Zoning laws are belaboring many Seattle residents, as the city struggles with urban planning in Washington State’s largest city.

Since 2000, the City of Seattle has grown by 30,000 in the city proper, and even more in the greater Seattle area, making the Emerald City the third fastest growing city in Washington state.

As a result, builders have taken to developing high density housing in the form of condominiums, particularly in boom areas, like trendy Ballard. Named the number one up and coming neighborhood by the Seattle Metropolitan Magazine (Aug. 2008), houses are springing up all around the Ballard skyline, much to the chagrin of residents. A wide array of bumper stickers around town announce the passive-aggressive opposition of current residents: “Ballard welcomes it’s new condo overlords.”

The distaste is so fine that many residents are complaining that the new condos uniformity is ugly, and destroying the character of the older Seattle neighborhoods not undergoing gentrification.

In contrast, many developers are complaining that the city discriminates against condominiums and multi-family housing developments due to an inordinate amount of single family dwelling zoning laws. They have managed to stir Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels into re-examining the multi-family dwelling laws, last altered in 1982.  This comes at the expense of general opinion, as many residents believe that the wide array of single family style housing has been a great attractor to new residents.

Condo developers have been trying to sweeten up their offerings, like the 2200 condominium development on the corner of Denny and Westlake in Seattle. There, tenants pay dues to for amenities like a grocery store, Starbucks, a concierge service, and spa all on the same property. The property in question is owned by Microsoft’s Paul Allen, and was initially built as an experiment in high density living to promote a greater sense of community. As it stands now however, many residents have found their dues rising with no equivalent bump in service.

This problem is endemic in Seattle, as the city struggles with it’s own urban development. Mayor Greg Nickels’ plea with Seattle residents to walk more during the summer months, to ease their gas consumption, was met with frustration by some residents. Particularly in West and South Seattle, the sidewalks are in poor condition, making walking unsafe and unfeasible for those in the area.

In his most recent proposal for the 2009-2010 budget,  Nickels addressed this issue by allocating 3.5 million over the next two years to build 26 blocks of new sidewalks in 2009, and repaving 25 miles of streets. This budget is of course subject to debate by the city government, especially with Washington Mutual’s takeover looming in the mind of lawmakers.

Still, as Seattle residents watch their big city grow wildly, the city government and mayor have been playing a reactionary role to the public’s complaints, rather than enact more definitive city planning. In recent nationwide assessments, Seattle has not scored well on city planning while more forward looking cities like Tacoma and Portland have been praised. With a much larger population, a solution for a well thought out city plan can be challenging (especially with Seattle’s famously hilly nature) but with the population ever growing, these challenges for the city’s future need to be head on. Ad-hoc growth, as it seems to have been the case so far, only leads to huge logistical headaches and more problems down the line.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 30th, 2008 at 8:01 am and is filed under Seattle. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.