A Visual Walk Through Amazon's Impact On One Seattle Neighborhood 296
reifman writes: If you live in Seattle, it's easy to see Amazon.com's impact on downtown construction and growth but not everyone sees what's happening in neighborhoods like formerly sleepy Ballard. One by one, traditional Seattle homes are being razed and replaced by 3 1/2 story behemoths without regard for aesthetics of any kind. The new townhomes offer 12 foot wide living spaces for Amazon's brogrammer class. Take a walk with me down my friend's street to see what it's like to live amongst the returns of e-commerce success. Ballard is also home of the late octogenarian Edith Macefield, who refused to sell her house to developers as construction went up around her.
Microsoft was better? (Score:5, Funny)
I don't recall people of Seattle complaining about how Bill Gates ravaged their city in the 90's...
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Re:Microsoft was better? (Score:5, Informative)
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They changed the view across lake Washington from trees to houses. It's staggering if you lived there before MS bloomed.
Re:Microsoft was better? (Score:5, Insightful)
My kingdom for mod points!
What folks not from Seattle and it's environs don't realize is that while Microsoft is often referred to as a "Seattle company", it's not actually in Seattle. It's in Redmond, ten miles to the east. (Though there are satellite campuses all over the place nowadays.) Most of the growth that lead to Seattle's infamous traffic was/is equally to the east of Seattle proper.
Like most metro areas, Seattle metro covers a huge area... but it's eponymous city is only a small part of that area.
Downtown Seattle has prospered over the last couple of decades, and that's partly a side effect of Microsoft and the growth of the dot com era, not a direct result.
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Downtown Seattle has prospered over the last couple of decades, and that's partly a side effect of Microsoft and the growth of the dot com era, not a direct result.
Frasier reruns did the rest.
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Most of the growth that lead to Seattle's infamous traffic was/is equally to the east of Seattle proper.
To be fair, most of Seattle's traffic problems were due to Microsoft being in Redmond, and a giant lake being between Redmond and Seattle, meaning you had few very routes from where people actually lived, to where people actually worked.
If Microsoft was in Seattle (as Amazon is) I doubt they would have affected traffic to the same degree. But, as Amazon is doing, it would have led to a lot of Seattle's residential neighborhoods, especially North Seattle, going through huge changes.
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What's funny is that the smart-growth crowd doesn't call this "ravaging" but rather calls it "ingrowth" and "densification". It also "creates livable, walkable neighborhoods."
I guess Amazon just made the mistake of doing this in Seattle rather than Portland where it's called approved growth planning.
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Middle class never meant that. It's only modern usage that has extended the usage of the term towards working-class families.
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My definition of middle class is those people who have to work much of their life for a good living, but have some leisure time, some education, some financial stability, and something to lose if things go bad. The upper class doesn't have to work for a living (although quite a few do). The lower classes don't have financial stability, have trouble making a good living, and generally have little they can lose in a financial problem. The middle class is vital to democracy, since they have the numbers, th
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Perfectly fine? If they were perfectly fine, why didn't people just buy the existing houses and move into them? Perhaps because they weren't perfectly fine for the people moving in? Nobody's tearing down houses and putting up new houses "just because."
I work in Seattle (Score:5, Insightful)
This was not an overnight problem. Amazon is growing, they are buying space where they can. There is no crime there. If Seattle wants to preserve the look of its older neighborhoods, it's had ample time to legislate the building codes.
The real question is: When do we cross the line when legislating aesthetics. If someone buys the residential land, is it within the rights of the city
To give them 4 floor plans they choose from? 8? Five outward shapes they can pick? Does the city pick the colors? The plants?
Nearly everyone knows what looks ugly after the fact, but without building codes unrelated to safety and yet of draconian precision, how to you keep someone from building something ugly in advance?
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This isn't necessarily an issue of aesthetics, it's an issue of size and density (lot floor area ratios). It could be fixed by simply changing the zoning such that only single-family houses were allowed, with a floor area ratios less than X, and with a maximum roof height less than Y.
Alternatively, the older houses in those photos look old enough that they could just declare the neighborhood to be a historic district and then they c
Re:I work in Seattle (Score:5, Interesting)
I really think you don't get that our population will DOUBLE by 2025.
Not 2040.
But 2025.
Time to rezone all arterial blocks to 6-8 stories and stop "preserving" overpriced Single Family Housing that drives all but the Upper Middle Class out of Seattle.
(caveat - I own my house)
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By "our population", do you mean Ballard, Seattle, the US or the entire world?
Because it matters. A few months ago, I drove through Nebraska, and it didn't look to me like we're in danger of running out of habitable surface area in the US. And having seen a National Geographic special on the Asian continent, it doesn't look like we're going to be running out of habitable surface area on planet Earth (assuming no catastrophic climate chan
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Spreading out won't help - it just increases traffic congestion. I'm specifically referring to the adjacent neighborhoods like Wallingford, Montlake, Capitol Hill, Queen Anne.
All the arterials everywhere.
The entire city population - and regional population - is going to double. Pretending it won't is part of the problem, and pushing growth out is part of what led to the current problem.
I was in the meetings where we decided to upzone SLU to 8 stories. Maybe you missed them.
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Spreading out will actually help in the long run. Overly dense urban areas are blights to natural habitats and put strains on natural waste management. This all assumes of course that logistics can or will be improved. For example, more teleworking.
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You as an individual may directly consume less but the cost to support the infrastructure and logistics of major urban centers is very high. As an example, think of the costs involved in building and maintaining the sewer and storm drain network.
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ANd suburbs and rural areas still need all that- in fact they need more of it due to the larger geographical area. This means the per person cost is far more when spread out. That's *why* the cost are cheaper in urban areas, the same amount of capacity needs to be put in a far smaller area.
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assuming no catastrophic climate change, which I don't
Sea level is expected to rise by two feet in 2050 and four feet in 2100. My apartment complex in Silicon Valley is located on a flood plain that will be under water, assuming that no levees are built to prevent that from happening. The only levee plan I heard about was for the San Francisco Airport. I'm planning to retire to Las Vegas long before that happens.
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Last I looked at the IPCC report, it said that sea level might rise about two feet by 2100. Where do you get four feet from?
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I'm planning to retire to Las Vegas long before that happens.
You better hope they drain Lake Powell to fill Mead or you're going to wish you moved to Seattle.
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OK, you've convinced me. But can I still go to the early-bird buffet and play penny slots after?
Oh, and let's see...in 2066 Wayne Newton will only be 124, so I guess I should think about getting reservations soon.
https://youtu.be/LRPILZS1hc8 [youtu.be]
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Well, my post presupposes that increasing density is a problem in the first place and addresses how to solve that problem. If one rejects that premise, then of course what I said doesn't apply.
For the record, I like both the single family houses and the higher-density stuff in those photos, but I agree they shouldn't be mixed together quite like that. What they ought to do is pick which nieghborhoods should go higher-density and which should be preserved (and it's valid for the answer to be "all of them,"
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It could be fixed by simply changing the zoning such that only single-family houses were allowed
This is exactly the sort of crap that leads to urban sprawl, and all the wasted hours on commutes, pollution, oil consumption, etc. We have the same problems in the Bay Area, where SF rejected more than 95% of building permits last year, and 90 minute commutes are routine. If you don't want the sprawl, the only alternative is dense housing in the core city. We need to stand up to the NIMBYs, or even worse, the BANANAs [wikipedia.org].
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It could be fixed by simply changing the zoning such that only single-family houses were allowed
This is exactly the sort of crap that leads to urban sprawl, and all the wasted hours on commutes, pollution, oil consumption, etc. We have the same problems in the Bay Area, where SF rejected more than 95% of building permits last year, and 90 minute commutes are routine. If you don't want the sprawl, the only alternative is dense housing in the core city. We need to stand up to the NIMBYs, or even worse, the BANANAs [wikipedia.org].
A friend inherited a house in SF (Sunset district) that was in pretty poor shape - he looked at the cost and time to get a permit to tear it down and replace it with a 2 unit duplex that would have fit almost within the same footprint of the existing house. He quickly gave on up that due to the cost and no assurance of ever getting his plan approved -- anyone nearby could tie up the planning process nearly indefinitely and he can't really afford to sit on an unoccupied house for a year or more while waitin
Re:I work in Seattle (Score:5, Interesting)
in SF
I think I found the problem.
Granted it isn't just SF but the whole general area. My wife's grandmother who is 88 still lives in the house they bought out there shortly after WWII in Marin county and it is more cost effective to continue to live in the house and pay people to come and take care of everything than to move into a senior living place. A friend of the family that worked for HP near the beginning until he retired likes to joke that he always wanted to live in a multimillion dollar home, he just didn't think it would be the home he bought when he started at HP a 2 block walk to work. Even in far away places that aren't CA suffer from these things as there was a recent case in St. Paul, Minnesota [twincities.com] where a demo permit was issued and then retracted the same day and the owner had to sue the city to demolish his own property.
As someone who leans fairly libertarian my answer to these people who complain about new development is that if they don't like it they should buy the property. I also believe that people like Edith Macefield should be able to tell a developer to piss off and there isn't anything thing the government can do to force her to give up her property.
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When demand for housing is high, if you zone to restrict change by limiting size and density you will increase the cost. This is great for the established home owner / NIMBYs. It keeps the renters and young people out while inflating the value of their homes. On the other hand, it's terrible for those poorer, younger people and it's also terrible for traffic as they get pushed farther and farther from the jobs. This is exactly the trade-off that San Francisco has made: keep the neighborhoods from changing
Re:I work in Seattle (Score:5, Insightful)
In my experience terms like "aesthetics" and "historical integrity" usually translates to:
1) All I care about is my property values, the rest of the world be damned!
2) I bought this house decades ago with the assumption that this neighborhood would never, ever, ever, ever change. NO TAKEBACKS!
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I'm not sure about 1). The new entrants are probably increasing property values. But TFA makes clear that the issues are the important stuff, like
The western afternoon light is gone
If that doesn't satisfy the definition of "Armageddon" I don't know what does.
Re: I work in Seattle (Score:3)
You just described Celebration, FL. Disney-enforced Leave It to Beaver Land. (Pleasantville in the Hollywood vision.)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Someone pissed they didn't get hired? (Score:2)
>> Amazon...Amazon...Amazon...
Is someone just pissed they didn't get hired?
Re:Someone pissed they didn't get hired? (Score:5, Insightful)
And "brogrammer"? Seriously? Submitter is an entitled, classist jackass.
Re:Someone pissed they didn't get hired? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Someone pissed they didn't get hired? (Score:5, Insightful)
And "brogrammer"? Seriously? Submitter is an entitled, classist jackass.
I have never, not once, heard a programmer use the word "brogrammer". I have only heard it used by SJWs when denigrating programmers, and the companies they work for (Amazon in this case).
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I'm a programmer, and I've met some brogrammers in my lifetime. They were easy enough to tell from regular programmers: they're the ones on Caltrain sipping Budweiser and talking about how great it is to work at Zynga and how those people who got their RSUs revoked last week had it coming and don't deserve any sympathy. (
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The irony in this post makes me giggle. Insightful? You bet it is.
Re:Someone pissed they didn't get hired? (Score:5, Interesting)
Urban changes are no surprise (Score:5, Interesting)
Thing of it is, the strip that has already been redeveloped was in such poor shape that there really wasn't much of value lost in its redevelopment. It wasn't a quaint little neighborhood of chabby-chic bungalos with old landscaping, it was a neighborhood of falling-down buildings, many with real structural faults that would require significantly more than a facelift remodel, with unmaintained grounds or gravel-coated yards so that the maintenance was nothing. The area is also close to the college and to the popular downtown, and is along a major mass-transit corridor that leads to the big city downtown too. In short, the area was simply worth a lot more than its existing use could justify, and most of the occupants were renters, not owners.
Some call the new buildings ugly. I will agree that some of the new buildings are not to my tastes. What I won't agree on though, is that the new buildings are worse for the area, or that the project was worse for the culture of the area. The old area was a slum. The new area has more residents, has more businesses, and isn't dangerous. Given that eminent domain can't be used in my state to take private land away from private owners to provide to other private owners, if the city had any strong-arming tactics they were probably based on actual infractions on the part of the existing owners (like building and fire code violations) which I can't really fault them for enforcing.
Simply, if neighborhoods fall into blight and become slums they're ripe for this to happen. It's hard to really call it wrong when that happens.
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If one doesn't want 12' wide homes, it shouldn't be that hard to put a stop to that, if one actually bothers to try before the commission votes to make the change. They post rather large signage when such hearings are being held, so it's not like it's done in secret.
Somebody sounds butthurt (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Complaining about new homes replacing shitty old 1950's houses.
2) Complaining about modern architecture which is surely a personal preference, not some objective standard meaning "ugly and bad".
3) Complaining about "brogrammers" simply with a cite of "lots of dudes at Amazon" as supporting evidence for a 'brogrammer' culture.
Yep, Seattle hipster detected. You should probably move to Portland, where you can keep the dream of the 90's alive.
Is this an article on wealth redistribution? (Score:5, Interesting)
Ok, so lets recap the article, Amazon needs to lead on diversity, assist low income in the area, change tax codes to be more "fair" in Seattle and Washington state.
And the article says how horrible interviews are at amazon, but only for a woman. As if people around here don’t realize its a sweatshop, and everyone has to be oncall 24/x and work insane hours. They are burning people to make products, they pay great, sign on bonuses, moving costs, but life sucks there. There is a reason people are leaving after a year in droves.
Crazy article, ignores many facets of working at amazon and concentrates on social reform outside the company. Agenda much?
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> There is a reason people are leaving after a year in droves.
My husband works in HR there, and people aren't leaving Amazon as much as they are leaving Seattle. Many of the new hires are shocked to find-out that fast Internet access is only available in a tiny number of buildings in the region. CondoInternet's fifty buildings is a tiny, tiny portion of the buildings in this area with a population of over 5 million. Also, those buildings are $400-600 more per month in rent. In other words, good Inter
Re:Is this an article on wealth redistribution? (Score:5, Informative)
People are leaving jobs and town because they can't get high speed internet? Color me skeptical. Plus, though I live across the water on the peninsula, I have many friends who live in Seattle and I've heard not once complaint about lack of broadband access - ever.
On top of which, we just had a report here on Slashdot of broadband access being lost (temporarily) because a fiber was cut. Searching around a bit shows pretty much no significant complaints about lack of faster-than-dialup internet connections. (Many complaints that broadband isn't as fast as it should be... though it's hard to sort out the actual complaints from the unrealistic assumptions about what the service should be.)
So, I'm moving beyond skeptical right to not buying it.
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I interviewed with Amazon twice - both times told them no thank you. Now I get hit up by their recruiters weekly. I finally told them to stop contacting me. I wasn't interested in their "work your @$$ to death" corporate culture. Just like I told Microsoft I wouldn't work for them because I despised the company.
Great - suburbs are becoming urbanized (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Great - suburbs are becoming urbanized (Score:5, Funny)
How dare you suggest that housing people want and need to buy and economic growth are more important than Jeff Reifman's delicate architectural sensibilities. You insensitive clod.
Yeah, call the wahmbulance.
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People have to live somewhere.
Yes, but nobody likes migrant workers. They drive up the price of everything. They work day and night. They bring their own uncivilized subculture. They require earthquake-proof housing. They don't care about octogenarians. They block our views. They take our women. Migrant workers are just horrible-horrible human beings.
I'm just glad that the KKK is making a resurgence in the Seattle mainstream media and on Slashdot thanks to Dice Holdings.
Oh Boo Hoo (Score:5, Insightful)
People are building houses they want on property they own?
The infamy!
I wonder how the whiners felt about the people who lived in the area as the whiners' houses were being built. What, no retroactive self-shaming guilt trips? I am shocked, shocked! to discover egocentric whining.
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In what universe would a libertarian support one man's aesthetic determining another man's property rights? In what universe is this Maoist? I think you are knowledgeable of neither libertarianism nor Maoism.
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You cluelessness about libertarians is typical of those who don't want to understand personal responsibility because it scares them. So much easier to assign responsibility to a bunch of strangers, and then to whine about the bad decisions they make, which really means they didn't force you to go along with a decision you haven't got the guts to make yourself.
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Exactly. I was a self styled libertarian when I was a kid and only cared about myself. As I grew up I figured out that you can't form a functioning society on the "F**k everyone else, I got mine" ideals.
As much as I hate it being true, there's nothing I can change about the fact that other people are selfish and stupid and will stab you in the back just as soon as they shake your hand. That's just part of human nature. And for that reason, "pure" libertarianism can never work. It's the exact same reaso
Cops in Ballard (Score:2)
All you have to do to see the difference is search for "Cops in Ballard" on youtube. You're welcome.
Cha cha (Score:2)
It's 2015 (Score:4, Insightful)
This started well before Amazon... (Score:2)
... was a twinkle in Jeff Bezos' eye.
I lived on Queen Anne (south of Ballard) back in the late 80s - early 90s. Old Ballard was already being dismantled by developers, with old houses getting torn down and large apartment buildings going up in their place.
A fictionalized conversation. (Score:5, Funny)
The following is a dramatic representation of a conversation in Seattle.
Scene: an artesian coffee shop, a late-forties white person is talking to another late-forties white person
Person 1: When I cashed in my Microsoft shares in 1998 and I bought a house here it was a quiet residential street.
Person 2: Yeah, I thought it would always be a quiet residential street, but then THOSE people moved in and I can't find parking.
Person 1: This is the single worst thing that has happened in the history of human existence. You know the first thing the Nazis did when they invaded Poland... took all the parking.
Person 2: I know, right? I have $500k in equity in my house but I can't find parking. If I sold my house to cash in my equity I'd probably have to move to Lynnwood or Rainier Valley.
Person 1: I heard there's a new locally grown, gluten free, Vietnamese Banh Mi restaurant in Rainier Valley now.
Person 2: Really? I heard they have quiet residential streets and plenty of parking. Maybe I should move there.
Person 1: Good idea. I can cash in some of my Microsoft shares and start a new shade grown coffee shop. Get off the rat race, you know?
Person 2: Yay! The people of Rainier Valley will really appreciate it. Let's go talk to our brokers.
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Mod points!
What's the problem? (Score:4, Interesting)
No, that's a contemporary, high density housing style. You might not like it, but there is regard for aesthetics. You just don't agree with the aesthetic value.
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LOL (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh no, *change* is happening, and it's not in a direction that supports my almost-entirely-unrealistic vision of an affordable bucolic urban hipster paradise.
SOMEONE STOP IT NOW!
This part I read with almost glee:
"...I admit Iâ(TM)m part of the problem. Not only did I come to Seattle for the opportunity to work at a large technology company, but it made me wealthy, as well. Iâ(TM)m not saying that Amazon shouldnâ(TM)t grow and that others shouldnâ(TM)t benefit from the opportunity, I just believe the companyâ(TM)s growing irresponsibly and beginning to have an irrevocably damaging impact on Seattleâ(TM)s character and quality of life..."
In short, you're a fucking hypocrite. I got mine, so the rest of you stop trying to do what I did because it's just so not want I want.
Yeah, well, life is change even in the land of non-chain coffee shops, horn-rimmed glasses, and experimental music.
No regard for aesthetics... (Score:2)
Why does that always seem to translate into "no regard for the aesthetics I find most valuable"?
We've had a ton of "debate" in Minneapolis over the last few years over teardowns in Southwest Minneapolis and there's always complaints about the "aesthetics", as if people were putting up houses that looked poorly built, used unpleasant color schemes or were otherwise easily identifiable eyesores. Most of them looked totally inoffensive.
These Seattle townhouses look like they're just your basic contemporary s
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You've not lived in a area subject to a draconian home owners association I take it?
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"It prevents your neighbors from deciding that they want to pave their backyard and put up a basketball court."
The funny thing wa
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No, and I will always actively seek to avoid it if possible. I don't know if I would ALWAYS refuse one, but given two similar properties I'd choose the one without the HOA.
I also think it's kind of a regional thing. I don't know of any HOAs off the top of my head that aren't townhouse developments.
Different times (Score:2)
When these small houses were built there was lots of room and fewer people. That has changed and there are more people who need to live in the same area. Neighbourhoods will change and densify. The only alternative is to grow outward and that is not a viable option as it creates land use and traffic issues.
As for the aesthetics issues, older homes are built very inefficiently. There is a lot of wasted space. Newer construction has to use the space more efficiently to allow more people to live on the same lo
Seattle has "no zoning" to prohibit this? (Score:4, Informative)
As far as aesthetics, just go to a neighborhood Design Review Board meeting, where the dozen or so busybodies in each neighborhood go and throw rotten vegetables at developers for hours, ruthlessly hounding them to get their designs more in line with the aesthetics of the busybody junta.
(A sufficiently small townhouse project can evade the board, much to the chagrin of the busybodies).
The problem with the townhouses is not that they're ugly or don't "fit in" but that too many of them get build without parking, as the anti-car elements on design boards and in the gummint browbeat developers into not offering parking.
I looked at a lot of the new Ballard construction when house shopping in 2013, before buying a condo in another 'hood, they're not bad, the kitchens especially are generally being done very nicely, but you can't please everyone with how they look from the outside, I guess.
Get off my lawn! (Score:4, Insightful)
Born & raised in Seattle. Sure, I'd love the good old days of the 80's before Seattle started to get crowded, but whatever, life goes on. We have a bunch more people here in Seattle these days then we ever did. We need space for the people that are here. Ballard has been a little home owning community. People would buy homes, start families there. Well, family homes are not what is needed anymore. You have young single professionals looking for places to work, not young married couples looking for places to start a family. Does it suck because the Ballard I & you remember is changing? Nope, this has been going on all over Seattle. We are NOT the little community we used to be anymore.
Seattle has grown up and it's time to get it new clothes that fit.
I live here, and I think this is great (Score:5, Interesting)
I live in Seattle.
I am all for the rebuild and densification of my city.
The city can't sprawl, and sprawl is wasteful and ugly.
Seattle was a company-town shithole for most of it's history, and only relatively recently has the nasty streetcrime and the worst of the corruption been mostly eliminated. (Most of the last bits of the bad poltical corruption left when a number of the the 40 year career party apparatchiks were invited to move to DC by their national party) The city is now ok-ish decently-ish well managed and has a thriving multi-centered economy, and so people want to live here. And I welcome them. As long as they are not from California and bring California's social and government pathologies with them.
99% of the people complaining about people moving here, are either people who moved here themselves, or are the children of people who moved here. You don't get to move someplace, and then start bitching that people should stop moving here after you move here yourself.
And I look at the buildings that are being demolished, and they made of old dried wood, and brick held together by crumbling mortar. A major earthquake, and they where going to fall down and catch fire. We need to demolish more of them faster, and build more denser buildings that are better able to resist the constant damp and moss, save water and sunlight and energy, made from steel not wood and sand.
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Congratulations! (Score:2)
You wrote:
"99% of the people complaining about people moving here, are either people who moved here themselves, or are the children of people who moved here. You don't get to move someplace, and then start bitching that people should stop moving here after you move here yourself."
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Congratulations; you summed up the entire GOP immigration debate as in "Hi I'm Bill O'Rielly, blowhard for Right Wing Nut Jobs. I'm the son of an Irish immigrant and i just HATE all the Mexicans coming into the count
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There, fixed that for you.
How do these articles get published? (Score:2, Troll)
This guy comes across as an archetypical `mangina', bleating and fawning over "women's causes" in the desperate hope that one of them would give him a pity fuck. Why on earth are we giving this bilge coverage on Slashdot?
I don't even know where to begin addressing the pseudo-feminist assertions and hypocrisies in this article:
1. I've already got mine, Jack, from Microsoft of all places. I've retired from tech life and am now looking for a way to remain relevant to the world.
2. Amazon's offices are sparse
Good lord, the parking (Score:2)
I grew up in Ballard. They were already starting to do this in the 80s, I remember when my neighbor's house got replaced by an apartment. As much as I liked the way things were early on, I really hope they make these new places big enough to have parking garages. Ballard is already way too low on on-street parking, and the roads are hideously narrow (plus traffic circles everywhere, oh man do the fire departments ever hate that).
They've been wrecking the place for decades trying to build a big suburb on
3.5 stories is a behemoth? Ya got to be kidding (Score:3)
Happened in the Silicon Valley as well... (Score:2)
Nothing new here...
Silicon Valley used to be farmland in the 70s/80s. HighTech and then the dotcoms appeared and the small 1500sqft homes were mowed down and larger homes were built. A starter home (3bd/2bath), built in 1965, in what used to be "sleepy Sunnyvale/Cupertino" is now $1.5m
Even looking at the demographics... when I went to grade school out here in the 80s my classes were all white/hispanic kids. Now those same classes have 10% caucasian and 90% Asian/Indian. No hispanic/black kids. And the a
Demand for housing (Score:2)
....and? (Score:2)
This is what no zoning laws will get you... (Score:2)
And people complain about zoning laws and HOAs and the like...
This would not be possible where I live, between the city, laws for zoning, and our HOA, you just couldn't do this...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E... [wikipedia.org]
That picture shows exactly why you have laws against "letting people do whatever they want without regard to other people".
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Which outcome would you have preferred?
(1) The developers were prevented from building the condos, thereby continuing a housing shortage and causing people to lose lots of money.
(2) The home got taken by eminent domain for some book value and then handed to the developer for next to nothing by the city?
I think that picture shows a better alternative to either outcome.
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You are implying that those were the only two choices...
They were not...
These three story townhomes are being built right next to single family homes, they are blocking out the sun.
This is why New York City back in the 30's passed a law about how tall buildings could be near the property line....
sounds great (Score:2)
Old, run-down, inefficient, low-density housing stock is replaced with modern, energy efficient, clean, high-density townhouses and condos. People should be happy about this.
The problem is wealthy f*cks like Reifman and his "let them eat cake" attitude. Hey, he got his multi-million dollar home; why doesn't everybody else get one too, instead of destroying those quaint neighborhoods that he likes to perambulate through. And he wants to be admired for his socially responsible views. He doesn't care about mon
Brogrammer - not a thing. (Score:2, Informative)
Sorry, angry millenials, but "brogrammer" is not a real thing. It's a made up word that means nothing, these days it's just something angry feminists call male programmers.
"There oughta be a law!!!" (Score:3)
Liberties are of utmost importance, whether it be for digital data, sexual preference, religion, property, or any other activity that does not INJURE others.
When you demand the right to control how your neighbor uses his property, you give implicit permission for him to control how you use your property. And that expands into every other facet of life.
I don't like the flooding of historic neighborhoods with huge boxes any more than you do, nor would I want my neighbor to build an asphalt plant, but the loss of liberty is of even greater concern to me. If my neighbor did choose to build an asphalt plant, I would complain loudly, but I would also defend his right to do so. I do not have a "right" to not see, not hear, or not smell that which offends me provided it does not injure me. There is no right to not be threatened; no right to "feel safe." And I have no right to guaranteed property value at all. But I do have the right to move somewhere else, and I have the responsibility to accept whatever that costs me.
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3 1/2 story behemoths without regard for aesthetics of any kind.
OK, so someone is replacing architecture the summary writier prefers with something they prefer. Different people have different tastes. Get over yourself.
That's my thought. I visited Seattle a few years ago and stayed in Tacoma. All the houses to me (although decent size) looked run down with rotted wood, really odd paint scemes, and clearly decades old construction. Those town homes actually look pretty decent to me, with a style you see in a lot of urban renewal type situations. So basically it sounds to me like people paid a lot of money for small, "historic" homes and are worried the "feel" of their street will change and property values will drop be
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The reference to "brogrammer" indicates that this is a social justice complaint. They tend to treat tech companies as part of the capitalist enemy, and that transforms "different people use different architecture" into "people with the wrong architecture are disruptive".
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It's Seattle. "a new neighborhood" means "30 more minutes from work, minimum".
To be honest though, I don't see why someone would be upset about the design of the homes... the buildings look fine, and don't even look particularly out of place for Seattle architecture. They're not old, that's about it.
The problem is inevitably going to be parking. There is no possible way for homes like that to have enough parking.
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Everyone seems to have a problem with suburban sprawl. Now the affluent are deciding to move back to the city center and we're complaining that there are too many of them and they want to rebuild and fix up the infrastructure?
Which is it?
Yeah, it drives up property value. Guess what, that's what naturally happens when you add services and make the place look better.
I'm all for maintaining historical housing, but how do you bring people into city centers and maintain the relatively low population density o
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IMHO they look better. Especially the interiors. I live in an 'old' house like that, it's very cheap to obtain but needs constant repairs and any improvements require major investment (lead and asbestos assessments, if any space renovation triggers the local code it needs to have fire sprinklers and CO/smoke detectors retrofitted).
If Amagoogsoft wants to buy it at 2 or 3 times the market rate, I'll happily sell it and buy one or two down the street (so they can do the same in a few years).
Sure it may be a b
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Yeah, but it's Texas.
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I like city life, but I understand your point of view. I'm currently in the 'burbs on a whopping quarter acre. I occasionally appreciate the peace and quiet in a way that I occasionally missed in the city.
With that said, zoning law is sufficient to address this "problem". If the zoning allows 3 stories and no setbacks, then that's what you'll get. Zone for 15 ft setbacks and 2 stories, and you'll get smaller boxes. This isn't rocket science.
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Thank god this is something they seem to realize is NOT the case in TX, and fortunately TX has the space to spare. I, for one, can't f- STAND living all packed in close together like that. I perceive it as some kind of mental illness.
Just don't complain when gas goes up again and all of that space to spare means that you have a 60 mile round trip commute so you're spending $10+/day in gas to get to work.
I live in a dense area (not quite urban, not quite suburban). When I lived 20 miles from the office, I took the train, now I live 3 miles from the office and ride my bike -- I couldn't tell you how much it cost to fill up my car because it was over a month ago.