Slashdot Mirror
A Visual Walk Through Amazon's Impact On One Seattle Neighborhood
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.
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?
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.
People have to live somewhere. As Seattle grows, if not from Amazon's expansion from other economic growth, the people moving in will need places to live. Placing those people in townhouses replacing low-rise bungalows is a good thing, in my opinion. The alternative is to expand the city ever outward, creating more suburbs. Instead what seems to be happening is that previously suburban neighbourhoods are becoming urbanized. Increased densification of these neighbourhoods makes public transport more viable, and will likely increase local commerce, making it a more walkable neighbourhood. I might have chosen a different architectural style for those townhouses, but overall I don't see how this is anything but a positive direction of urban development.
And "brogrammer"? Seriously? Submitter is an entitled, classist jackass.
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.
Infuriate left and right
Seriously, welcome to every single desirable, thriving metropolitan area in the country right now. Every single one of them.
Why is Slashdot running a political hitpiece against Amazon in the firstplace? WTF Dice?? The SJW stories are bad enough, but at least they're usually trying to be somewhat tech-related. This is pure politcal/corporate propaganda.
Alas, poor Slashdot - I knew him Horatio.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
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.
-Styopa
Middle class never meant that. It's only modern usage that has extended the usage of the term towards working-class families.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
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).
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.
Be seeing you...
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".
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.