Fresh Air from the Puget Sound

posted in Antiplanner, News commentary

A Seattle blogger has a skeptical view of the notion that Seattle, or any
city, should try to become denser the way Vancouver and Portland have
done. Knute Berger, aka Mossback, argues that Seattle’s density “policies
are making the city more unaffordable. They are helping to drive the poor
out of town. They are displacing long-standing communities. They are
changing the scale of a once-egalitarian city that featured few poor people,
few rich people, and a lot of folks in between. This old middle class
Seattle is now seen as unsophisticated, not worthy of protection,
backward even.”

Mossback points to another blog that celebrates the fact that Seattle is
now the only city in the Northwest that has more multi-family housing than
single family. Whoopee! We’ve made housing so expensive that we’ve
reduced the quality of life for a majority of our people.

The Antiplanner makes no secret of the fact that he thinks the density mania
is even more insane than the rail transit mania. I am glad that another
blog, Crosscut.com, has people who feel the same way. And Mossback
is not the only one.

Comments are closed.


©2007 Coalition On Sustainable Transportation