The Phoenixes, Tulsas and Fresnos of American can take heart. Sometimes even the most progressive cities make really dumb decisions. Seattle has been agonizing for years about what to do about the earthquake-damaged Alaskan Way Viaduct, which runs through downtown along the waterfront. The decision: replace it with another viaduct, or two surface streets.
Somehow the obvious answer, putting the roadway into a tunnel, which would have opened up the waterfront of Elliott Bay to downtown, never made the cut. Whatever the excuse, it's a potent reminder that America has lost the ability to do great and visionary projects. This didn't happen even in the worst years of the Great Depression. The problem is not lack of funding, but lack of will and hope, another symptom of decadence.
For Seattle, the lost opportunity will be as monumental as another viaduct is ugly. The renderings always show fanciful outdoor dining tables under the spaghetti concrete spans of traffic. But we know what will really be underneath the new monstrosity. At least the old viaduct had a certain 1950s Naked City gritty beauty. The surface street option is bad in its own special way, adding to congestion and placing a barrier of traffic between the city and its waterfront. A people who have lost the ability to dream big are not capable of designing wide Parisian boulevards.
What's perhaps most striking is the way transportation planners and elected leaders are stuck in the past. Stuck in the mindset that the next 50 years will be a replay of the past 50, and the personal automobile will be the defining characteristic of the future. Even the normally bullish International Energy Agency just released a sobering report about future oil supplies and peak oil (more on this later in the week).
The point is that the age of the auto as we knew it is fading. Energy will be more expensive and sprawl much less appealing. Transportation choices will be important because no magic, inexpensive alt-fuel car is going to drop from the sky. Alas, the vandalism that has passed for civic design in recent decades has yet to catch up.
Seattle spends a good deal of time fretting that it can't make the smarter choices of its neighbor to the south. Portland has an extensive light-rail system, while Seattle has yet to open its first line (and was slowed by people saying "we don't even know if this will work" when in fact light rail works all around the world). Portland also smartly rejected a freeway along its riverfront, creating the city's wonderful "front lawn" that exists today. The park was built instead of a freeway and somehow the world kept spinning. Such green, compact and sustainable urban decisions are proving good for business in Portland. Similarly, San Francisco was forced by a quake to take down the ghastly Embarcadero Freeway, opening up its waterfront that is now a thriving, pedestrian-friendly, trolley-served gathering place. Again, the earth didn't stand still.
Seattle? So far, it's acting very Phoenix-like. That knowledge should erase some of its legendary smugness.
The first time I visited Seattle, my dominant impression was not its beauty so much as its compromises: the I-5 gash through the heart of the city, the viaduct’s ugliness and noise, and the ghastly sprawl. Seattle is blessed by nature in a way few other cities are. The old city largely honors that. The newer city, not so much.
There’s the familiar rule about short-term pleasure trumping long-term good. For example, Boston’s Big Dig is synonymous with public works’ boondoggles but it is a long-term good. Deck Park in Phoenix is another example. Mitigating the worst aspects of freeways is a solid investment because the beauty of any place is an incalculable economic asset. In the same vein, good urban spaces and architecture are a human need. Take that away and community suffers along with some portion of our mental health.
Like most people, I love cars but they have done more to ruin cities than just about anything. Even with Peak Oil staring us in the face, we can’t quite imagine a different – and better – future. The cities that really work best do so by checking car travel. We could possibly make a virtue of necessity by planning now for car-free cities. But that short-term pleasure thing keeps most of us paralyzed.
While a tunnel replacement would have been ideal, this overlooks the enormous potential of the surface/transit alternative. Should these improvements be implemented correctly, the waterfront could begin to resemble aspects of the Embarcadero or better yet something unique to Seattle.
As a Phoenix native, current Portland resident, and former Seattle resident, I particular enjoy the commentary on this blog linking the 3 cities. However, I find the reference to the Portland MAX system interesting. Seattle absolutely squashes Portland in terms of overall transit mobility. MAX is great for those that have access to it, but it has come at the expense of the Tri-Met bus system, which has a fraction of the service frequency and coverage, has an old and dated bus fleet, and uses an atiquated route structure that results in slow travel times. Seattle’s long delay in building light rail may be a blessing in disguise as it could eventually (assuming the northern Link segement is built) have the most balanced transit system in the West.
Must ditto Soleri.That was exactly the same thought I had when I visited Seattle.We had to take a ferry across the bay to see the beautiful city and bay.Seattle can and must do better-if no other reason to show Phoenix that common areas should be uncommonly beautiful.
Living in the Seattle area for 43 of my 53 years I can say that this is typical of the city.
We have done some interesting things that give us a reputation for innovation: the Yukon-Pacific Exposition in the 1890’s became the campus of the University of Washington, the 1962 World’s Fair became the Seattle Center (with the constantly tantalising monorail), Freeway Park created public greenspace above the I-5 gash that soleri mentions above, a world-class bus system (in 1988 – they have the awards to p-rove it) with it’s downtown tunnel, and the Washington State Convention Center was built over the same gash many years later saving tons of money in real estate and legal fees.
In among those achievements we have the Viaducts built-but-never-used ramps intended to connect to I-90, the I-90 interchange to I-5 that remained incomplete from the early 60’s till the late 80’s, The bus system that lived, unaltered, past its prime, the monorail boondoggle that started in the 90’s, the current struggle with the Viaduct and don’t get me started on the Sea-Tac airport 3rd runway or the recently proposed 4th.
Plus those fine achievements above often had major problems: Freeway Park and the Convention Center mean that we cannot ever widen the freeway in that part of town (this may be a blessing in disguise).
The Bus tunnel was built originally with rails in the floor because it was always intended to convert to a rail tunnel. By the time we got around to it, we learned that the rails installed were the wrong kind so we had to close the tunnel to buses for two years just to put in the right kind.
The bus system was only world-class if you intended to go into the city in the morning and get out of the city in the afternoon. Try going the other way or getting from one suburban center to another! The only real option to get from Auburn to Federal Way (adjacent communities) was to take a bus into Seattle and back out again, a total trip of over 40 miles one-way with at least two transfers.
Seattle is more manic-depressive or schizophrenic than progressive. We occasionally make good, even great, decisions but we are always tempted to be stupid instead. Since we just opened a Lake Union Streetcar last year and will open the light rail system next year, we’re due to make a bad choice next. Maybe Jon’s presence will help prevent that.
“Stuck in the mindset that the next 50 years will be a replay of the past 50, and the personal automobile will be the defining characteristic of the future.”
I’ve been saying something similar for over 30 years:
The country that made the most automobiles won the 20th century. The country that learns to live without them will win the 21st.
I suspect that less than one percent of Americans have pondered this idea. Fewer dare believe it. But remember: Nearly everyone you know has been fed a steady diet of automobile commercials since infancy. This one makes you sexy, that one will make you powerful; this one wins the girls, that one grants you status…
The whole damn thing has so permeated the consciousness of our denizens that it is nothing unusual for one of us to plop down for a meal not 20 feet from the roar and toxic stench of traffic. Bon appetit anyone?
Of course I am simplifying a bit here. The auto-culture is driven by more than just its relentless advertising. Fundamentally the addiction is rooted in the palanquin idea: That four slaves that will lift your royal arse up and bear you wheresoever you desire. Just snap your fingers. The auto has made us all royalty borne on the shoulders of rubber slaves. The engine does our instant bidding. Ultimately history has shown us, it is damn hard to give up one’s slaves…
But again, I am simplifying. The cultural entrenchment of the automobile goes deeper than the ads. It goes even deeper than having powerful slaves to shoulder you up and carry you to the track for a run…
Ultimately we can’t escape this stupid system because we are the machines. I get a kick when I see sci-fi writers speculate on cyborgs as if they are something purely futuristic. Please. Wake up. We have had man-machines for decades. They have come to dominate and overrun the planet. I call them “automobeings.”
You there! You know the thoughts and the feelings of these automobeings. You have been an intimate part of a cyborg hybrid. You know this as well as I do: An automobeing cares only about one thing only: Its own forward progress.
That is why automobeings have an unquenchable appetite for landscape and fuel. Unquenchable! Forward progress and only forward progress. That is all they know. It is their basal modi operandi. And it is that very hunger that has changed the surface and atmosphere of this planet.
The automobeing is earth’s dominant organism. VW had it wrong. It isn’t the joy of driving that infects us, it is the joy of being wedded to a powerful machine.
Was it Thoreau who wrote “Machines makes us powerful without giving us wisdom”? So true. I have a little refrain I repeat when I strap myself to a different sort of machine and bicycle through traffic:
Strong engines. Weak hearts.
Fast cars. Fat stomachs.
Big trucks. Little minds.
That is our culture. That is who we are and what we are. It is our past. It is our future. It cannot be changed. There is no escape and no exit. We are automobeings and we will not dare shoot ourselves in the carburetor…