Toward a Living Community

TOWARD A LIVING COMMUNITY: A VISION FOR SEATTLE’S FIRST HILL AND ADJACENT NEIGHBORHOODS LIVING COMMUNITY CHALLENGE SM TABLE OF CONTENTS Note on document interactivity: Arrows on text and images generally link to another section of the document. Underlined text and case study headings link to the web. For convenience, the back arrow by the page numbers on the lower right hand corner return to the previously viewed page on double click. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: Thank you to the Bullitt Foundation, Summit Foundation, Kresge Foundation, and Boeing Foundation for their generous support without which the project would not have been possible. Special thanks to the many individuals and neighborhood partner organizations that contributed to this vision, in particular the Yesler Community Collaborative, the City of Seattle for staff time and data support, the First Hill Improvement Association, Futurewise, Virginia Mason, the Seattle 2030 District, Seattle Urban Farm Co. for local agriculture data, and McLennan Design for rendering and technical support. A full list of partner organizations can be found in the appendix. All icons from thenounproject.com Note on figures: All figures are estimates based on the best available data at the time of publication and assumptions which are called out in the text and images. These estimates are intended to illustrate vision and spur action. In-depth analyses and detailed planning are necessary to refine the vision as the process progresses. 12/2/2015 2 INTRODUCTION THE TIME IS NOW TO MAKE THE FIRST HILL SOUTH LAKE UNION AND CENTRAL DISTRICT CAPITOL HILL NEIGHBORHOODS OF SEATTLE BELLTOWN THE MOST ENVIRONMENTALLY REGENERATIVE, SOCIALLY JUST, AND CULTURALLY THRIVING NEIGHBORHOODS IN DOWNTOWN THE NATION. FIRST HILL CENTRAL This document is the summation of a year’s DISTRICT work to create a vision of a Living Community PUGET SOUND for the First Hill and Central District neighborhoods (hereafter referred to as the community). LAKE INTERNATIONAL WASHINGTON The intent of this document is to: DISTRICT a. Provide a physical record of the work; STADIUM DISTRICT b. Create a resource to guide future decisions for our neighborhood partners and government BEACON HILL staff; The community is proximate to downtown and is c. Inspire other planning teams/neighborhood centrally located in the city. It is surrounded by and COMMUNITY BOUNDARY groups/municipalities to undertake their composed of vibrant neighborhoods. own Living Community plans and to take action to create more resilient, equitable, and beautiful neighborhoods based on the ideas presented here. 00 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 3 INTRODUCTION cont. THE COMMUNITY REPRESENTS ONE OF THE MOST DIVERSE, VIBRANT, DENSELY A NOTE ON BREAKOUTS POPULATED, AND RAPIDLY CHANGING Throughout the document, POLICY AND GOVERNANCE PARTS OF SEATTLE. ONE NEED ONLY WALK action items and EQUITY implications are called out as DOWN ANY STREET TO SEE THE SCALE AND bullet points in blue-colored boxes similar to this. These threads support all of this work and provide the basis for IMMEDIACY OF THIS CHANGE ON MANY next steps in subsequent phases. LARGE AND SMALL PARCELS ALIKE. POLICY AND GOVERNANCE BREAKOUT This document reflects the vision, input, and feedback of many individuals and organizations who dedicated time to the planning process. The most • The Living Community Challenge and this study can substantial contribution to date of this first round of the stakeholder inspire a broader, deeper reinvention of the city through engagement process is the structure of the vision itself, which emerged in to the upcoming Seattle Comprehensive Plan update. a charrette in June of 2015. The participants of the charrette envisioned a regenerative future of the community around the topic areas of: integrating • This study envisions the cityscape as an equitable place urban agriculture and food systems into the neighborhood; radically for all, through significant reintegration of wildness and transforming networks within the right-of-way as places that favor people and nature to the city, and radical right of way repurposing place making rather than motorized vehicles; using net zero water principles (30% of the entire city area). This vision can help with on a micro-watershed scale; guiding and implementing a renewably powered the city’s Vision Zero and open space goals by creating future for the neighborhood; and creating a more healthy, equitable, and livable a place predominantly for people rather than cars and neighborhood to foster the significant community that already exists in the machines. community. • The study can assist city government as it addresses In addition to establishing a vision for the community, this document also energy use in existing buildings as part of its includes a concise set of quantitative analyses and benchmarks meant to support and guide this vision. More detailed information such as physical and Climate Action Plan, encourages integrated water resource analyses are included in the various appendices. management to reduce stormwater pollution, and takes proactive steps for resilience in the city’s first Climate Following a quick historical sketch, the vision for the community is illustrated Preparedness Strategy. through five vignettes; ideas which emerged during the previously mentioned charrette. The vignettes are followed by preliminary implementation and • The City of Seattle has entered a new era of inclusion phasing strategies focused on the block scale and biased towards meaningful and affordability, as the new Equity and Environment action. The final section outlines actionable next steps for the project team, Initiative demonstrates. The Living Community vision City leadership, and neighborhood partners to advance this vision. Certainly no that is laid out in this document provides a framework communities are built in a day, least of all Living Communities. This document for social justice as a critical component of equitable represents the first year of work to create a Living Community in First Hill and livability measures for the First Hill and Central District the Central District, though it is not itself the Living Community or even master neighborhoods, and beyond. plan, it is intended to be an important and useful step along the way. 00 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 4 Boren Avenue reimagined as a place for life. 00 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 5 Streets that are abundant living systems 00 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 6 01. CONTEXT 7 THERE IS A TENDENCY WHEN When Europeans first began building settlements previously thought*, they did so in a way that was in the Puget Sound region, they believed that they more interactive than subjugative. VIEWING THE LANDSCAPE were stepping into an idyllic, static, and benevolent TO BELIEVE THAT THINGS landscape, but they were not its first residents. It did not take long for the newer settlers to bump The Native American tribes in the region, such as into the shorter natural cycles of the region. Hillsides HAVE ALWAYS BEEN AS THEY the Duwamish people, understood the dynamism that had been logged in the dry season quickly began APPEAR NOW. of the place; they built their traditions, habits, and sliding in long rainy seasons. Settlements built on culture around the constant ebb and flow of the fill began sinking into tidal flats that refused to be tamed. Rivers flooded, blocking transport routes An old growth forest may be clear-cut and tide, seasonal variation in the weather and migratory and ruining crops. Steep hillsides and ravines made logged in one generation, return as new patterns of animals, and even understood and transportation and service infrastructure difficult. growth in the next, and appear as a natural, adjusted to the long-term cycles of climate change, glaciers, volcanoes, earthquakes, and tsunamis. The native ecosystem to the next. The short span Rather than adapt to the needs of place, these Native Americans had a culture that worked much of a human life compared to the long time latecomers instead decided to adapt the place to more closely with nature and its rhythms, taking their needs. Large-scale geoengineering projects span of natural and geological processes advantage of natural bounties and systems. While were undertaken to level hills (Denny and First Hill contributes to the belief that the natural world recent research has concluded that Native Americans among them), simultaneously displacing the often is static, when, in reality, it is anything but. manipulated the landscape much more than was poor and “undesirable” people who lived on their slopes. Fresh water was collected into reservoirs and piped from the mountains; electric power was generated by harvesting the flow of this water; rivers were dredged and rerouted to formalize property, minimize flooding, and secure navigation routes; and tidal flats were filled in with the detritus of these operations to create more property available for sale and commerce where Seattle’s hills meet the Sound. The European transformation of the area began in the late 1880s. Early photos offer a disorienting, even breathtaking, perspective. Fresh new homes and the first paved road in the area, Madison Street, sit amidst clearcuts and stumps, surrounded by remaining trees, reminding one of rural development in the Cascade foothills today—except that this is the core neighborhood of the city. A hopeful windmill stands at the edge of the First Hill residential neighborhood, perhaps reflecting Midwest or Dutch heritage, except then as now, there is not enough wind in the area to generate meaningful mechanical or electrical power. * Mann, Charles C. (2005). 1491 : New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus. New York :Knopf View of Madison from First Hill shortly after the area was logged. All historic images courtesy of pauldorpat.com. 01 CONTEXT 8 View of Madison from First Hill shortly after the area was logged and developed. All historic images courtesy of pauldorpat.com. Written records from the period offer a tantalizing The area did not take long to receive more major cars, and as the area densified and car ownership glimpse of a frontier under transformation.

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