Recently in Streets for People Category

The humble alley has been getting a lot of attention lately - from Igor, last week; and now this more favorable article from Northwest Hub about the Pioneer Square alley behind the Nord building. Alleys are spatially interesting. Alleys have a lot of potential. Alleys belong to us, to me and you. They are public rights-of-way, although because of problem behaviors many of our Belltown alleys were posted against trespassers. The Belltown Neighborhood Plan even calls for alleys to be used as pedestrian and bike routes. If the alley is well maintained and interesting, it can be a preferable route because there is little vehicular traffic. Because many extant Belltown structures were built without parking, there are some very appealing alleys in Belltown that see some positive, active use (the negatives have been very present, as well, but there has been much improvement).

 

Some cities take alley cleanup and use seriously. Alleys get new fancy names with "mews" or "lane" attached, and become a new type of urban street. You see this in new development too. A big new condo building goes in, and a sign is put up reading "Post Alley North" (where I live) or "News Lane" for the 1521 building. It's a way of adding cache to a big project, and to the units on the named alley. Everyone knows Post Alley through the Market. Belltown has alleys that have a sense of that character, of having many uses, becoming almost a secondary street.

 

This alley is a fascinating place, with wrought iron balconies and the skateboarding skeleton, thanks to Black Dog Forge, which operates here. Dead Baby Bikes was here, as witnessed by the artwork on the roll-down door - which remains, although the bikes are gone (to Counterbalance Bicycles in Uptown). This is a fabulous alley, even more interesting because the one-story storefronts (home of Roq la Rue and Halogen galleries) become two-stories on the alley. Note the old brick pavement still in place, too.

 

Via Tribunali is on the corner of the alley behind the Crocodile. It's a great new addition to the neighborhood and created an amazing transformation of the alley, in conjunction with the Clear Alleys program. (For photos of the transformation, see Evolution of an Alley). I admire their moxie, but wonder how well it's been working for them, as they keep doing things to increase traffic - sidewalk sandwich boards, adding a streetside roll-down door, then putting up this illuminated arrow. Wags has moved to this alley too, and the people at Mama's seem to be thinking about expanding into the former Import Doctor garage, but that's uncertain. It seems odd, but even with the new uses in this public alleyway the "NO TRESPASSING" sign is still in effect. It helps in policing unwanted alley behavior. There have been a lot more people walking through these active alleys just to stroll or to get somewhere, and that helps too.

 

Bathtub Gin opened in the alley behind the Humphrey this summer. They operate in mysterious ways, covering the alley door with plywood during the day and not advertising their hours of operation, in speakeasy style. I hope that's working for them. The Humphrey also has a unique and wonderful courtyard restaurant, La Fontana. All of these uses are possible because the building doesn't have parking - it wasn't needed in 1923 and people do without it now. Wags was on this alley previously, with their nice sign. I don't know who is responsible for the "I Am Pabst" mural. I'd like to see artists turned loose in one of our alleys, doing something similar to the murals on the Vogue (Vain), or like the rooms in the hostel, or even like the alley behind Rendezvous. There are actually, sometimes, funds for that sort of thing; alleys are public spaces and artists need to be paid.

 

 

I live on north Post Alley. I had been there for some time before I realized that, across the alley, was a building I had studied in graduate school, the John Carney building, SRO replacement housing designed by Michael Pyatok. It's a small world. Anyway, this building has no parking, so the alley was used for double-height artist studio lofts, or live-work spaces. I don't know if artists live there or not, but there the units are. We build more residential parking right now than we actually need, because banks don't want to give credit (or didn't, when it was available at all) to developers unless they build parking - they think the market demands it. Others think the demand is not there, and the parking below our new buildings will be converted to some other use. They may even become the new industrial artist work spaces for Belltown, someday. 

Cross-posted to Inside Belltown

In April the Clear Alleys program went into effect, along with the new city waste disposal contract. In an effort to get dumpsters out of alleys to improve visibility and curb drug-related and other antisocial activities, trash is now put into bags and picked up several times a day. In some cities cleaning up the alleys has led to businesses opening off of them, and they get their own names, usually with "lane" or mews or something like that attached. This is the alley in Belltown between 2nd and Third, behind the newly (and successfully) reopened Crocodile music venue. The pizzeria serves the Croc and the public; the (pretty fancy) dining room can only be accessed off the alley. They have a big red Via Tribunali pizza oven.


November 26, 2008


February 4, 2009


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March 26, 2009


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April 20, 2009


May 4, 2009

Found in this Streetsblog post (original post on The Thoreau You Don't Know here) in response to this wonderful article on biking etiquette by Robert Sullivan in the New York Times, which drew some predictable responses. This even encourages me to try bike commuting again, to see if I can get the technique down. Otherwise, I'm afraid of the street on some stretches, but uncomfortable riding amongst pedestrians on the sidewalk. Here's to the schluffle.

cross posted to Seattle Great City Initiative

This started out as something of a rant. I've been frustrated with a local campaign that I've been peripherally a part of, called Streets for People, part of the Seattle Great City Initiative and now the Seattle Network. The stated campaign philosophy uses the right words, about moving away from auto dominance and making streets better for walking, biking and transit. My experience of it so far, however, is that it is dominated by bicycle enthusiasts. When I first wrote this, I have to admit to actually writing something like "male, testosterone driven, speed obsessed bicycle advocates" because that represents the person who tends to jump down my throat if I dare to suggest that cyclists might control their speed in certain situations. This is of course biased and unfair to the women cyclists who are equally obsessed, but I have hormonal issues of my own and should probably avoid writing this at all. Ah, well, here it is anyway.

If this was still the rant, I would be going on about the difference between people and human powered machines, which is what a bicycle is. They are technologically advanced machines, capable of ever greater speeds, dependent on complicated gearing systems. The speed, and the cyclists speed obsession, is the problem with mixing these speed machines on the same paths with people on foot. Of course, the real speed machine, the deadly one, is the automobile. Giving streets, or a larger share of them, to people on bicycles would benefit pedestrians as well, by getting the bikes off the sidewalks.

That's enough ranting now, really. The point is that this campaign should be about finding common interests, getting the single-issue advocates out of their silos and combining efforts between interest groups, to greater effect. We seem to be reinforcing and increasing the number of silos instead. When I became unhappy with Streets for People, I started looking around. There's another group called Safe Walks, which sounds good, but the focus is on building sidewalks in the annexed suburbs. I'm not really interested in advocating for more infrastructure for single-family neighborhoods, although they do have a deadly serious problem for people trying to walk along arterial roads. I'd still rather reduce and slow down the cars, to make streets safer for people, but those neighborhoods are too heavily car dependent.

Then there was the big push to renew the parks levy, which I have to say I really didn't care about at all. My streets are my open space, and downtown parks are the receptacle of problems that have not found solutions, havens for the disenfranchised and for drug dealers. I have my own silo of interests, and our public right of way contains all of them. Open space, sunlight and air circulation, park and playground, place for green infrastructure, for cyclists, walkers and transit, it's all there in the street, if only we could combine our efforts to take back a share of it. This would-be rant is probably counter-productive, and more indicative of my own faulty biases than of possible solutions, but it seems that one element is at the root of the goals of many of these groups, and that is taking back space, public space, from dedicated car usage. One element, one goal. Could we all get obsessed with that one?



(A final note on obsession: The title of this post is from a song by Kraftwerk, whose lead singer was so obsessed with cycling that, after being in a coma from a terrible bike accident, his first words upon awaking were to ask for his bicycle.)

Seattle doesn't know how to operate in snow. We had an unusual snow situation in December, with heavy snow falling for several days in one week, causing a rare buildup that stuck around and effectively shut down much of the day-to-day business of the city.



It also created an unusual opportunity for a sense of community, at least in my downtown neighborhood. Without all of the traffic, our streets were quiet. People who had nothing better to do felt free to get out and walk the streets, wave to and chat with their neighbors. People were sledding in the streets, or getting their exercise by shoveling sidewalks. It was a quite different feel from a normal business day, when every other street is a major traffic arterial filled with hurtling tons of loud, smelly vehicles. What if everyone lived near work, or near convenient transit? My neighborhood could be more like this every day.

 

It's a beautiful sight...

I have a fear of cyclists. It's hard to admit to. I fear some people on bicycles more than I fear drivers in cars. Irrational? Maybe - but cars don't drive on the sidewalk, usually. I fear those cyclists who whizz through pedestrian traffic on the sidewalk, who pass me by a hairbreadth with no warning, no care. I fear cyclists who blast through a crosswalk when pedestrians have the light, although admittedly not as much as I fear drivers who do the same. The need to preserve momentum at all costs seems to be an overwhelming need for some cyclists.

 

Conditions that make it easier for cars to speed also invite cyclists to speed - smooth pavements, wide turning radii on curves. I've walked amidst hordes of cyclists in Copenhagen and not felt this fear. For some reason fewer cyclists there show a need for speed - perhaps because of rough cobbled pavements? Because they have no concerns, confident that they can safely get where they want to go, on their bike? Perhaps they just have to slow down because of congestion - there are crowds of cyclists on the tracks, and throngs of cyclists mixing with pedestrians in some of the public plazas. We don't yet have that "critical mass" of cyclists, and our serious bicycle commuters are forced to ride with auto traffic. They behave accordingly, even when inappropriate. Cyclists are "soft" and should be treated as such, not treated like automobiles. They need their own space.

 

Our Market has rough brick paving, and cyclists do slow down. Too many still try to ignore pedestrian presence. I watched this cyclist driving into the market while a crowd was gathered for the holiday lighting ceremony. He seemed to have an overwhelming need to keep on the bike, wheels rolling, until it was absolutely impossible to proceed through the throngs of humanity. He finally stopped and looked around, acknowledging the "critical mass" of pedestrians.

 

From the Heart of the City...

 

and the Soul of the City...

Seasons Greetings from Seattle

Last week was a big week; a somewhat smaller event on the Monday before the elections was the AIA (American Institute of Architects) Honor Awards for Washington state. The theme this year was "Perform/Transform", and the jurors were looking for more than just buildings that look great in glossy photographs. Among other comments, they admonished submitters and the audience to give contextual information on their projects, photos or images that show how they fit in with their neighbors and surrounding environment.

Some of us are more interested in the spaces between the buildings than the buildings themselves; the buildings should inform, define, and serve the public space, the arteries and veins that feed our urban environment. William Whyte spoke of this in The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces, as did Jan Gehl in Life Between Buildings. Gehl Architects has been preparing a Public Places Public Life study for Seattle. They have been using local university students to count pedestrians and cyclists and to interview them for surveys (I was interviewed in July). One tidbit they released has to do with how underutilized our waterfront is. Since the 1950s, our waterfront has been walled off from our downtown by a double-decker elevated highway structure. As a result, on a good summer day we might get 16,000 pedestrians on the waterfront, whereas San Francisco will get 90,000. Many people love driving on the viaduct because there are fantastic views of Elliott Bay and the Olympic mountains. I think there might be other ways to enjoy the view besides from a car window. For those of us who live here, the viaduct is a blight in many respects. It was damaged in the Nisqually quake and will have to come down but there is no final decision on what will replace it.

 

Another thing that Gehl Architects (or someone they quote who did a study with brain scans) has determined is that our brains need a new impression every 4 seconds in order to keep our interest, or to keep our conscious mind engaged. That translates to a new impression every 10 meters or 33 feet, at a pedestrian pace (seems brisk - I'm not sure I walk that fast). It's a good rule of thumb for modulating facades, differentiating shop windows, placing entryways, street trees and furnishings, etc. This is what we have to do, in modern times - recreate the vernacular wisdom of the ages, which we seem to have lost with the coming of the car, through scientific proofs.