Some years ago a candidate for the Mayor of Paris, France proposed she would make sure Paris was a “15 minute city” with access to the essential commercial and public facilities within a 15 minute walk of each resident. That idea has caught on with urban density advocates and is part of the motivation for proposed upzones in Seattle. Recently a UW graduate student, Nat Henry, asked himself if he could map Seattle to see where it is already a “15 minute city” and where it lacks facilities. His maps are interactive, that is you can select what you consider to be essential and the map will change its evaluation of your block.
Here are two maps for Wallingford. The first shows the parts of Wallingford that are within a 15 minute walk of (all of) supermarkets, libraries, parks, bus stops to downtown and restaurants in blue and green. The parts in tan are 15 to 20 walking minutes away and the darker brown parts are 20 to 25 minutes walking distance from all the selected commercial essentials. The large white area in the middle of the map is the Wallingford Playfield and Hamilton Middle School. For the tan areas north of N/NE 36th St it is the distance to the Wallingford library branch that is more than 15 minutes. South of N/NE 36th St it is also farther to the supermarket. Similarly in Tangletown it is the library and the supermarket that are more than 15 minutes away.
The second adds in the requirement to be within a 15 minute walk of the Link Light Rail station in the U District.
These maps are not showing walking distances to schools because the map database seems to not have included John Stanford or McDonald and Lincoln appears to be misplaced west. Similarly, the tan areas in Tangletown suggests the 56th St Market is not included as a “supermarket” although it is certainly an adequate neighborhood market. The use of a 15 minute walkshed for access to a conventional bus raises some questions. In my experience the distance most folks consider reasonable to walk to a bus is 10 minutes. Research has shown that commuters try to limit their commute to work time to 20 minutes and substitute other methods when one method exceeds that.
This map suggests most of Wallingford has already achieved the City goal of being a “15 minute city” and, thus, does not need to be a candidate for any additional rezoning.
“This map suggests most of Wallingford has already achieved the City goal of being a “15 minute city” and, thus, does not need to be a candidate for any additional rezoning.”
I would say it makes a strong case for the opposite, actually: a larger number of people living here means that many more people with a great opportunity to have a lower carbon foot print, which is good for the environment, while more types of homes affordable to people with less rather than more money gives them a great opportunity to live car-lite or car-free, which is good for them financially.
Indeed! Most areas of the city are less walkable than central Wallingford. That makes them a less attractive—and less suitable—place for new housing than Wallingford. Of course I’d love to see more neighborhoods become 15-minute neighborhoods, but not at the expense of discouraging newcomers from the existing ones.
This is the basic problem with transit oriented development- it blocks the creation of new urban villages and maximizes displacement. Neighborhoods that are car centric and have large lots or private country clubs with no displacement issues are frozen in amber because they’re not near a bus stop. See Sand Point, Broadmoor, Blue Ridge, etc. All untouched by HALA and state rezoning proposals. Neighborhoods that are near bus stops are getting continuously upzoned, maximizing demolition and displacement and eliminating older, walkable, human scale neighborhoods like you have in Europe. We’re building towards a future where the ultra rich have all the land and private parks and water access while everyone else gets stacked on top of each other around bus stops. Our first priority should be reforming state tax code to begin taxing land, not housing.
We should absolutely allow every one of our neighborhoods to grow incrementally over time. We restrict most of the new apartment buildings right next to noisy, polluted, high-traffic arterial streets that nobody really wants to see out their living room window—all so the folks next to country clubs don’t have to live near apartments—and that’s rather disgusting.
What I disagree with is the sentiment expressed at the end of the original article, the idea that reaching a certain level of walkability is some sort of justification to halt further development in that neighborhood. That is nonsense. No neighborhood should be immune from new neighbors. Not Sand Point, not Broadmoor, and not Wallingford.
“No neighborhood should be immune from new neighbors. Not Sand Point, not Broadmoor, and not Wallingford.”
You make it sound like density is a bad thing. I agree!
You have poor reading comprehension. I support additional housing anywhere in the city that people want to put it. I support walkable neighborhoods. Those require density. The denser the population, the more businesses your neighborhood supports, the more things you can do without hopping in a car.
The term “immunity” generally means that you’re protected from bad things like disease or prosecution. Or in this case, unwanted density.
Maybe people in Sandpoint are happy with the number of businesses they have. That’s why they decided to live there instead in an overcrowded shithole like Capitol Hill.
The fact that Capitol Hill housing is more expensive and way more people live there kind of indicates what’s preferred by more. What you called shithole is the higher end and more desirable neighborhood.
Usually the shithole comment is used in ways opposite from how you use. With the same money, people expect to get bigger houses and bigger yards when they are buying at shithole places. When it’s a more desirable neighborhood, people will put up with home being tiny.
I suspect most people don’t realize how bad city land use policy is…there’s more land (shown in red) locked up in suburban sized mandatory minimum lot sizes of 7,200 and 9,600 square feet than in the urban villages or that allow multi-family housing, respectively. (The little dip at the top of the single family bar shows the 2019 MHA rezonings).
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/982cd0a08b95f0dec0cd7f52391079c0cbfeacf3f5bc627879500f33b53d7149.jpg
Look at the Seattle map. Isn’t it very obvious that it makes no sense to have places like Sand Point high density, considering how it’s surrounded by water and hard to construct traffic infrastructure to? Isn’t it obvious that Wallingford is one of the better location for upzoning for its center location?
As long as we have people much richer than others, you’ll have groupings of them in neighborhoods that’s intentionally made hard to get to. The solution isn’t to then just upzone their neighborhood in spite. It has to make sense. Places with water access on the east and west edges of Seattle are mostly not great for upzoning, for the fact that water restricts infrastructure options. If you want to give the general public more access to them, it’d be making more parks there and zoning more of them commercial.
Infrastructure isn’t restricted by water at sand point, broadmoor, etc. Those places simply have restrictive covenants and zoning that is designed to be exclusionary. They all buy up large tracts of land as country clubs or simply buffer zones to keep transit and city influences out, then the state has rules that prevent those places from being taxed. You need to spend some time in the king county parcel viewer so you get sufficiently outraged. Don’t rationalize their undeveloped status as being good urban planning- it’s an example of the opposite.
We need to be thinking more in terms of goldilocks- there’s a human scale of density that works best. Too much and you end up with a mess like downtown is. Too little and everybody has to drive all the time and you get gridlock and mcmansions. The goal should be to advance all neighborhoods to walkable status, then network them and allow them to mature. We all need to stop being so extremist and start looking to live with moderation.
Also since I live in East Wallingford, I have been loving how traffic infrastructures favor me so much. My traveling time to all job/business hubs are shorter than from Sandpoint or Ballard, by car or by public transportation. That’s why I’ve been advocating zoning up in Wallinford MORE than many other places in Seattle.
TJ, you keep saying water water water, but sand point and broadmoor country clubs are each more than a half mile from water. Also, many private parks and land hoarded near the coast is going untaxed. That land can be taxed and then force converted to parks, then land swapped with the public golf courses that are directly on light rail to create new urban villages. There’s also great places for urban villages that are more than a half mile from the coast and are undeveloped, like Talaris. It’s not like we need to pack everyone on top of I5 as you seem to be dreaming of.
Don’t buy into the urbanist mantra: See that nice walkable place? We need to destroy it by redeveloping it! See that place where everyone drives and has mcmansions? Let’s preserve that forever! It’s a path to a dystopian nightmare, not a livable city.
Actually, I would be all for destroying those neighborhoods and turn them back into nature, while everybody just live in more limited and higher density areas. The whole population of Wallingford as is can easily fit in two narrow corridors of 45th and Stone Way actually, and I wouldn’t be against moving everybody there.
The main point is still that we shouldn’t just spread around evenly for the sake of it. Even the border of Seattle is just an arbitrary human construct.
Lake definitely restricts infrastructure, and there are two simple ways to look at it: 1. You can’t put supermarkets/rail stations/schools/libraries in the lake, so by default places by lakes have fewer places that can build infrastructure. 2. If you do put an infrastructure by the lake, by default it serves less places that can be used for housing. Lake-side library surely is great, but it means its walking zone would be halved.
So it makes perfect sense for infrastructures like lightrail to be drawn in north-south in the center of Seattle, and build more concentration of housing and infrastructure around the center, and then lower it as it go further away. To advance all neighborhoods to be walkable is what I’d call extremist. I think to make vast majority of the people to live in walkable neighborhoods is the better goal anyway. Fitting the same number of population, the easiest way to make most people living in walkable places is to concentrate them, not to build up everywhere.
I agree, the only reason my partner and I are able to live in Wallingford (well, technically Fremont, but still east of Aurora) is because we happen to be able to afford a townhouse. No way would we would be able to afford (or even want) a single-family home and all of the inefficiencies that come with it, but being able to walk to frequent transit, grocery stores, libraries, and parks is a reason we love to live here.
While I hope HB 1110 passes, the city can and should certainly act on its own to do away with exclusionary zoning.
A “15 minute walk” does not equate to “walkable.” The walk between Wallingford and the U District light rail station is fairly crappy, and trying to cross 50th Street is a game of Frogger. The City talks a good talk about making our neighborhoods more pedestrian-friendly, but little real action is ever taken.
Agree! We walk to the U District every day (including kids) and have to dodge cars turning onto I-5, broken glass and garbage with the roar of traffic in our ears. Technically walkable but Seattle can do better.
Well, they could do something about getting rid of the violent and squalid homeless encampments on that route to make your walk more pleasant. But some people think seem to think they should stay right where they are.
Clueless drivers on a road not designed for pedestrians are a far bigger safety hazard than any encampment.
While I’m sure they exist, I have yet to be harassed by a homeless person. I’m harassed and every month or so get to fear for my life because of drivers, often in Wallingford itself.
I’ll say. I guess the first question is “how far is that?” Google’s map software suggests about 2/3 of a mile. I agree that kind of hike is going to happen only in cases of real desperation – for a bus ride. On the other hand, I routinely walk a good deal farther for other purposes, and I’m not sure exactly how to account for the difference. The bus stop isn’t the end destination, the bus won’t wait if those 15 minutes turn out to be 16, etc. And of course all this depends a lot on how much spare time you have, and how fit you are to walk distances.
All of Wallingford is within 10 minute access so its a moot point.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/27352df1160d3a502564a18928febe0f0999d47b4c41461d244fce7ddd880b92.jpg
It’s mostly a moot point because most of Wallingford is 10 minutes or less (this is time to bus from the map).
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9fb6be495312dd099493938bd725baaa51e347ae818813827671c32f17953328.jpg
Also important to note the map only considers buses that run directly to downtown. For many in Wallingford, taking the 62 bus on its long slog all the way downtown via Fremont is slower than taking the 20/31/32/44 to the U District and transferring to Link to get the rest of the way downtown. These latter buses are not accounted for on the map at all.
I think it’s just too hard to come up with a good criteria. A short 5
minute hop from east Wallingford on the usually on time and not crowded
route 20 isn’t quite the equivalent for the stop-and-go 44 from west
Wallingford that sometimes take forever to show up due to congestion.
Also I think realistically for people who work at downtown, what’s
critical isn’t necessarily if you have a bus to downtown, but the
overall travel time also. It’s not worse to have a longer walk if the
bus ride is shorter, meaning a less convenient place in Wallingford is
still better than next to a Lake City bus stop. With that said, I think
whatever done in this map is roughly good enough for the point it’s
trying to make.
Is this in good faith or is this propaganda? You decide!
2 weeks ago here: “it’s a misconception that Historic Wallingford wants to freeze housing in time in Wallingford! It’s a misconception that Historic designation is about stopping zoning!”
Today, the Treasurer of Historic Wallingford: “Wallingford does not need to be a candidate for any additional rezoning.”
Nope, the author has no agenda here, clearly.
https://twitter.com/pushtheneedle/status/1580943020266225664
“Ruby gave them a roadmap for preserving the neighborhood. They followed his instructions, and new duplexes were outlawed. “It just basically kept the neighborhood more or less the way it was,” said Ruby.”
https://kuow.org/stories/wallingford-fought-developers-decades-it-was-hip/
If an oil company put out this type of propaganda, “Is Exxon-Mobile Already A Green Company? This ESG-15 Metric says we already are green!!” Wallingford environmentalists will be up in arms, as rightfully they should.
But when Historic Wallingford puts out Is Exclusionary Zoning Already Great? The 15-Minute Blogpost Metric Says We Already Are! while no one can afford to actually live in Wallingford, some people fall for it.
Truth is more and more working class families are pushed out to living in Auburn and Marysville and have to burn fossil fuels for 3 hours a day to get to their jobs in Seattle…
Wallingford shouldn’t fall for this.
“Truth is more and more working class families are pushed out to living in Auburn and Marysville”
Or maybe those working families actually would rather live in single family homes in quieter neighborhoods, instead of being crammed like sardines into townhomes and Borg cubes.
The admin of my office, basically the lowest earner in the team, would love to live in a Wallingford townhome (700k~1m) but has to settle for single family house in Kent(400k~600k). She wouldn’t mind living in a condo if they are more affordable. Her house is cheaper than many 2bd condos in the neighborhood.
Wallingford is a great place to live if you want to be able to walk to most of your daily needs. More people should have the opportunity to live in Wallingford!
I complete disagree with the last sentence. As one specific counterpoint, I bet all those empty storefronts along 45th and Stone Way would benefit from the increased demand that comes with density.
As another: I live in one of those orange areas; as an expectant mother as much as I’m looking forward to long stroller walks around the neighborhood during my parental leave … it sure would be nice to have things be a little bit closer and more accessible. I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to say that we want our neighborhood to be able to serve more young families — as much as this map might suggest otherwise.
Mike Ruby’s final “thus” conclusion is a hilarious non-sequitur. We should all try our own. I’ll go first:
“This map suggests most of Wallingford has already achieved the City goal
of being a ’15 minute city’ and, thus, does not need to floss everyday.”
We are definitely increasing density in the wrong places based on this. The biggest growth in density in Wallingford has been along Stone Way, and based on this I think the places we should put big buildings in would be around Wallingford Center as we are all aware. Also if not for being so expensive, the 47th Street pedestrian bridge over i5 would be a great idea if it’s also coupled with building more high density buildings in the blocks close to i5 between 45th and 50ths.