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In Midst of a Tech Boom, Seattle Tries To Keep Its Soul
HughPickens.com writes: Nick Wingfield has an interesting article in the NYT about how Seattle, Austin, Boulder, Portland, and other tech hubs around the country are seeking not to emulate San Francisco where wealth has created a widely envied economy, but housing costs have skyrocketed, and the region's economic divisions have deepened with rent for a one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco at more than $3,500 a month, the highest in the country. "Seattle has wanted to be San Francisco for so long," says Knute Berger. "Now it's figuring out maybe that it isn't what we want to be." The core of the debate is over affordable housing and the worry that San Francisco is losing artists, teachers and its once-vibrant counterculture. "It's not that we don't want to be a thriving tech center — we do," says Alan Durning. "It's that the San Francisco and Silicon Valley communities have gotten themselves into a trap where preservationists and local politics have basically guaranteed buying a house will cost at least $1 million. Already in Seattle, it costs half-a-million, so we're well on our way."
Seattle mayor Ed Murray says he wants to keep the working-class roots of Seattle, a city with a major port, fishing fleet and even a steel mill. After taking office last year, Murray made the minimum-wage increase a priority, reassured representatives of the city's manufacturing and maritime industries that Seattle needed them., and has set a goal of creating 50,000 homes — 40 percent of them affordable for low-income residents — over the next decade. "We can hopefully create enough affordable housing so we don't find ourselves as skewed by who lives in the city as San Francisco is," says Murray. "We're at a crossroads," says Roger Valdez. "One path leads to San Francisco, where you have an incredibly regulated and stagnant housing economy that can't keep up with demand. The other path is something different, the Seattle way."
Seattle mayor Ed Murray says he wants to keep the working-class roots of Seattle, a city with a major port, fishing fleet and even a steel mill. After taking office last year, Murray made the minimum-wage increase a priority, reassured representatives of the city's manufacturing and maritime industries that Seattle needed them., and has set a goal of creating 50,000 homes — 40 percent of them affordable for low-income residents — over the next decade. "We can hopefully create enough affordable housing so we don't find ourselves as skewed by who lives in the city as San Francisco is," says Murray. "We're at a crossroads," says Roger Valdez. "One path leads to San Francisco, where you have an incredibly regulated and stagnant housing economy that can't keep up with demand. The other path is something different, the Seattle way."
handcuff the cops, take away everyone's guns, put a marijuana store on every street corner, make sure you fly an LGBT flag from the Space Needle, make sure every busy street takes a lane for bicycles, put up another bust of Lenin, and everything will be peachy.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
Really? Do you have your own well for water? Who picks up your garbage? If you get into an accident, or are the victim of a crime, you gonna call the police, or Ayn fucking Rand?
This is what I mean about libertarians being stupid. They expect their streets plowed, and potholes fixed, but don't want city government.
The city government that picks up your goddamn garbage and plows your streets in the winter is the same one that builds mass transit.
You are welcome on my lawn.
First of all, it's not the "EL" it's the "L". Second, there are exactly ZERO tollways within the Chicago city limits. Nobody pays tolls getting around Chicago. If you want to come in from Milwaukee or fucking Indiana, yes there are toll roads that start in Indiana and that's only because nobody wants anyone from Milwaukee or Indiana coming into the city because they don't know how to behave.
Yes, it's because the I-PASS is for the entire state of Illinois and public transit customers tend to live in the Chicago area.
May I ask where you're from? I'm really curious. Plus, I want to write a letter to city government asking to build a wall.
You are welcome on my lawn.