judah. 11 years spent not in seattle? thats not experience, thats a vacation from the pain of seattle.

Posted by Bellevue Ave | August 21, 2007 11:11 PM
19

And every year of your life so far has been a vacation from the pain of my foot in your ass, Bellevue Ave.

Posted by Judah | August 22, 2007 8:47 AM
20

Here's a website you may find useful. http://www.addicted.com is a site for friends, families, and those who suffer from various addictions.

Posted by Addiction | August 22, 2007 10:31 AM
21

This article was published on crosscut like 50 billion years ago. Mr. Raban even replied to comments.

I'm kind of surprised how little you mention crosscut on this blog. Do you guys even read it? Does it belong in the friend or foe list? David Brewster is a smart guy, and this his latest venture is doing pretty well.

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22

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24

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