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.

Comments

Microsoft was better?

[Spy Handler]

I don't recall people of Seattle complaining about how Bill Gates ravaged their city in the 90's...

Re:Microsoft was better?

[Mr D from 63]

It looks like an efficiency improvement to me.

Re:Microsoft was better?

[l0ungeb0y]

Because with MS most of the Developers bought shiny new McMansions built in Redmond, Issaquah, Bellevue and Mercer Island -- new development that expanded communities in the Eastside rather than tearing down historic neighborhoods that didn't need "revitalizing".

Re:Microsoft was better?

[lgw]

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.

Re:Microsoft was better?

[l0ungeb0y]

No, what's being talked about is the people who WORK for Amazon and other Tech Companies that are "revitalizing" perfectly fine neighborhoods with new development that clashes with the existing community. Plenty of MS employees lived in Seattle -- hell Metro created an entire express Bus Route from the shiny new Bus Tunnel on Olive Way over the 520 right to MS HQ They were happy to buy existing and upgrade homes in Seattle rather than tear them down to build something more "modern" in a neighborhood built and designed at the turn of the 19th century for Middle Class families -- back when middle class meant being a butcher, policeman or other lower skilled worker or tradesman.

Re:Microsoft was better?

[whoever57]

back when middle class meant being a butcher, policeman or other lower skilled worker or tradesman.

Middle class never meant that. It's only modern usage that has extended the usage of the term towards working-class families.

Re:Microsoft was better?

[goombah99]

They changed the view across lake Washington from trees to houses. It's staggering if you lived there before MS bloomed.

Re:Microsoft was better?

[DerekLyons]

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.

Re:Microsoft was better?

[Anonymous Coward]

are "revitalizing" perfectly fine neighborhoods with new development that clashes with the existing community.

Perfectly fine? If they were perfectly fine, why didn't people just buy the existing houses and move into them? Perhaps because they weren't perfectly fine for the people moving in? Nobody's tearing down houses and putting up new houses "just because."

rather than tear them down to build something more "modern" in a neighborhood built and designed at the turn of the 19th century for Middle Class families

What is this hard-on you have for preserving something "built and designed at the turn of the 19th century"? A lot of that old housing is shitty, drafty, inefficient, poorly laid out, and full of toxic materials. New housing will be more energy efficient, better laid out, made of better (and less-toxic) materials, and as durable (if not MORE durable) than the kit houses they're tearing down. They're not tearing down the fucking Parthenon - these houses aren't "precious historical artifacts that need preserving."

And as far as middle class - if Seattle wanted to preserve living space for middle income families, then they should change the zoning to encourage higher-density apartments and condos (yes, high-rises to replace your precious kit houses), so that plenty of housing could be built, which would keep prices affordable even in the more "desirable" areas. The only way to keep pricing stable in a desirable area is to allow (and encourage) developers to build *up*. Otherwise, you're starting a bidding war for open acreage.

Re:Microsoft was better?

[MachineShedFred]

What's funny is that the smart-growth crowd doesn't call this "ravaging" but rather calls it "ingrowth" and "densification". It also "creates livable, walkable neighborhoods."

I guess Amazon just made the mistake of doing this in Seattle rather than Portland where it's called approved growth planning.

Re:Microsoft was better?

[Sir_Eptishous]

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.

Frasier reruns did the rest.

Re:Microsoft was better?

[david_thornley]

My definition of middle class is those people who have to work much of their life for a good living, but have some leisure time, some education, some financial stability, and something to lose if things go bad. The upper class doesn't have to work for a living (although quite a few do). The lower classes don't have financial stability, have trouble making a good living, and generally have little they can lose in a financial problem. The middle class is vital to democracy, since they have the numbers, the ability to pay attention to and participate in politics, and reason to be careful.

Re:Microsoft was better?

[WillAffleckUW]

The only neighborhoods that didn't change were the rich ones like Queen Anne, Wallingford, Montlake, and so on.

That's what MSFT did.

(caveat - I bought my first house with $ from trading MSFT stock on announced information, where I got my first down payment - and have worked for them)

Re:Microsoft was better?

[WillAffleckUW]

You fail to understand all the subcontracting and connected firms. Probably 10 percent of the jobs were MSFT created. Many of our dot coms and current tech firms are from MSFT people.

Re:Microsoft was better?

[Nethead]

And I remember when Wallingford was middle-class. Hell, even I was able to live there back in my hippie days.

Re:Microsoft was better?

[maccodemonkey]

Most of the growth that lead to Seattle's infamous traffic was/is equally to the east of Seattle proper.

To be fair, most of Seattle's traffic problems were due to Microsoft being in Redmond, and a giant lake being between Redmond and Seattle, meaning you had few very routes from where people actually lived, to where people actually worked.

If Microsoft was in Seattle (as Amazon is) I doubt they would have affected traffic to the same degree. But, as Amazon is doing, it would have led to a lot of Seattle's residential neighborhoods, especially North Seattle, going through huge changes.

Re:Microsoft was better?

[WillAffleckUW]

Remember the bean sprout stereotypes ... yup

Re:Microsoft was better?

[WillAffleckUW]

You're saying Wallingford isn't middle class? How do you work that out?

You can afford $1 million for a house on a median wage of $40,000 for a family? ... really?

I see. And is this with or without the imaginary unicorn garden?

Re:Microsoft was better?

[shutdown -p now]

There were (and are) plenty of people at Microsoft who want the same thing as those Amazon guys. It's just that for those who do, it makes much more sense to do so on the Eastside (and more recently, in Snoqualmie).

Re:Microsoft was better?

[stevesliva]

It's what's intended with zoning, no doubt. This block must be zoned multifamily. Probably near transit or commerce or an arterial...

I work in Seattle

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Re:I work in Seattle

[mrchaotica]

The real question is: When do we cross the line when legislating aesthetics.

This isn't necessarily an issue of aesthetics, it's an issue of size and density (lot floor area ratios). It could be fixed by simply changing the zoning such that only single-family houses were allowed, with a floor area ratios less than X, and with a maximum roof height less than Y.

Alternatively, the older houses in those photos look old enough that they could just declare the neighborhood to be a historic district and then they couldn't be torn down to build gigantic new shit. In that case, the only aesthetic consideration would be "matching what's already there."

Re:I work in Seattle

[WillAffleckUW]

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)

Re:I work in Seattle

[PopeRatzo]

I really think you don't get that our population will DOUBLE by 2025.

By "our population", do you mean Ballard, Seattle, the US or the entire world?

Because it matters. A few months ago, I drove through Nebraska, and it didn't look to me like we're in danger of running out of habitable surface area in the US. And having seen a National Geographic special on the Asian continent, it doesn't look like we're going to be running out of habitable surface area on planet Earth (assuming no catastrophic climate change, which I don't).

If you're talking about Seattle, or the Ballard neighborhood, then it's just a matter of smart zoning and perhaps raising the top income tax rate to 90% like it was in the '50s.

Re:I work in Seattle

[ShanghaiBill]

It could be fixed by simply changing the zoning such that only single-family houses were allowed

This is exactly the sort of crap that leads to urban sprawl, and all the wasted hours on commutes, pollution, oil consumption, etc. We have the same problems in the Bay Area, where SF rejected more than 95% of building permits last year, and 90 minute commutes are routine. If you don't want the sprawl, the only alternative is dense housing in the core city. We need to stand up to the NIMBYs, or even worse, the BANANAs.

Re:I work in Seattle

[WillAffleckUW]

Spreading out won't help - it just increases traffic congestion. I'm specifically referring to the adjacent neighborhoods like Wallingford, Montlake, Capitol Hill, Queen Anne.

All the arterials everywhere.

The entire city population - and regional population - is going to double. Pretending it won't is part of the problem, and pushing growth out is part of what led to the current problem.

I was in the meetings where we decided to upzone SLU to 8 stories. Maybe you missed them.

Re:I work in Seattle

[SnapShot]

When demand for housing is high, if you zone to restrict change by limiting size and density you will increase the cost. This is great for the established home owner / NIMBYs. It keeps the renters and young people out while inflating the value of their homes. On the other hand, it's terrible for those poorer, younger people and it's also terrible for traffic as they get pushed farther and farther from the jobs. This is exactly the trade-off that San Francisco has made: keep the neighborhoods from changing and keep the existing homeowners happy at the expense of the poorer, younger workers. I'm assuming that Seattle will eventually make that same decision because homeowners have a lot more political clout than renters.

Re:I work in Seattle

[neoritter]

Spreading out will actually help in the long run. Overly dense urban areas are blights to natural habitats and put strains on natural waste management. This all assumes of course that logistics can or will be improved. For example, more teleworking.

Re:I work in Seattle

[WillAffleckUW]

Nope. Many studies have disproven this. Sprawl is less efficient. People who live in dense cities consume much less than sprawl SFH suburbs - frequently 1/10th as much. We drive less (many of us use walking, bikes, or transit, or drive short distances) and use less energy.

Face it, we're better than you.

And we're not subsidizing suburbs either. Those days are over.

Re:I work in Seattle

[hawguy]

It could be fixed by simply changing the zoning such that only single-family houses were allowed

This is exactly the sort of crap that leads to urban sprawl, and all the wasted hours on commutes, pollution, oil consumption, etc. We have the same problems in the Bay Area, where SF rejected more than 95% of building permits last year, and 90 minute commutes are routine. If you don't want the sprawl, the only alternative is dense housing in the core city. We need to stand up to the NIMBYs, or even worse, the BANANAs.

A friend inherited a house in SF (Sunset district) that was in pretty poor shape - he looked at the cost and time to get a permit to tear it down and replace it with a 2 unit duplex that would have fit almost within the same footprint of the existing house. He quickly gave on up that due to the cost and no assurance of ever getting his plan approved -- anyone nearby could tie up the planning process nearly indefinitely and he can't really afford to sit on an unoccupied house for a year or more while waiting for planning approval.

Instead he opted to do a nearly down to studs remodel back into a single family house. Everyone in SF complains about the cost of housing, but no one seems to want higher density.

Re:I work in Seattle

[mrchaotica]

Well, my post presupposes that increasing density is a problem in the first place and addresses how to solve that problem. If one rejects that premise, then of course what I said doesn't apply.

For the record, I like both the single family houses and the higher-density stuff in those photos, but I agree they shouldn't be mixed together quite like that. What they ought to do is pick which nieghborhoods should go higher-density and which should be preserved (and it's valid for the answer to be "all of them," if that's what they decide), and adjust the zoning accordingly.

Of course, the real solution would be for Amazon to open satellite offices in other cities (say, Atlanta) and stop trying to turn Seattle into a company town.

Re:I work in Seattle

[NotDrWho]

In my experience terms like "aesthetics" and "historical integrity" usually translates to:

1) All I care about is my property values, the rest of the world be damned!
2) I bought this house decades ago with the assumption that this neighborhood would never, ever, ever, ever change. NO TAKEBACKS!

Re:I work in Seattle

[LDAPMAN]

You as an individual may directly consume less but the cost to support the infrastructure and logistics of major urban centers is very high. As an example, think of the costs involved in building and maintaining the sewer and storm drain network.

Re:I work in Seattle

[__aaclcg7560]

assuming no catastrophic climate change, which I don't

Sea level is expected to rise by two feet in 2050 and four feet in 2100. My apartment complex in Silicon Valley is located on a flood plain that will be under water, assuming that no levees are built to prevent that from happening. The only levee plan I heard about was for the San Francisco Airport. I'm planning to retire to Las Vegas long before that happens.

Re:I work in Seattle

[AuMatar]

ANd suburbs and rural areas still need all that- in fact they need more of it due to the larger geographical area. This means the per person cost is far more when spread out. That's *why* the cost are cheaper in urban areas, the same amount of capacity needs to be put in a far smaller area.

Re:I work in Seattle

[Bob the Super Hamste]

in SF

I think I found the problem.

Granted it isn't just SF but the whole general area. My wife's grandmother who is 88 still lives in the house they bought out there shortly after WWII in Marin county and it is more cost effective to continue to live in the house and pay people to come and take care of everything than to move into a senior living place. A friend of the family that worked for HP near the beginning until he retired likes to joke that he always wanted to live in a multimillion dollar home, he just didn't think it would be the home he bought when he started at HP a 2 block walk to work. Even in far away places that aren't CA suffer from these things as there was a recent case in St. Paul, Minnesota where a demo permit was issued and then retracted the same day and the owner had to sue the city to demolish his own property.

As someone who leans fairly libertarian my answer to these people who complain about new development is that if they don't like it they should buy the property. I also believe that people like Edith Macefield should be able to tell a developer to piss off and there isn't anything thing the government can do to force her to give up her property.

Re:I work in Seattle

[__aaclcg7560]

San Jose is no longer sprawling outward as it once did since the 1970's. Mixed developments of ground floor stores and four-story apartments are popping up along the light-rail and other transit corridors. Many of the two-story tilt-ups from the 1990's are getting replaced by four- to seven-story office buildings. With much of Silicon Valley under the flightways of several major airports, condo and office skyscrapers are limited to 21-stories or so.

Re:I work in Seattle

[njnnja]

I'm not sure about 1). The new entrants are probably increasing property values. But TFA makes clear that the issues are the important stuff, like

The western afternoon light is gone

If that doesn't satisfy the definition of "Armageddon" I don't know what does.

Re:I work in Seattle

[LunaticTippy]

Land is so valuable in Silicon Valley you can count on levees being built. We will hire some experts from the netherlands and spend the billions necessary. I expect even Alviso will be saved.

Re: I work in Seattle

[chill]

You just described Celebration, FL. Disney-enforced Leave It to Beaver Land. (Pleasantville in the Hollywood vision.)

Re:I work in Seattle

[david_thornley]

Last I looked at the IPCC report, it said that sea level might rise about two feet by 2100. Where do you get four feet from?

Re:I work in Seattle

[Sir_Eptishous]

I'm planning to retire to Las Vegas long before that happens.

You better hope they drain Lake Powell to fill Mead or you're going to wish you moved to Seattle.

Re:I work in Seattle

[__aaclcg7560]

http://www.usgs.gov/blogs/features/usgs_top_story/san-francisco-bay-could-lose-marshes-to-sea-level-rise-by-2100-2/

Re:I work in Seattle

[PopeRatzo]

I'm planning to retire to Las Vegas long before that happens.

Good idea. Go where the water is...

When you get there, think you can put a bet down on the White Sox to win the 2105 World Series? I'll send you a ten-spot.

Re:I work in Seattle

[__aaclcg7560]

Just transport water via the railroad from the wetter regions of the east coast.

Re:I work in Seattle

[__aaclcg7560]

If I'm going to somewhere that is wet, I would go to southern Florida as that part of the state is supposed to be underwater by 2100.

Re:I work in Seattle

[PopeRatzo]

Just transport water via the railroad

You just made Warren Buffett smile.

Since we move crude by pipeline from Canada, why not just move water by pipeline from Canada. After we invade Canada.

Seriously, friend. What are you gonna do when you're retired in Las Vegas? I mean, Las Vegas for a weekend every few months? Absolutely. But living there year round? You gonna hit the early bird buffets and then sit down at the penny slots while you wait to turn to dust with the other alter cockers?

Unless you're planning on a post-retirement career as a professional gambler, in which case I take it all back and envy you.

Re:I work in Seattle

[__aaclcg7560]

Stand in line to get tickets for the Las Vegas Star Trek Con to celebrate the 100th anniversary of ST:TOS in 2066.

Re:I work in Seattle

[PopeRatzo]

OK, you've convinced me. But can I still go to the early-bird buffet and play penny slots after?

Oh, and let's see...in 2066 Wayne Newton will only be 124, so I guess I should think about getting reservations soon.

https://youtu.be/LRPILZS1hc8

Re:I work in Seattle

[WillAffleckUW]

It's not families.

It's people.

People are migrating here, and will migrate here, for many reasons: good wages, good minimum wage, no state income tax, no state capital gains tax (except houses above $1 million), we have water (somewhat), we have a green city, and we have top level education that most can afford.

And we have a lot of tech and other jobs being created all the time.

Re:I work in Seattle

[cascadingstylesheet]

To give them 4 floor plans they choose from? 8? Five outward shapes they can pick? Does the city pick the colors? The plants?

Welcome to New England, where as Dave Berry pointed out if you unzip your fly, you must put green shutters on either side.

Re:I work in Seattle

[OffTheWallSoccer]

Sprawl is less efficient. People who live in dense cities consume much less than sprawl SFH suburbs - frequently 1/10th as much. We drive less (many of us use walking, bikes, or transit, or drive short distances) and use less energy.

Face it, we're better than you.

Yes, you urban types are better than we suburban and rural types. Good for you!

I'm happy to raise my kids in an environment where we have plenty of space and sunshine in our backyard to grow vegetables, and have lots of wildlife (birds, squirrels, rabbits and deer) roaming around. You can keep your view-blocking eyesore buildings.

And lest you think I am describing some backwoods place, my commute to work is 25 minutes into downtown San Jose. I will take that level of sprawl over some San Francisco or NYC or other high-density zoo.

Re:I work in Seattle

[nanoflower]

I don't think the replacements are that nice. Maybe if they were combining the town homes so that instead of 4 in those pics there were two but the super narrow town homes look like something out of NYC or Tokyo.

Re:I work in Seattle

[david_thornley]

Thank you.

Someone pissed they didn't get hired?

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> Amazon...Amazon...Amazon...

Is someone just pissed they didn't get hired?

Re:Someone pissed they didn't get hired?

[halivar]

And "brogrammer"? Seriously? Submitter is an entitled, classist jackass.

Re:Someone pissed they didn't get hired?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Someone pissed they didn't get hired?

[grimmjeeper]

She's sexist. Not classist.

Re:Someone pissed they didn't get hired?

[ShanghaiBill]

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).

Re:Someone pissed they didn't get hired?

[FooAtWFU]

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).

I'm a programmer, and I've met some brogrammers in my lifetime. They were easy enough to tell from regular programmers: they're the ones on Caltrain sipping Budweiser and talking about how great it is to work at Zynga and how those people who got their RSUs revoked last week had it coming and don't deserve any sympathy. (Remember that episode?) Typically there's a bit of a scruffy look to them. I cannot make a solid characterization of their actual programming skills (or lack thereof).

I'd be surprised to find tons of brogrammers at Amazon; it struck me as less "bro" and more "nerd". I am generally dubious of the submitter's characterization.

Re:Someone pissed they didn't get hired?

[jwdb]

Actually, the article by Dominic Holden about "apodments" that Reifman links to is quite interesting: discusses tiny ~250 ft apartments, the few valid problems they have, and the nimbyism against them that's gotten way out of proportion. Long, but worth a read.

http://www.thestranger.com/sea...

Re:Someone pissed they didn't get hired?

[zenasprime]

The irony in this post makes me giggle. Insightful? You bet it is.

Re:Someone pissed they didn't get hired?

[zenasprime]

Oh you mean just like the word "dweeb" is a made up word from the 80s. I see. Great way to argue your point!

It's a good thing the english language is a living, evolving language like that.

Urban changes are no surprise

[TWX]

There was a lot of complaining when the city I live in rezoned some neighborhoods along what years previously had been the main thoroughfare (before the freeway was built and the highway designation was pulled) and the collections of old just-post-war homes and motels and businesses were sold off, razed, and the land rebuilt with three to five storey buildings of mixed commercial and residential use. Another part of town will probably follow suit, as recent changes in law will force landlords to bring their properties up to code compliance if they want to continue renting them out.

Thing of it is, the strip that has already been redeveloped was in such poor shape that there really wasn't much of value lost in its redevelopment. It wasn't a quaint little neighborhood of chabby-chic bungalos with old landscaping, it was a neighborhood of falling-down buildings, many with real structural faults that would require significantly more than a facelift remodel, with unmaintained grounds or gravel-coated yards so that the maintenance was nothing. The area is also close to the college and to the popular downtown, and is along a major mass-transit corridor that leads to the big city downtown too. In short, the area was simply worth a lot more than its existing use could justify, and most of the occupants were renters, not owners.

Some call the new buildings ugly. I will agree that some of the new buildings are not to my tastes. What I won't agree on though, is that the new buildings are worse for the area, or that the project was worse for the culture of the area. The old area was a slum. The new area has more residents, has more businesses, and isn't dangerous. Given that eminent domain can't be used in my state to take private land away from private owners to provide to other private owners, if the city had any strong-arming tactics they were probably based on actual infractions on the part of the existing owners (like building and fire code violations) which I can't really fault them for enforcing.

Simply, if neighborhoods fall into blight and become slums they're ripe for this to happen. It's hard to really call it wrong when that happens.

Re:Urban changes are no surprise

[Anonymous Coward]

Here’s what’s being built in their place — townhomes with twelve foot wide living spaces — many for Amazon employees (mostly men). In other words, those are four vertical townhomes each twelve feet wide. These are across the street and down half a block from those teardowns:

I see the above as a problem. If you don't, go check out it on http://jeffreifman.com/2015/05/08/amazons-impact-on-seattles-ballard-neighborhood

I don't know if those are like dorm-like, or just thin townhouses. That would be a problem. But it's definitely a problem when you build tall buildings next to someone's house. I want to say that they should require greenbelts around the houses of no less than half the buildings height when next to a single-family house.

Re:Urban changes are no surprise

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know if those are like dorm-like, or just thin townhouses. That would be a problem. But it's definitely a problem when you build tall buildings next to someone's house. I want to say that they should require greenbelts around the houses of no less than half the buildings height when next to a single-family house.

Someone has already said what needs to be done, its called the zoning and building codes. If those people don't want to live next to these townhouses, they can sell their homes for well over half a million dollars and move out of Seattle proper.

Row houses like these are commonly rather narrow, but 12 feet is ridiculous.

Re:Urban changes are no surprise

[TWX]

Sounds like the best approach is to get the existing community to show up to those zoning hearings and to weigh-in on what these changes will do to the neighborhood.

If one doesn't want 12' wide homes, it shouldn't be that hard to put a stop to that, if one actually bothers to try before the commission votes to make the change. They post rather large signage when such hearings are being held, so it's not like it's done in secret.

Somebody sounds butthurt

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Somebody sounds butthurt

[zenasprime]

I see, so you are complaining about their complaints followed up by an ad hominem. Way to one up them.

Re:Somebody sounds butthurt

[zenasprime]

You sound exactly like the article you are decry. Filled with emotion and angst because someone has an opinion other than your own. Good luck with that. :)

Is this an article on wealth redistribution?

[BrookHarty]

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?

Re:Is this an article on wealth redistribution?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, the article has an agenda (as you pointed out) but the Slashdot discussion topic here is on the impact on the local neighborhood.

Unfortunately, when many companies settle in an area, they really don't give a crap about the long term effects on that area. Some do and work with city officials to make things better. In Folsom, CA Intel for example has about ~6 thousand employees for a small city like that. They invest in computers, equipment for the local high schools and put a lot of investment into the city in various ways. I worked (literally lived) there for so many hours like a dog for years, but the leadership used their clout to always took care of their kids and community to make sure they got the best of everything. -- They always seemed to have their shit together. Even though mom and dad worked very long hours and it was a cutthroat environment.

There is this stupid trend to put these Scandinavian style townhouses all over urban communities. They look out of place and unsightly for the areas.

Re:Is this an article on wealth redistribution?

[Anonymous Coward]

> There is a reason people are leaving after a year in droves.

My husband works in HR there, and people aren't leaving Amazon as much as they are leaving Seattle. Many of the new hires are shocked to find-out that fast Internet access is only available in a tiny number of buildings in the region. CondoInternet's fifty buildings is a tiny, tiny portion of the buildings in this area with a population of over 5 million. Also, those buildings are $400-600 more per month in rent. In other words, good Internet access here costs you about $5,000 per year. Too many young men move here then flee after getting tired of not having faster than dial-up access. I know I'm fed-up with that. I've had dial-up since 1994 here in Seattle, and I'm ready to move the hell out of this city.

Re:Is this an article on wealth redistribution?

[gabrieltss]

I interviewed with Amazon twice - both times told them no thank you. Now I get hit up by their recruiters weekly. I finally told them to stop contacting me. I wasn't interested in their "work your @$$ to death" corporate culture. Just like I told Microsoft I wouldn't work for them because I despised the company.

Re:Is this an article on wealth redistribution?

[DerekLyons]

People are leaving jobs and town because they can't get high speed internet? Color me skeptical. Plus, though I live across the water on the peninsula, I have many friends who live in Seattle and I've heard not once complaint about lack of broadband access - ever.

On top of which, we just had a report here on Slashdot of broadband access being lost (temporarily) because a fiber was cut. Searching around a bit shows pretty much no significant complaints about lack of faster-than-dialup internet connections. (Many complaints that broadband isn't as fast as it should be... though it's hard to sort out the actual complaints from the unrealistic assumptions about what the service should be.)

So, I'm moving beyond skeptical right to not buying it.

Re:Is this an article on wealth redistribution?

[WillAffleckUW]

On campus at the UW in Seattle you can get 100 Gbps (3 ports) and 40 Gbps (many ports, lost count after 40).

So, yes, 20 Mbps is dirt slow. Even 1 Gpbs (Gigabit) is dirt slow. It's like watching paint dry.

Re:Is this an article on wealth redistribution?

[schnell]

My husband works in HR there, and people aren't leaving Amazon as much as they are leaving Seattle. Many of the new hires are shocked to find-out that fast Internet access is only available in a tiny number of buildings in the region.

Too many young men move here then flee after getting tired of not having faster than dial-up access.

Bull. Fucking. Shit.

Broadband in Seattle is in line with the rest of the country, thank you. And where is it in the city of Seattle that you can't get "faster than dial-up access" speeds?

You mention "CondoInternet" as though it is the only option for "fast" - as if 1 Gbps+ is the only definition of "fast." Not only are there two other providers (according to the FCC report above) offering 1 Gbps+ Internet in Seattle, there are several others offering reasonable Internet speeds: in Woodinville (25 miles outside Seattle and close to the boondocks) where I live, Comcast (cursed be their name) offers 100 Mbps at reasonable prices.

So long story short, "young men" (why young men?) are not leaving Seattle because they can't get "faster than dial-up access" Internet. Either you are making this up completely, or you were somehow trying to find a way to mention "CondoInternet," which I will now try to find a way to avoid.

Great - suburbs are becoming urbanized

[wired_parrot]

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.

Re:Great - suburbs are becoming urbanized

[MrRobahtsu]

How dare you suggest that housing people want and need to buy and economic growth are more important than Jeff Reifman's delicate architectural sensibilities. You insensitive clod.

Yeah, call the wahmbulance.

Re:Great - suburbs are becoming urbanized

[stephanruby]

People have to live somewhere.

Yes, but nobody likes migrant workers. They drive up the price of everything. They work day and night. They bring their own uncivilized subculture. They require earthquake-proof housing. They don't care about octogenarians. They block our views. They take our women. Migrant workers are just horrible-horrible human beings.

I'm just glad that the KKK is making a resurgence in the Seattle mainstream media and on Slashdot thanks to Dice Holdings.

Re:Great - suburbs are becoming urbanized

[Sangui5]

I live in the Bay Area.

My boss has told me "you really should be living in a 6-story condo building; if you did then your housing wouldn't so obscenely overpriced". The snarky response would be "well, can I bulldoze your house to build a 6-story condo? Because there aren't any".

I'm not a brogrammer. I'm not a single hipster. I'm married with two young kids. I don't need a trendy city scene; I don't want hip bars; I'm not looking for a luxury condo with all the fancy amenities. I just want a place to live. People who complain about denser development often seem to ask the question "why can't they be happy with what we had back in the day? why do they want so much space?". Well, how much space? In the 1970's, the median household size was 3, and the median house size was 1500 sq. feet. That's 500 sq feet per person.

My family has 350 sq. feet per person, and we pay through the nose for it.

The occasional octogenarian who isn't fit enough to move is a human interest story puff piece; the real political problem is the 55-year-old who simply doesn't want anything to change, and has a "I got mine, what's your problem?" attitude. "Doesn't match the aesthetics of the neighborhood" is code for "we don't want young people here", just as much as "digital native" is code for "people under 40 need not apply". Both attitudes are poisonous.

Re:Great - suburbs are becoming urbanized

[Comrade Ogilvy]

I basically agree with you. In spades.

As for my peninsula house, I might even be willing to have it demolished and replaced with 6-story condo, because I could probably walk away from the deal two million dollars richer, but NIMBYism is never going to allow it.

The Bay Area has decided to create green spaces, a policy that I support. But part of the price of having green spaces that box in growth is that we should be positively managing growth upwards in the places where infrastructure will best be able to support density. Unfortunately, we mostly to the exact opposite, and SF is the worst offender. Peninsula cities are only now meekly embracing 3 and 4 stories in locations that could darn well justify 8 and 10 story buildings.

You are paying the price through the nose.

I am paying the price, to a lesser extent. I really wish their were more poor people living nearby. It is good for the poor. It is good for the rich. It is good for society. Heck, you know how hard it is to find a baby sitter on the peninsula who will work for $15 per hour and will show up on time? (You probably do.)

Re:Great - suburbs are becoming urbanized

[shutdown -p now]

The alternative is to expand the city ever outward, creating more suburbs.

This is also happening, it's not an either/or - it's just that it's happening outside of the Seattle city boundary, and hence not a target of the rant. But Amazon (and before it, Microsoft) has already had a profound effect on the Eastside - Bellevue, Redmond, Kirkland, Sammamish, Issaquah - and more recently it's spilling over even further east into Snoqualmie (where they a huge ongoing project to build more housing specifically targeting this demographic), and even somewhat into North Bend, all the way out to the mountains.

Re:Same stuff, different day

[Nidi62]

3 1/2 story behemoths without regard for aesthetics of any kind.

OK, so someone is replacing architecture the summary writier prefers with something they prefer. Different people have different tastes. Get over yourself.

That's my thought. I visited Seattle a few years ago and stayed in Tacoma. All the houses to me (although decent size) looked run down with rotted wood, really odd paint scemes, and clearly decades old construction. Those town homes actually look pretty decent to me, with a style you see in a lot of urban renewal type situations. So basically it sounds to me like people paid a lot of money for small, "historic" homes and are worried the "feel" of their street will change and property values will drop because more modern housing is going in.

"It brings density which may be good..."

[spads]

Thank god this is something they seem to realize is NOT the case in TX, and fortunately TX has the space to spare. I, for one, can't f- STAND living all packed in close together like that. I perceive it as some kind of mental illness.

Re:"It brings density which may be good..."

[PopeRatzo]

and fortunately TX has the space to spare.

Yeah, but it's Texas.

Re:"It brings density which may be good..."

[MightyYar]

I like city life, but I understand your point of view. I'm currently in the 'burbs on a whopping quarter acre. I occasionally appreciate the peace and quiet in a way that I occasionally missed in the city.

With that said, zoning law is sufficient to address this "problem". If the zoning allows 3 stories and no setbacks, then that's what you'll get. Zone for 15 ft setbacks and 2 stories, and you'll get smaller boxes. This isn't rocket science.

Re:"It brings density which may be good..."

[_UnderTow_]

The only thing wrong with Texas is that it's full of Texans.

Re:"It brings density which may be good..."

[hawguy]

Thank god this is something they seem to realize is NOT the case in TX, and fortunately TX has the space to spare. I, for one, can't f- STAND living all packed in close together like that. I perceive it as some kind of mental illness.

Just don't complain when gas goes up again and all of that space to spare means that you have a 60 mile round trip commute so you're spending $10+/day in gas to get to work.

I live in a dense area (not quite urban, not quite suburban). When I lived 20 miles from the office, I took the train, now I live 3 miles from the office and ride my bike -- I couldn't tell you how much it cost to fill up my car because it was over a month ago.

Re:"It brings density which may be good..."

[el_chicano]

The only thing wrong with Texas is that it's full of Texans.

Not Austin. Austin doesn't contain any Texans; it's filled with damnyankees.

LOL seeing as how Austin is 35% Hispanic if this was true it would be full of Puerto Ricans instead of Mexican Americans.

Source: US Census http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/48/4805000.html

Re:Same stuff, different day

[Jax Omen]

It's Seattle. "a new neighborhood" means "30 more minutes from work, minimum".

To be honest though, I don't see why someone would be upset about the design of the homes... the buildings look fine, and don't even look particularly out of place for Seattle architecture. They're not old, that's about it.

  The problem is inevitably going to be parking. There is no possible way for homes like that to have enough parking.

Oh Boo Hoo

[A nonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Oh Boo Hoo

[halivar]

In what universe would a libertarian support one man's aesthetic determining another man's property rights? In what universe is this Maoist? I think you are knowledgeable of neither libertarianism nor Maoism.

Re:Oh Boo Hoo

[grimmjeeper]

Thing is, modern libertarianism is nothing more than "I want to get my way whatever the issue." Anything that stops you from doing what you want is evil government interference. Anything that lets your neighbor do anything you don't want is the government letting others infringe your freedom.

Re:Oh Boo Hoo

[A nonymous Coward]

You cluelessness about libertarians is typical of those who don't want to understand personal responsibility because it scares them. So much easier to assign responsibility to a bunch of strangers, and then to whine about the bad decisions they make, which really means they didn't force you to go along with a decision you haven't got the guts to make yourself.

Re:Oh Boo Hoo

[el_chicano]

You cluelessness about libertarians is typical of those who don't want to understand personal responsibility because it scares them.

If anyone is clueless it is the libertarians. Name one country with a libertarian government that actually works. You can't because none exist.

This is what happens when Ayn Rand fanbois decide to start a community based on their "ideals":

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2014/09/15/libertarian-utopia-styled-after-ayn-rand-book-spectacularly-falls-apart-almost-immediately/

Selfishness is NOT a virtue...

Re:Oh Boo Hoo

[A nonymous Coward]

Oooh, same old nonsense to trot out. Haven't had a new thought in a while have you?

Was there anything like the 1787 constitution before the US created it?

Was there anything like the Wright Brothers flyer before they created it?

Everything is new at some point.

And Ayn Rand ... (rolls eyes) .... if that is your idea of libertarianism, you really are clueless.

Go, find someone else's leg to pull, and I can guarantee it won't be a libertarian's if that's the best argument you got.

Re:Oh Boo Hoo

[grimmjeeper]

Exactly. I was a self styled libertarian when I was a kid and only cared about myself. As I grew up I figured out that you can't form a functioning society on the "F**k everyone else, I got mine" ideals.

As much as I hate it being true, there's nothing I can change about the fact that other people are selfish and stupid and will stab you in the back just as soon as they shake your hand. That's just part of human nature. And for that reason, "pure" libertarianism can never work. It's the exact same reason why "pure" capitalism won't work. (why shouldn't I exploit the system to take as much as I can from as many people as I can?) It's also why "pure" communism won't work. (why should I work harder if I never receive any benefit?)

I just wish more people were smart enough to figure that out. But that would require them to give up their willful ignorance, which is one of the most impossible things to overcome.

Re:Oh Boo Hoo

[grimmjeeper]

Do you have anything more than a petulant "Nuh Uh! You're wrong because I say so!" to "trot out"?

Re:Oh Boo Hoo

[Obfuscant]

Was there anything like the Wright Brothers flyer before they created it?

Yes.

In 1890 the French engineer Clement Ader completed the first of three steam-driven flying machines, the Eole. On 9 October 1890 Ader made an uncontrolled hop of around 50 m (165 ft); this was the first manned airplane to take off under its own power.

On May 6, 1896, Langley's Aerodrome No. 5 made the first successful sustained flight of an unpiloted, engine-driven heavier-than-air craft of substantial size.

Gustave Weisskopf was a German who emigrated to the U.S., where he soon changed his name to Whitehead. From 1897 to 1915 he designed and built early flying machines and engines. On August 14, 1901, two and a half years before the Wright Brothers' flight, he claimed to have carried out a controlled, powered flight in his Number 21 monoplane at Fairfield, Connecticut. The flight was reported in the Bridgeport Sunday Herald local newspaper.

Re:Oh Boo Hoo

[A nonymous Coward]

You mean more than the cluelessness to which I responded, or that you have shown?

Nah. I'm a libertarian. I don't try to force feed people.

Re:Oh Boo Hoo

[grimmjeeper]

I'll take that as a no.

Cops in Ballard

[kjell79]

All you have to do to see the difference is search for "Cops in Ballard" on youtube. You're welcome.

Re:Cops in Ballard

[ISoldat53]

Bill Nye when he was still famous.

Cha cha

[Ashenkase]

Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes (Turn and face the strain) Ch-ch-Changes

Re:Aesthetics

[guruevi]

IMHO they look better. Especially the interiors. I live in an 'old' house like that, it's very cheap to obtain but needs constant repairs and any improvements require major investment (lead and asbestos assessments, if any space renovation triggers the local code it needs to have fire sprinklers and CO/smoke detectors retrofitted).

If Amagoogsoft wants to buy it at 2 or 3 times the market rate, I'll happily sell it and buy one or two down the street (so they can do the same in a few years).

Sure it may be a bit more compact so stop driving a freaking tractor to work every day or rent out a space at a neighborhood garage lot.

It's 2015

[Jahoda]

Seriously, welcome to every single desirable, thriving metropolitan area in the country right now. Every single one of them.

This started well before Amazon...

[93 Escort Wagon]

... was a twinkle in Jeff Bezos' eye.

I lived on Queen Anne (south of Ballard) back in the late 80s - early 90s. Old Ballard was already being dismantled by developers, with old houses getting torn down and large apartment buildings going up in their place.

A fictionalized conversation.

[SnapShot]

The following is a dramatic representation of a conversation in Seattle.

Scene: an artesian coffee shop, a late-forties white person is talking to another late-forties white person
Person 1: When I cashed in my Microsoft shares in 1998 and I bought a house here it was a quiet residential street.
Person 2: Yeah, I thought it would always be a quiet residential street, but then THOSE people moved in and I can't find parking.
Person 1: This is the single worst thing that has happened in the history of human existence. You know the first thing the Nazis did when they invaded Poland... took all the parking.
Person 2: I know, right? I have $500k in equity in my house but I can't find parking. If I sold my house to cash in my equity I'd probably have to move to Lynnwood or Rainier Valley.
Person 1: I heard there's a new locally grown, gluten free, Vietnamese Banh Mi restaurant in Rainier Valley now.
Person 2: Really? I heard they have quiet residential streets and plenty of parking. Maybe I should move there.
Person 1: Good idea. I can cash in some of my Microsoft shares and start a new shade grown coffee shop. Get off the rat race, you know?
Person 2: Yay! The people of Rainier Valley will really appreciate it. Let's go talk to our brokers.

Re:A fictionalized conversation.

[Sir_Eptishous]

Brilliant!
Mod points!

Re:A fictionalized conversation.

[Nethead]

Fine with me, just stay out of Snohomish County (except Lynnwood, you can have that.)

Re:A fictionalized conversation.

[nazrhyn]

I'm sorry, I spent the entirety of the time I would've spent reading this post imagining what an "artesian" coffee shop would be. Does the coffee bubble up from the bedrock, after being brewed deep below the surface? Awesome.

What's the problem?

[ichthus]

So... I just don't see what the issue is here.

... without regard for aesthetics of any kind

No, that's a contemporary, high density housing style. You might not like it, but there is regard for aesthetics. You just don't agree with the aesthetic value.

Re:What's the problem?

[grimmjeeper]

Personally, I'm not a fan of the style. But I understand that others are. And if that's a style that's popular right now, why not build it? At the very least, they look a lot better than the run down cheap houses that they are replacing. While those older houses may have been nice at one time, they weren't built to last and the neighborhoods are better off with new housing, whatever the style.

LOL

[argStyopa]

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.

No regard for aesthetics...

[swb]

Why does that always seem to translate into "no regard for the aesthetics I find most valuable"?

We've had a ton of "debate" in Minneapolis over the last few years over teardowns in Southwest Minneapolis and there's always complaints about the "aesthetics", as if people were putting up houses that looked poorly built, used unpleasant color schemes or were otherwise easily identifiable eyesores. Most of them looked totally inoffensive.

These Seattle townhouses look like they're just your basic contemporary styled building. They don't match the generic, small-house look of what was there, but why do they have to? Is there a requirement that everything has to look as it always has, forever, especially when what's existing never met any standard to begin with?

The "too big" thing cropped up here and mostly it struck me as either outright jealousy (most of the houses replaced were functionally too small for a family of four, unless they replicated the living standards of a family of four circa 1950.

The rest of the size criticism just struck me as jealousy cloaked in an anti-materialist ideology that had some notion of what the "right" amount of living space was. Also ironic because more than a few of the original homes were owned by single people or childless couples who probably had more square feet per person than a family of 4 or 5 would have in one of the newer houses,.

The new houses were probably way more energy efficient (new HVAC, superior insulation standards, new windows), too.

I do think that you need SOME zoning codes -- a 10 story, poured concrete house build within 2" of all property lines would be a mistake, but mostly people should feel good about new houses. Someone is willing to invest in an existing urban neighborhood, not move to some suburb.

Re:No regard for aesthetics...

[cdrudge]

Is there a requirement that everything has to look as it always has, forever, especially when what's existing never met any standard to begin with?

You've not lived in a area subject to a draconian home owners association I take it?

Re:No regard for aesthetics...

[Bob the Super Hamste]

I don't live in a neighborhood subject to one but the newer development across the park seem to believe since they can see my neighbors' and my backyards they can send us complaints and that we actually might care. I made it a point to not buy a home subject to the whims of a failed middle manager, my mother and step father always talked up how great they were since, and I quote:
"It prevents your neighbors from deciding that they want to pave their backyard and put up a basketball court."
The funny thing was that while I was in college that is what one of my mom's neighbors did despite the HOA. On the other side of things one of my neighbors has been on a building spree and I have had to go down to city hall and testify and sign off on some of his projects like his 14x16 shed and 25x30 detached garage he has put up in recent years. These are city zoning laws and he was seeking a variance and I told him that I really didn't care what he did with his property the first time he asked as it was his property. Then again I actually know most of the people on both sides of my street and instead of being dicks to each other we help each other out which doesn't seem to happen in neighborhoods with HOAs.

Re:No regard for aesthetics...

[swb]

No, and I will always actively seek to avoid it if possible. I don't know if I would ALWAYS refuse one, but given two similar properties I'd choose the one without the HOA.

I also think it's kind of a regional thing. I don't know of any HOAs off the top of my head that aren't townhouse developments.

And this is new how?

[hattig]

But are the townhouses $600,000 each?

Typically this is what happens in neighbourhoods as population goes up and house prices go up, and demand for cheaper (not cheap, just cheaper) houses increases.

Nothing new here. The new houses look like they're built to a decent standard of construction.

Different times

[jklovanc]

When these small houses were built there was lots of room and fewer people. That has changed and there are more people who need to live in the same area. Neighbourhoods will change and densify. The only alternative is to grow outward and that is not a viable option as it creates land use and traffic issues.

As for the aesthetics issues, older homes are built very inefficiently. There is a lot of wasted space. Newer construction has to use the space more efficiently to allow more people to live on the same lot. Newer construction will be boxier as it is more space efficient.

Growth is like a balloon. You either let it grow up or, if you try to push it down, it will grow out. Neighbourhoods will change. Deal with it.

Re:Different times

[jklovanc]

You might want to check out the Vancouver Development Cost Levies. They go toward the cost of the infrastructure you mention and are not small. Levies like this exist in most jurisdictions.

city life is awesome

[emh203]

750k to live in a broom closet. Combine that with a 45 minute commute to go 5 miles, inflated prices, bumper to bumper traffic and smelly public transit it sounds like a great deal to be an office drone.

I just can't

[Anonymous Coward]

take any article seriously that actually uses the word "brogrammer" with a straight face. I just can't.

Seattle has "no zoning" to prohibit this?

[boguslinks]

Seattle has zoning out the ying-yang, and the streets specifically need to be zoned to townhouse height to build the townhouses. That designation has been spreading over the last decade+.

As far as aesthetics, just go to a neighborhood Design Review Board meeting, where the dozen or so busybodies in each neighborhood go and throw rotten vegetables at developers for hours, ruthlessly hounding them to get their designs more in line with the aesthetics of the busybody junta.

(A sufficiently small townhouse project can evade the board, much to the chagrin of the busybodies).

The problem with the townhouses is not that they're ugly or don't "fit in" but that too many of them get build without parking, as the anti-car elements on design boards and in the gummint browbeat developers into not offering parking.

I looked at a lot of the new Ballard construction when house shopping in 2013, before buying a condo in another 'hood, they're not bad, the kitchens especially are generally being done very nicely, but you can't please everyone with how they look from the outside, I guess.

Re:Seattle has "no zoning" to prohibit this?

[thrig]

Eh, what, developers are not offering parking?

"The recommendations (all meeting materials available here) were based on a survey of 219 newly reviewed or permitted residential developments in parts of Seattle where no parking is required, which found that three-quarters of developers are choosing to build parking anyway"
http://seattletransitblog.com/...

So, 75% of developers without all the usual minimum parking mandates choose to plonk out parking slabs anyways. Could you perhaps expand on what you mean by "too many of them get build without parking" in light of this? Are the mere 25% who choose not to waste space and money on parking really that objectionable? (Disclaimer: car-free in Seattle since, oh, 1994 or so, so lack of parking is a huge bonus in my book. About time we go more of that.)

Meanwhile, on the ugly townhomes front, the following is fairly indicative of how things played out.

http://seattleurbanism.blogspo...

Get off my lawn!

[Nyder]

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.

Re:Get off my lawn!

[shutdown -p now]

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.

Eh, there's plenty of both. The young single professionals don't stay single all that long.

Re:Get off my lawn!

[Nyder]

"Well, family homes are not what is needed anymore"

Says who? I think you're confusing what is needed with what is being shoved down everyone's throat by the agenda of government, banks, and developers. THEY are telling you that's what isn't needed anymore, and you're simply lapping it up and repeating it.

Cramming lots of people into small areas is extremely profitable for these entities. Not to mention very convenient for them. All they have to do is convince you to believe this is good for you, no matter what lies they have to tell.

Ya, if you say so. Are you that homeless dude who lives down by my apartments dumpster that keeps getting kicked out of housing that bitches there is no housing? Dude, you stink, you do drugs and you can't keep a place over your head, so why you bitching at us when it's your own fault?

I live here, and I think this is great

[Mark Atwood]

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.

Re:I live here, and I think this is great

[boguslinks]

As you know, the whole "it rains there every day" thing is a canard dreamed up by the people already here, to stop more people from coming.

How do these articles get published?

[Magnus Pym]

This guy comes across as an archetypical `mangina', bleating and fawning over "women's causes" in the desperate hope that one of them would give him a pity fuck. Why on earth are we giving this bilge coverage on Slashdot?

I don't even know where to begin addressing the pseudo-feminist assertions and hypocrisies in this article:

1. I've already got mine, Jack, from Microsoft of all places. I've retired from tech life and am now looking for a way to remain relevant to the world.

2. Amazon's offices are sparsely furnished. Patriarchy!!!!

3. The new buildings are mostly occupied by men! Oh the humanity!!

4. Amazon's workforce is 75% men! There are so many women with Women's studies degrees who can do as good a job of developing cloud infrastructure if it wasn't for all the discrimination. (Ladies, I am a really nice guy, so if you want someone who is not like these younger competitors...)

5. Seattle is White! And getting whiter! Of course, the throngs of Indians who occupy the Amazon & MSFT offices are invisible to me, they are just cyber-coolies after all.

6. The poor ladies of Seattle can't find a date because the men that Amazon hires are of such low quality!!! (Refer to my comment earlier about my availability to pick up the slack...)

Re:Same stuff, different day

[tnk1]

Everyone seems to have a problem with suburban sprawl. Now the affluent are deciding to move back to the city center and we're complaining that there are too many of them and they want to rebuild and fix up the infrastructure?

Which is it?

Yeah, it drives up property value. Guess what, that's what naturally happens when you add services and make the place look better.

I'm all for maintaining historical housing, but how do you bring people into city centers and maintain the relatively low population density of historical buildings?

Re:Same stuff, different day

[Jiro]

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".

Good lord, the parking

[Sowelu]

I grew up in Ballard. They were already starting to do this in the 80s, I remember when my neighbor's house got replaced by an apartment. As much as I liked the way things were early on, I really hope they make these new places big enough to have parking garages. Ballard is already way too low on on-street parking, and the roads are hideously narrow (plus traffic circles everywhere, oh man do the fire departments ever hate that).

They've been wrecking the place for decades trying to build a big suburb on top of small town infrastructure. Please, just put Ballard out of its misery and rebuild it from the ground up. Only hipsters live there now anyway.

Re:Good lord, the parking

[Sowelu]

Yeah, but that's guest spots. Ballard doesn't have enough parking for the people who actually live there. Often narrow lots with no driveways.

So tired of these rise of the techno-elite article

[buddha379]

I am so sick of these ridiculously cry-baby posts about the rise of the "techno-elite." What's wrong with those houses? They're big? They don't look like the other ones? Who gives a shit? Who's aesthetics are we talking about anyway? And why do they matter? It's old, therefor it's good? It has to all look the same? Oh God, people spent money and knocked down old shit to build that stuff they wanted to. How horrible! How dare those programmers and technologist make money. How dare they act like men! They're keeping everyone down! They're stealing from everyone! I mean nobody is buying technology and putting money in their pockets. Nobody should be rewarded for making stuff people want. That's just not right. Is this America or Mao's China? Is this a tech site or part of the Marxist society? Don't like 90% of the people who read this fucking rag work in tech?

3.5 stories is a behemoth? Ya got to be kidding

[GLMDesigns]

Take a look at Paris and Rome. Take a look at cities before elevators and you will find numerous beautiful, liveable areas with buildings in the 50-60 range. That is a good height. You're complaining about a 35 foot building?

Happened in the Silicon Valley as well...

[HockeyPuck]

Nothing new here...

Silicon Valley used to be farmland in the 70s/80s. HighTech and then the dotcoms appeared and the small 1500sqft homes were mowed down and larger homes were built. A starter home (3bd/2bath), built in 1965, in what used to be "sleepy Sunnyvale/Cupertino" is now $1.5m

Even looking at the demographics... when I went to grade school out here in the 80s my classes were all white/hispanic kids. Now those same classes have 10% caucasian and 90% Asian/Indian. No hispanic/black kids. And the average income of their parents is easily in the $300k/yr and up.

Demand for housing

[edtice1559]

In summary, Amazon has created demand for more housing. That housing has appeared. Maybe the city didn't control growth well, but I don't see how that's Amazon's fault. The alternative would be a housing shortage where prices are insane, some people being pushed to homelessness and others having two hour commutes and all of the pollution that entails. In short, if an area does well economically there are some challenges that are probably well worth the rewards. Not everybody will like it. They are free to move to an area with a weaker economy and make a profit on their housing in the process. Thanks for the insightful new information.

Re:Gentrification

[Anonymous Coward]

They aren't being pushed out, they are being bought out...usually to the tune of several years to a decade's worth of their salary in profit.

High rises in a concrete island by Ballard?

[Righ]

At what point does the crashed Jaguar of Maitland make an appearence? http://www.ballardian.com/bibl...

Congratulations!

[tekrat]

You wrote:
"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."
---------------

Congratulations; you summed up the entire GOP immigration debate as in "Hi I'm Bill O'Rielly, blowhard for Right Wing Nut Jobs. I'm the son of an Irish immigrant and i just HATE all the Mexicans coming into the country."

Re:Congratulations!

[smooth wombat]

Congratulations; you summed up the entire GOP immigration debate as in "Hi I'm Bill O'Rielly, blowhard for Right Wing Nut Jobs. I'm the son of an Irish immigrant and i just HATE all the Mexicans coming into the country illegally."

There, fixed that for you.

....and?

[Totenglocke]

Other than the author being butthurt at modernization, what's the problem here?

This is what no zoning laws will get you...

[FlyHelicopters]

And people complain about zoning laws and HOAs and the like...

This would not be possible where I live, between the city, laws for zoning, and our HOA, you just couldn't do this...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E...

That picture shows exactly why you have laws against "letting people do whatever they want without regard to other people".

Re:This is what no zoning laws will get you...

[NostalgiaForInfinity]

That picture shows exactly why you have laws against "letting people do whatever they want without regard to other people".

Which outcome would you have preferred?

(1) The developers were prevented from building the condos, thereby continuing a housing shortage and causing people to lose lots of money.

(2) The home got taken by eminent domain for some book value and then handed to the developer for next to nothing by the city?

I think that picture shows a better alternative to either outcome.

Re:This is what no zoning laws will get you...

[FlyHelicopters]

You are implying that those were the only two choices...

They were not...

These three story townhomes are being built right next to single family homes, they are blocking out the sun.

This is why New York City back in the 30's passed a law about how tall buildings could be near the property line....

Re:This is what no zoning laws will get you...

[Nidi62]

These three story townhomes are being built right next to single family homes, they are blocking out the sun.

You're talking about Seattle. What sun?

Re:This is what no zoning laws will get you...

[NostalgiaForInfinity]

You are implying that those were the only two choices...

You gave Edith Macefield's home as an example of why we need zoning laws, but her home is under city zoning control and subject to zoning laws. If you dislike the outcome, then this is an example of the failure of zoning laws.

These three story townhomes are being built right next to single family homes, they are blocking out the sun.

Yes, and again they are in zoning board controlled areas. The reason the home owners can't do anything about it is because the existence of zoning laws prevents such rights to be treated as property rights, therefore subjecting home owners to arbitrary decisions by zoning boards.

If you want to show how bad the absence of zoning laws is, you need to carefully compare cities with zoning laws to cities without zoning laws.

Re:This is what no zoning laws will get you...

[eWarz]

Been busy lately, but casually stumbled upon this story and spewed my coffee when i read this. Best. Comment. Ever.

Re: Sounds like a mansion!

[Anonymous Coward]

"At some point the original houses replaced something else, possibly farmland, and I am sure someone was pissed about that too."
Exactly! Some people tend to think that their opinion is the only one that matters. They need to realize that what makes them happy made someone else unhappy at some point, and eventually it will happen to them too.

As for the "programmer" jibe? The author sounds like a bitter cunt that can't get a job at Amazon so she makes fun of the qualified individuals that actually have the skills to get a job. Keep on ranting, sweetie. That'll help ya get a date.

Brogrammer? Mostly Men?

[Anonymous Coward]

What does that have to do with the story?

sounds great

[NostalgiaForInfinity]

Old, run-down, inefficient, low-density housing stock is replaced with modern, energy efficient, clean, high-density townhouses and condos. People should be happy about this.

The problem is wealthy f*cks like Reifman and his "let them eat cake" attitude. Hey, he got his multi-million dollar home; why doesn't everybody else get one too, instead of destroying those quaint neighborhoods that he likes to perambulate through. And he wants to be admired for his socially responsible views. He doesn't care about money, to him, money is simply something you have and don't think about.

Re:Aesthetics

[Bob the Super Hamste]

For stuff like lead paint just throw all the molding and plaster in the trash it all in the trash and go pick out some nice stuff and put up sheetrock, asbestos is harder to deal with but when we redid my father's house there wasn't any. It was built in 1927 and we striped the interior down the the studs (walls were plaster over lath). We put in all new wiring, plumbing, added insulation, new duct work with a new furnace and added an AC (it had one of those old octopus furnaces), and put up sheet rock. Once that was done we took off the wood siding that was just attached to the wood studs, put up MDF, covered it with Tyvec and put on some insulated siding. After 5 years the energy savings paid for everything even though the house didn't have AC when they moved in.

Brogrammer - not a thing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, angry millenials, but "brogrammer" is not a real thing. It's a made up word that means nothing, these days it's just something angry feminists call male programmers.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Modern shotgun houses?

[Rinikusu]

Shit, sign me up. Not everyone needs a a 1500 square foot single family dwelling. I wish there were MORE of these, especially here in LA where we're facing housing shortages.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Alternatives

[ibpooks]

Would they prefer Detroit? Because that's changed a lot too.

Tell it to Detroit

[Sheik Yerbouti]

Yeah whine to the rust belt about your first world problems

Re:Aesthetics

[WillAffleckUW]

Actually, most were built during WW I and WW II and the Korean War to create worker housing for the shipyards and Boeing aircraft line workers.

At least in Seattle.

Re:Yay for progress!

[WillAffleckUW]

All you haters can shut the fuck up.

I live in Seattle and I absolutely cannot wait to see the homeless people kicked out of the city.

Actually, almost all of the homeless people aren't "from" Seattle. They're from the suburbs. (based on accurate headcounts in research studies)

"There oughta be a law!!!"

[Webmoth]

Liberties are of utmost importance, whether it be for digital data, sexual preference, religion, property, or any other activity that does not INJURE others.

When you demand the right to control how your neighbor uses his property, you give implicit permission for him to control how you use your property. And that expands into every other facet of life.

I don't like the flooding of historic neighborhoods with huge boxes any more than you do, nor would I want my neighbor to build an asphalt plant, but the loss of liberty is of even greater concern to me. If my neighbor did choose to build an asphalt plant, I would complain loudly, but I would also defend his right to do so. I do not have a "right" to not see, not hear, or not smell that which offends me provided it does not injure me. There is no right to not be threatened; no right to "feel safe." And I have no right to guaranteed property value at all. But I do have the right to move somewhere else, and I have the responsibility to accept whatever that costs me.

Learn something new every day

[matunos]

Today I learned that Amazon is the only employer in Seattle, and apparently the sole driver of Seattle's skyrocketing economy.

Way to go, Amazon!

As for you, Jeff, why don't you do everyone in Seattle a favor, and instead of complaining about how terrible Seattle is becoming for your dating life and your aesthetics, move the hell out?

squirrel

[bugs2squash]

What Edith Macefield needs is lots of balloons.

the houses on pooey corner

[TheRealHocusLocus]

Row houses like these are commonly rather narrow, but 12 feet is ridiculous.

12 is an even number.
These row houses have 12 feet.
12 is an odd number of feet for row houses to have.
The only number that is both odd and even is infinity.
Therefore, these row houses have an infinite number of feet.

With a squelchy dull thud, Amazon has impacted Ballard like a Monty Python foot descending from the sky. The massive toes wiggle hither and thither, condemning single unit clapboard homes and crushing them, each bursting and releasing a little spurt of growth. A drunken real estate bacchanal has ensued. The streets are slippery with impending wealth. One-click yuppies are a-comin'.

These 'houses' are constructed like a giant foot with four toes. Each toe has a door which leads into a long corridor into which someone has squeezed out a kitchenette and laid a showerette. When you reach the end of this corridor you must turn back. The upper reaches are obtained by ascending a flight of stairs that look vaguely industrial. Then upstairs, more stairs. Then on the third floor, no more stairs, you must turn back. An upright piano would tire quickly on those stairs.

It appears that these toe-house residents will spend half their time on those narrow stairs. A wife cannot even carry her husband to bed without risking injury to them both. Carrying bulky objects like dish trays and laundry baskets up and down stairs a chore because we Yankees have forgotten how to build dumbwaiters. Perhaps the plans have been lost. Perhaps it is because of strict building codes that mandate shaft firewalls, door interlocks and braking safety features similar to that of passenger elevators, so your dishes feel safe. Some of the most exciting children's adventure books involve dumbwaiters. Yet stairs are as dangerous as ever. You could always place pillows at the bottom of a dumbwaiter shaft, and the number of children who have been harmed in dumbwaiter tragedies does not even hold a candle to those who have been killed or disfigured by stairs. No one ever blames the stairs.

But who is this legion of mostly-singles who will be jellifying these toe-houses? Here we see them at work storing and retrieving session tokens for visitors to the Amazon website. Those engaged in Special Services rate private offices. Here we see a glimpse of the layout of DZ stroke 015's private office, after which these stacked toe-houses were designed. And here we see the hidden ductwork that also contains broadband fiber, so those who have made thousand mile pilgrimages to Seattle can work from home.

Is this toe-house life an experiment crafted by our furry friends to explore our response to dense neighborhoods, afternoon gloom and stairs? Or are they all following the example of a single trend-setter? Why is there no spiral slide? Families will be raised (and lowered) in these odd living spaces, and incessant front-to-back motion of countless people will probably perturb our orbit and make the moon recede faster. The children will probably have sturdy legs up to their shoulders and evolution will favor large padded craniums from tumbling down stairs.

good grief

[sribe]

Somebody should drag the developer that build that monstrosity out back and shoot him (or her). Not only because of how it doesn't fit in, but because the living spaces inside are just awful.

There were so many ways to use that space better... (2x2 instead of 4x1 for starters...)

Re:Aesthetics

[guruevi]

I don't know where you live but in the US you're not allowed to just strip lead paint from walls or asbestos and trash it. You need a professional asbestos/lead abatement, permits, trash and dust handling etc.

Re:Aesthetics

[guruevi]

I live in a 'tract' housing. I don't mind doing the work, the cost is very cheap (60k for 2500sqft vs 300k for 1500 sqft), even if you have to gut/raze the building and rebuild, that would be cheaper than a plot of open land 2 miles away.

Re:Zoning?

[stevesliva]

Likely zoned multifamily to encourage density.