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A Visual Walk Through Amazon's Impact On One Seattle Neighborhood

Posted by Soulskill on from the aside-from-the-all-the-packages-sitting-at-people's-doors dept.

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.

4 of 296 comments (clear)

  1. Is this an article on wealth redistribution? by BrookHarty · · 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?

  2. Re:I work in Seattle by WillAffleckUW · · 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)

    --
    -- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
  3. Re:Someone pissed they didn't get hired? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Every article listed, except for Wikipedia, is from reifman. Jeff Reifman has been on a tirade against Amazon for some time. At this point, we should all just ignore him.

  4. I live here, and I think this is great by Mark+Atwood · · 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.