Comments On: The Only Future Is Living Small by Charles Mudede http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2013/01/29/the-only-future-is-living-small Comments On: The Only Future Is Living Small by Charles Mudede en-us Copyright 2013 The Stranger. All rights reserved. This RSS file is offered to individuals, The Stranger readers, and non-commercial organizations only. Any commercial websites wishing to use this RSS file, please contact The Stranger. webmaster@thestranger.com (The Stranger Webmaster) Wed, 19 Jun 2013 00:00:01 -0700 Wed, 19 Jun 2013 18:00:00 -0700 Foundation http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss <![CDATA[Re: The Only Future Is Living Small]]>
Granted, they are high school students, and who knows how much they share coffee mugs/kiss/come into other forms of close contact. But high density environments with a lot of shared facilities are ideal places to spread contagion, and micro-living facilities are, by definition, high density environments with shared facilities.
Posted by Clayton]]> Wed, 30 Jan 2013 08:43:44 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: The Only Future Is Living Small]]>
No one is more old-timey than I, but restoring whatever grid was there originally is like hoping you can have breakfast at the Ballard Denny's or cocktails in the Marine Room. It ain't gonna happen.


Posted by Catalina Vel-DuRay]]> Tue, 29 Jan 2013 22:32:39 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: The Only Future Is Living Small]]> Posted by paulh]]> Tue, 29 Jan 2013 22:25:43 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: The Only Future Is Living Small]]>
Yup, Fnarf has it right. Those high-rise apartments surrounded by park space and streets that don't really go anywhere are way too "Tower in the Park." Where are all those pedestrians in that video walking to?
Posted by litlnemo]]> Tue, 29 Jan 2013 21:32:40 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: The Only Future Is Living Small]]> Posted by Orv]]> Tue, 29 Jan 2013 16:45:12 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: The Only Future Is Living Small]]>
New plumbing, new electric, new sewer, new heat, new insulation, modern safety?

YT has to be a bitch to maintain, right?

I bet we could make up the difference in grant-money alone.
Posted by six shooter]]> Tue, 29 Jan 2013 15:05:28 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: The Only Future Is Living Small]]> After the Broadway Streetcar opens, Lloyd's Rocket gets replaced by a Starbucks and Little Ethiopia on 12th gets turned into apartments a block at a time.

Have you seen the buildings overlooking Waid's lately?
Posted by six shooter]]> Tue, 29 Jan 2013 14:58:48 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: The Only Future Is Living Small]]>
btw, before the interstate came through, it was actually about twice the size it is now. Isn't that interesting?
Posted by Catalina Vel-DuRay]]> Tue, 29 Jan 2013 14:22:50 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: The Only Future Is Living Small]]>
In addition, nothing of interest or value will ever be built on that section of Boren/Rainier, by design. That stretch was ripped out of the city by the automobile planners in the 50s, about the same time as Yesler Terrace was too, and well before the freeway went in. The entire area, including YT now and YT in the future plan, is an anti-urban wasteland with no through streets and no place for retail and no place to escape the onrush of car traffic. Recent development is worsening, not lessening, this effect.

In addition to that, the Lloyd's Rocket site has had fancier uses try to go in but they've been shot down by the neighborhood, who are terrified that people might be able to get an alcoholic beverage there, so close to a school. The school people regard well-dressed people with a cocktail in their hand like you and I regard armed terrorists. This kind of NIMBY "neighborhood involvement" by shortsighted bluenoses who complain endlessly about the lack of opportunity but oppose any kind of business activity is one of the main reasons blighted neighborhoods can never get off the schneid.

If they really wanted to do YT right, they'd level the entire site, put the street grid back in, including at least two more over- or underpasses on the freeway, and build rowhouses with four-story apartment houses on the corners with full-floor shops underneath.
Posted by Fnarf]]> Tue, 29 Jan 2013 14:14:25 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: The Only Future Is Living Small]]>
rebuilding those "cheap-ass barracks" would cost a lot, actually.
Posted by Max Solomon]]> Tue, 29 Jan 2013 13:55:17 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: The Only Future Is Living Small]]>
Actually, doing nothing sounds fine to me - SHA has acknowledged the units are liveable and could remain so into the future with modest upkeep (and SHA is notorious for skimping on maintenance on projects in order to create/strengthen the rationale for demolishing them in favor of Hope VI projects), and we ought to be using the funds they are raiding from numerous sources (including the housing levy and State Housing Trust Fund) to build more units rather than pissing them away to replace existing units in order to make way for a massive upscale development project - a project that Hallivulcan surely will make a pretty penny from, indeed.


Posted by Mr. X]]> Tue, 29 Jan 2013 13:39:20 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: The Only Future Is Living Small]]> We, as a city, have done this before -- on the same location even -- and we've never done it well. New Holly and Highpoint work because they're not in the city core.

Make no mistake... SHA is selling the "good" land so they can fund revitalization, not more affordable housing. Hence 1:1.

We're not housing the poor, we're clearing a slum.

Do nothing? Of course not. How much it would cost to rebuild those old, cheap-ass barracks into modern cheap-ass barracks?
Posted by six shooter]]> Tue, 29 Jan 2013 12:18:35 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: The Only Future Is Living Small]]>
The SHA committed to 1:1 replacement of existing subsidized housing on site. Current residents get to come back if they want, like in previous redevelopments. There is additional housing targeting various AMI levels for workforce housing underway. There will be parks, pea patches, and parking. No one can afford to build a "concrete high-rise" anymore, so the SHA housing will be wood-framed and 6-7 stories (AKA 5/1), max. Some of it will be lower.

The SHA developers aren't money-hungry assholes, they're trying to build decent, modern public housing in the middle of a period of government austerity. It has to self-fund. And they have a track record of doing it well: High Point, Rainier Vista, New Holly, where there is market-rate housing mixed throughout.

How would you handle it? Do nothing? Let the 60 years of lead paint & asbestos fall down on the heads of the residents because it's more authentic?
Posted by Max Solomon]]> Tue, 29 Jan 2013 11:52:07 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: The Only Future Is Living Small]]> Posted by Matt from Denver]]> Tue, 29 Jan 2013 11:47:06 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: The Only Future Is Living Small]]>
I believe the city when they promise the displaced residents the right to rent the new, below-market-rate housing they'll eventually rebuild.

I hope those people don't miss their gardens, their impromptu parks, their abundant free parking, or their multi-room apartments. I hope they enjoy their new concrete-walled, bed-bug ridden concrete high-rise.

But hey, it'll have sprinklers and an elevator that works at least 80% of the time.
Posted by six shooter]]> Tue, 29 Jan 2013 11:29:10 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: The Only Future Is Living Small]]>
this has been a land grab from the get go.
Posted by south downtown]]> Tue, 29 Jan 2013 11:15:51 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: The Only Future Is Living Small]]> Posted by just a reader]]> Tue, 29 Jan 2013 11:15:32 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: The Only Future Is Living Small]]> Posted by south downtown]]> Tue, 29 Jan 2013 11:13:42 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: The Only Future Is Living Small]]> Posted by just a reader]]> Tue, 29 Jan 2013 11:13:40 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: The Only Future Is Living Small]]>
for anyone with kids, the idea of rooms with sliding walls and little space for toys, kids clothes, books, etc will see this as a failed design.

we certainly need to buy and store less stuff. and smaller units are necessary, no doubt. but let's at least declare a minimum habitable space for human beings in Seattle. San Francisco is trying out 220 sq ft. NYC 275. We allow and are producing units half that.


Posted by south downtown]]> Tue, 29 Jan 2013 11:11:23 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: The Only Future Is Living Small]]> Posted by Will in Seattle]]> Tue, 29 Jan 2013 11:10:25 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: The Only Future Is Living Small]]>
Seattle is the only city I've lived in that does such a good job of convincing non-white people to live in self-created ghettos. Once Profanity Hill goes middle-class white (now with a hill-climb!), how much longer can Dearborn remain "Little Saigon"?

Am I the only person who looks at the Hawaiian restaurant on 12th and Boren and wonders how they can afford so much unused real-estate?

Has Seattle displaced this many non-white people since the Internment days?
Posted by six shooter]]> Tue, 29 Jan 2013 11:04:19 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: The Only Future Is Living Small]]> Posted by Matt the Engineer]]> Tue, 29 Jan 2013 10:56:38 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: The Only Future Is Living Small]]>
Charles is anti-house and anti-yard. So it will be interesting to see what he has to say.
Posted by Matt from Denver]]> Tue, 29 Jan 2013 10:30:37 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: The Only Future Is Living Small]]>
As for the rest of the poor [expressly defined in your comment as non immigrants - MfD], what harm do you see in adopting the middle class values of hard work, saving and investing, small scale entrepreneurship, and opening opportunities to their children?


I don't see anything in Charles' comment to suggest that he meant that "he thinks the poor don't already share these values, nor should they." To me, it's clear that he was speaking of the kind of top-heavy moralism that is meant by "improving the moral character of poor people by exposing them directly to the ownership values of the middle-class."

Now, you correctly point out that many immigrant families already have these ownership values. In some ways, immigrants are much more likely to be the kind of independent entrepreneur that right wing talking heads like to say they champion, as opposed to entrenched billionaire dynasties whose wealth is all on paper whom they actually serve. In that sense, Charles' point is proven - the "rest of the poor" don't need exposure to it because it's already next door.

Where you go wrong is stating that "the rest of the poor" are all the opposite. The things you describe @ 16 are certainly endemic to the experience of the American urban poor, but they are not the reality of every American urban poor family. There are hard working people, with families that the men do not abandon, where the parents are sober and the kids go to school regularly. Again, proving the point that the poor are already well exposed to these values.

Their main problem is institutional racism. Urban poor are almost entirely minorities, and recessions for us are depressions for them. Hard work and solid family values (real ones, not fake-ass moralistic ones) don't mean that they'll stop being the first to be laid off and the last to be hired. They'll also be a lot less likely to get small business loans than immigrants, who are assumed to be inherently dedicated and hard working, while the "rest" are assumed not to be.

You and I have our differences, but I generally believe that you're a person who wants the best for everyone. So it's telling how deep this kind of thinking goes when you express it.
Posted by Matt from Denver]]> Tue, 29 Jan 2013 10:28:00 -0800 The Stranger