seattlites -- no other city is competing with you. you are the only, lonely player in this "we wanna be a metropol" pissing contest, and it makes me sad for you. you're a better city than that, so get over yourselves.

Especially when you consider what is *behind* the said gate in SFO is much nicer than what is behind the gate in SEA.

I could namedrop portland, but that would be obvious trolling :-)

but it's not just the gate statement i'm referring to when i mention needless civic competitiveness and "world city" insecurity. or maybe i've just read too many seattle condo brochures.

One could argue that we compare ourselves to those we aspire to become. If we dont see what our neighbors are doing, we risk reinventing the wheel.

part of the problem is that seattle doesnt have any real desire to become like these other cities we aspire to because we have people that refuse any density, public transportation, etc etc. seattle can't aspire to these places with population spread out as much as it is, and with the population so small.

also we need to encourage more minorities to move here.

Surely these NIMBY folk exist in any growing city. Do you think everybody was hunky dory when they put in the subway system in new york? Look at the big dig? Tons of controversy but in 50 or even 25 years from now people will forget all that and just say "damn, Boston is nice".

In 15 years, when all of the "real houses" on the hill are gone, will people living there remember all the comments in slogs dissing how the hill sold out to "corporate America"?

In other words, is whining just a part of adolescence?

- Streetcar.
- Lightrail.
- Belltown & SLU.
- the new tacoma narrows bridge

In other news:

The big dig was conceived (according to wikipedia) in the 1970's. The first EIS was in 1983 and construction started in 1991 and finished in 2005, almost 30 years after it was conceived.

Discussions around BART began in 1946. the BART district (aka sound transit) was approved in 1957 and voters approved on their plan in 1962. Construction began in 1964 and after 8 years and a "financial crisis" later, bart opens in 1972, almost 30 years later. (http://www.bart.gov/about/history/history_1.asp)

What is my point? Public works projects take a long time and all have whining. Whining is a byproduct of the fact that government has to be accountable to all it's citizens. Good thing? Yeah. Frustrating? Very much so.

Voters in California voted on 75 miles of BART and the opening date had completed 12 miles. That was 10 years between voter approval of the plan and opening of which 8 years was for construction.

looks like Chinatown got a monorail station like ten years ahead of schedule.

But the location sucks. The fact that its construction didn't affect traffic at all pretty much confirms that. Who is going to see it? All those people who turn down 5th to then turn at un-lighted King to go get their phở fix? Or those people who say "yeah, I'm going to go down King to turn onto 5th instead of just going straight down 6th to Dearborn"?

viaduct
monorail
520

Having said that, at least people in the Boston area acknowledged that there was a serious traffic problem and decided to do something, even though it meant pissing off a few NIMBYs along the way. Never happen in Seattle, where every freaking person in the city has to agree on something before it's actually done.

What is it about this region that has so much NIMBYism?

the same thing is happening in montana, where rich Californians are retiring there and spiking up the cost of living. essentially these newcomers are destroying the way of life and of many people in montana but at the same time creating an influx of money that is being lost in industries such as mining and farming. there is always a trade off here. the funniest part about this influx of people to montana is the desire of many 2nd and 3rd plus generation families to montana wanting to enact laws that prevent freedom of people to move there (with land and lot issues, new development taxes, etc etc) despite that being the motivation of their ancestors years ago.