Comments on The Puget Sound Area

It's actually surprisingly easy to get to Issaquah from downtown- 554 or the even better 218. And then when you get there we have a free bus around town.

But I get what you mean- better transit would foster regional thinking.

We aren't a region.

If you look at how the "region" grew, Seattle was the big city and the surrounding areas were not. But then we basically shot ourselves in the foot and cut off growth in-city (why there are all these single-family zoned locations) and put a cap on downtown building growth and UW/SU/UPS growth, and forced all the growth outside the city, mostly towards the Eastside.

This was accelerated by 520 and I-90 and the Microsoft/etc growth, but not as much as you'd think.

So, unlike say the Vancouver BC region (which preexisted pretty much the way it is now, just with less density overall), we created the patchwork ourselves.

Funny, isn't it.

Oh, and Fnarf, when you disagree with me on this, you're not just wrong, you're totally wrong. Had to say it ahead of time.

Agreed. I think this is partly why Prop 1 failed. People in Seattle did not see any value in rail to Tacoma and people in Northgate could care less about rail to Bellevue. The thought that one might move at some point, or that we should be concerned about our success as a region never seemed to cross many peoples mind.

Yes, suburbanites do like to think people in the whole region are the same.

You don't say you're from Sunnyvale or San Carlos or Richmond, because those localities have absolutely no sense of place. The "downtown centers" of these places are almost uniformly fake and mass manufactured. When I lived in San Carlos, the main reason I didn't tell people I lived in San Carlos was that nobody had any clue where it was.

Nowadays, I say I'm from Queen Anne because I'm proud of my neighborhood. It's a real place.

And did you seriously put up the Bay Area's transit system as a model to be emulated? Give me a break.

elenchos @4 - spot on. To wit: nobody living in San Francisco describes themselves as living in "the bay area".

Those suburban people should just stop being so provincial and pay for Seattle light rail. All aboard!!

@ 2 - SPU, not UPS.

/pedant

march arm in arm toward achieving a common goal on which we can all agree: kicking the spandex-clad asses of those bike-worshiping, bastards down in God forsaken Portland.

Word.

Paranoid much?

You're not wrong, just irrelevant.

We ARE a region, of course, but we're too busy sneering at our neighbors to notice. And, dare I say it, Capitol Hillians are the worst of all, oozing with contempt for Montlake and Madison Valley, let alone Issaquah and Marysville. Elizabeth is correct; we do need to think regionally. It's easy for Will to ignore Puyallup, because he never leaves the comfort of his own asshole; but these places do exist, and they are what makes our economy go. And we WILL fill in around them, whether anyone likes it or not, until we hit our natural carrying capacity of about ten or fifteen million, spreading up the sides of the mountains. We should plan for that, instead of pretending it's not going to happen. It's already happened, it just hasn't filled in.

No, no, no. I call bullshit, at least if you're trying to get to the southern Snohomish County suburbs.

Community Transit is pretty damn bitchin' for a suburban bus service. From the U-District or Downtown, I can get all the way up to Snohomish, making only one transfer, in about an hour. That is not "shitty infrastructure." I could also get as far out as fucking Darrington on CT buses (not that I ever would) - once again, that's not "shitty infrastructure."

You might be right for the King County suburbs, I don't know. But you've got to give some props to the CT.

Would this mean that I'd be required to stop calling West Seattle "fake Seattle"?

Excellent point. I don't have a car and also often end up staying in a tight radius of home and work. Going anywhere else is possible but eats up a lot of time in transport, so just heading to West Seattle can be a whole day trip.

@8 - stop hatin on University of Puget Sound.

I can ignore SPU if I want to (grin).

- "If I could hop on a train, I would visit friends in the suburbs a lot more often. Hell, I would think about living there."

Sounds like transit options cause sprawl.

and @10 - man, that was a lame post. you really need to bring your A game, and not try to throw softballs here in the major leagues.

@12 I prefer "baja seattle"

Have also ever noticed that people around here don't have any identity as "Washingtonians"? People's identity kind of goes: neighborhood, city, (maybe east/west of Cascades), then Pacific Northwest. There is no identity with the state. That would not be the case for people in many other, if not most other, states. No one ever says, "Proud to be a Washingtonian." But people are proud to be Seattleites or Northwesterners.

Maybe the lack of a sense of "Puget Sound Region" is because the next highest identifying region people take to heart after their city is "Pacific Northwest."

But right now getting to and from the suburbs is a logistical hassle to varying degrees, depending on where you’re going, so I just stay in my little corridor of the U-District and Capitol Hill.

Those suburban people should just stop being so provincial and pay for Seattle light rail. All aboard!!

Yes, people in Redmond shelling out for rail so that people from Cap Hill will visit more often. Is that an offer or a threat?

This reminds me of high school when I'd be lectured about how I don't have any school spirit.

I don't, OK? I just don't. So fuck off with your school spirit and your regional spirit and your identity as a Washingtonian. All this jingoistic crap wasn't needed until WWI and somebody thought we'd kill Germans more enthusiastically if we started folding the flag in a magic triangle.

A magic fucking flag triangle. What UP with that?

It is not hard to get to, or around, the Eastside by car. In fact, driving in Kirkland, Bothell, Woodinville, etc. sucks way less than driving downtown.

@18 - As a native Washingtonian, who has lived all over the fucking state, I take umbridge at your statement.

Only people who don't get to know where they live have no sense of place. If you never leave Seattle, or Forks, or Kennewick, or (god forbid) Republic, you could give a fuck about anywhere else. If you travel, where you're from and the places you go become a huge part of your identity and they become connected in your world view.

Pull your head out of your ass.

Well, to be fair, the "Bay Area" is considered to stretch from San Jose to somewhere near Antioch, both of which are somewhat accomodated by public transit, but the regional identity that falls between them (including the completely isolated North Bay counties) couldn't be more different... or at least not more dissimilar than Kirkland and Everette and Fife.

People live in small worlds, in some places a town my share a loose identity, in big cities maybe just a few blocks, either way, I don't see the human animal really dropping its old village ways to bring cohesion to a region. The reason we have good public transit in the Bay Area (well, besides the fact that the feds were giving this shit away in the 70's, to which Seattle actually said "no thank you" at the time - doh!) probably has a lot to do with the population of the Bay Area has usually hovered around 150% than that of all of Washington State.

Then again, San Francisco has the odd distinction of being a the center, but not the focus of much of what this area is to people. That gives me an odd regional view, so for this, and other reasons, don't listen to me.

@22:

Well, my head might be in my ass, but I'm a fifth generation Washingtonian myself; my great-grandparents homesteaded in the San Juans, Mercer Island, Issaquah, and Spokane, and our biennial extended-family reunion is in Richland or Pullman. I've spent time in every county of the state and lived long term in three of them; my original point still stands that people don't really have a strong sense of identity as "Washingtonians" as much as with smaller or larger entities. I'm sorry that my first-hand experiences are offensive to you, but there is actually something to the fact that there isn't much of a state identity here.

If there's one thing that defines all Puget Sounders, it's that we don't like shifty ex-Californian carpetbaggers telling us how to define ourselves or how to build a transit system.

San Francisco isn't even the biggest city in the Bay Area, and makes up a much smaller portion of its region than even Seattle does. The vast majority of Bay Area residents never go anywhere near San Francisco.

Using their transportation network as an example of (a) regional cooperation and (b) something we should follow is crazy, though. BART is, in fact, a perfect model of how regions DON'T cooperate. San Mateo and Santa Clara counties opted out of the thing when it was built, meaning that for its first 30-odd years it didn't go anywhere near the region's most important airport. It STILL doesn't go anywhere near its largest city.

I know, because I used to live in that city, and many times used public transportation to visit places as hard to get to as San Francisco, Santa Rosa, Santa Cruz, and Oakland-Alameda County Stadium.

PS: I note with pleasure Will's belief that Slog is "the major leagues". No doubt he is the Rafael Santana of his own fantasy league, mowing down commenters at will. Do you supply your own crowd noises, Will?

It's a sad ball player that tries to distract from his own performance, Fnarf.

A wise player, realizing he failed to bring his A game, shrugs it off and moves on.

Here endeth the lesson.

BART is definately far from perfect, but I still can't think of a better example. Metrorail maybe (hey, I said maybe)?

I think the problems BART have are intrinsic to the problems that arise when expecting different municipalities to be involved (pay for) in a single project. It would happen anywhere. All things considered, it seems to actually run pretty well for a public transportation agency.

Taking 30 years to get to SFO though? Total joke.

Hey, I the fuck care about Carmichael. I grew up there. Down at the end of Arden Way, near the American River.

So yes, I know first hand just how pointless this cataloging of technicalities really is.

Will, weren't you for a short time a major league prospect directly after coming out of sniper school?

Good point, Soupy @18. I feel the same way about actually *seeing* one's own place. I drive a lot - locally, at least - and no matter who lives where, I get off on getting to know who's where, what the lay of the land is (ie are the ball fields nice, fresh coat of paint on the bridge?), and appreciating how everyone has their stuff set up where they are.

To my ears, hearing people making the same old blanket stereotypes about (fill in the blank) just makes me realize that they likely have never been there and so have nothing to say besides reaching for the stereotype. It's isolationist and backwards.

@24 - You're still wrong. YOU and your family may not "identify" as Washingtonians, but I suspect that has more to do with your family than being from Washington State.

As a side note, whenever I see people from Washington on the news in other places, they always clarify that they are from Washington STATE - anecdotal evidence of regionalism? YES!

Also, bonus if they say "Warshington!"

It's the condescension of residents of Seattle neighborhoods that irks me. Looking down their nose at people from other neighborhoods, let alone acknowledging that anything north of 145th or south of exists. Most people don't CARE whether you're from Crown Hill or Ballard, and don't spend their time pondering the difference.

I agree with Sven, Greg, and Hernandez. It's really not that hard to get around the Eastside or South Snohomish County, either by car or bus. It's a hell of a lot easier to get to 405 or 520 from someplace like Education Hill than say, Magnolia to I-5 or even 99.

I don't think there's anything "cheerleader"-ish about developing a more regional identity. We're all just people trying to get by in this world, might as well team up and get through together to make it as pleasant as we can.

The first step will be to get Seattleites to acknowledge that the region actually exists, and is closer to them than, say, Baltimore.

Then, there will be a painful period of counseling between Seattle and Tacoma to learn to love their differences.

I think it is too late for their kids, Bellevue and Issaquah, who are growing up way too fast on their own without enough attention from their big cities, and have deep-seated resentment stemming from their childhood in a broken region.

But I think it's not too late for the South King and Southwest Snohomish kids to be given some much-needed TLC.

@34, clearly people do care about trivial things like neighborhoods, as evidenced by the 36 comments on this post.

Also, you live outside city limits? Lame.

The reality is that living in the suburbs is something anybody can do. It's the default, the lowest common denominator.

Finding a place you can afford in the city is not easy. It is a serious challenge for anybody: you're looking at all the luxury and square footage you could have in the 'burbs for less money, but you hunt and hunt for a place in the city instead. You settle for one that's barely large enough and that you can barely afford.

Why? Because you spent years aspiring to live in Seattle or San Francisco or NYC or wherever. People in Wheatridge and Arvada dream of moving to Denver one day, if you can believe that.

So city dwellers look at people spread out in the suburbs and see folks who didn't aspire to much, and weren't willing to make sacrifices. Or people who just don't understand what it is about cities that makes you willing to put up with all that.

That's why city people don't think they have much in common with suburbanites. Maybe you don't like it, but that's why.

How utterly American of you to come to our city and try to tell us how we should think about it. I've lived in Seattle all my life, approximately 18 years longer than you have, and here's the thing: we do think about things, as you call it, "regionally," but when it really comes down to it, there's nothing to do outside of Seattle. Seattle is where you can go to do things, and everywhere else is just where some people you know live and perhaps work. And maybe there's a mall there. Often people from Redmond or Lynnwood or Federal Way, or even Tacoma, when asked where they're from by someone not from this region, will simply say, "Seattle." Just because you do not frequent Bellevue or Redmond to visit your friends, doesn't mean that everyone thinks about the Great Seattle Metropolitan area (calling it the "Puget Sound Area" is like calling Taiwan, "Formosa") like you do.

@18, That's because the people on the other side of the Cascades are of a different breed. In California, you have Norcal and Socal, but at least the Norcalians aren't different in such a distinct way. Also, Washingtonian is a really unwieldy word. It doesn't flow off the tongue.

On the subject of state pride: Fuck those arbitrary political boundaries. Seattleites are much more closely related, culturally and ideologically, with Southwestern Canada and Western Oregon (even Northern California) than Eastern Washington. Pacific Northwest Pride! Ellensburg is an embarrassment.

joykiller, part of the whole point of the discussion is how neighborhood distinctions are meaningless from a regional perspective.

Color me lame.

@38: There's nothing to do outside Seattle... that you know of. Maybe the Eastsiders have been snubbing you this whole time, and you didn't realize it?

@38, It's this kind of mentality that needs to stop, or at least be tempered with some level of discourse and understanding. How condescending, to write off every nonurban resident as some sort of failed aspirant to fine city living. Besides, what defines "suburb" now? Bellevue's turning into more of an urban center than Seattle.

I meant to direct this to elenchos @37...although 38's pretty asinine on its own merits.

Amy Kate, I've often wondered as of late whatever happened to the Cascadia movement. That's the kind of regional thinking that could get us places.

No, I said they either don't aspire to it, or don't understand why city dwellers make sacrifices to live there. Because what I said was that it is about compromising, giving up space and luxury to live in the city. I didn't say everybody wants to be in the city but only some can.

Anybody can live in the city, but only some are willing to.

I did not say they aspired and failed. One of the reasons people are reluctant to explain things like this is that it's so easy to be misinterpreted.

Anyway, good luck with changing that. I think you're much better off recognizing that suburbanites have very different priorities than trying to say we're all the same.

A friend of mine once proposed changing the name of Washington to Jackson -- a much more kickass President -- and also changing the state flag to a giant $20 bill.

Perhaps couching it in terms like "aspire" is part of that. Makes it sound like urban life is the only worthy lifestyle choice, everything else be damned. I'd say most of the world's population aspires to clean drinking water and a reliable food supply.

There's lots of other factors involved in choosing to live in an urban environment. for example, I think you'd have a hard time convincing a parent in Redmond or Kirkland why they'd be better off living in Seattle and sending their kid to a Seattle public school. That's part of the compromise you bring up.

I guess my Midwestern roots have engendered in me a level of populism. When I say we're all the same, I mean that from a humanistic perspective. A person living in an apartment in Ballard isn't all that radically different from someone in a townhouse in Renton. Both gotta work to get through the day, and hopefully/luckily find something enjoyable to do in their leisure time. You could say that about most people around the country, of course, but I do believe we live in a special, unique part of the country, and that should also be recognized. Perhaps thinking about these issues from a larger regional view may help find solutions for everyone.

@31 - no. I was sniper qualified, though. But I never was good at baseball, I just like it (playing and watching).

@38, you are correct. Except that there are some things to do in Tacoma; after all, they host bull riding, monster truck shows, Nick Lachey concerts, etc.

I think you all take neighborhood and regional snarkism far too seriously. It's fun to make fun of suburbanites. Even in my little North Carolina hometown, my friends and I would engage in neighborhood localism, even through everyone on that peninsula was part of the same infernal swampy sprawl.

You just have to remember to make fun of your own neighborhood. So, all you Cap Hill knuckleheads, remember, the real enemy is gentrification, not Bellevue. Maybe if Mayor Nickels would get off his ass and establish some for-real affordable working-class housing initiatives, we would not be so afraid of the the Eastside. And we could have some substance to our supposed leftist spirit.

@37: Oh please. I live in a suburb, and I know that when we can afford to buy a condo, it will be in Seattle, not Issaquah. I'm willing to sacrifice square footage for culture anyday. What I'm not willing to sacrifice is square footage or natural light for the "prestige" of living in a shoebox-sized apartment that faces a wall with no natural light, just because it's two blocks from Linda's. We're currently looking for apartments on the hill, but it's a picky process. One hopes for a dishwasher after 3 years without one.

While I've only spent a grand total of six weeks living in Seattle (living on boats: not as much fun as it sounds), I definitely consider myself a Seattlite after living in the surrounding areas for my whole life. While my family might be evenly spread between Seattle and Moses Lake/surrounding tiny towns, I've always been and always will be a Seattlite. The mountains are a big fucking barrier, both physical and socially. Interestingly enough, almost all the family that's in the Moses Lake area moved there from the Seattle area to get away from the godless heathens and get closer to family (in one case, a little too close...).

Thus, I am a Seattlite. I want nothing to do with the societal-taboo breaking shenanigans of the rural eastern half.

Beat Portland? Fat chance.