GREENING THE EMERALD CITY

WILL CITY HEED CALL FOR VISIONARY PLAN?
Brice Maryman, Co-Director, Open Space Seattle 2100
openspace2100@gmail.com

Key members of the Open Space Seattle 2100 coalition, including People For Puget Sound, Parks and Open Space Advocates, Friends of Seattle's Olmsted Parks and Mithun Architects + Designers + Planners, have endorsed a request to the Mayor and City Council for the City of Seattle to develop a comprehensive green infrastructure plan for the next century. This budget request follows directly from the visionary ideas developed by over 300 Seattle citizens during the Green Futures Charrette held in February, 2006.

Specifically, the Open Space Seattle budget request asks the City to consider the following actions:

• Through community, consultant and city collaboration, further develop the 100-year Green Infrastructure Plan from the visions generated during the Green Futures Charrette and existing neighborhood plans, that spatially locates and integrates strategic green infrastructure investments and establishes a 20-year, phase one implementation strategy.
• Create a Green Infrastructure Task Force to oversee the Green Infrastructure Planning process, identify critical pathways to implementation and foster collaboration involving city, private sector, and non-profit stakeholders.
• Initiate planning for a Green Infrastructure Levy, as part of a replacement strategy for the expiring Pro-Parks Levy.

Representatives from the following organizations lent their names to a letter supporting these budget requests: Anchor Environmental LLC, The Berger Partnership, Cascade Design Collaborative, Charles Anderson Landscape Architecture, Friends of Seattle's Olmsted Parks, Gaynor, Inc., GGLO, Jones + Jones Architects + Landscape Architects, JA Brennan + Associates, Mike Houck of the Portland's Urban Greenspaces Institute, Mithun Architects + Designers + Planners, the Mountains to Sound Greenway Trust, Parks and Open Space Advocates, People For Puget Sound, The Pomegranate Center, Seattle Audobon, SvR Design, and the Washington Chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects.

Wetland Vingette 2 by Vanessa Lee

Green Futures: A New Way of Thinking

With several challenges now facing the City over the next century, including a doubling of our current population, global climate change, rising obesity rates, the prospect of "peak oil," shifting demographics, degradation of our regional resources, and a rapidly changing cityscape, the members of the Open Space Seattle 2100 coalition and the participants in the Green Futures Charrette see a vital need for the City to establish a long-range vision for "green infrastructure."

Without the City embracing a comprehensive vision, partner organizations and funds will be harder to engage, future opportunities will be overlooked, and citizens will not be aware of the ways in which their local work can gradually form linkages to create connected parks, habitat, and trails for the City.

A preliminary version of the City's 100-Year Green Infrastructure Plan comes directly from the ideas developed by 23 teams of developers, designers, non-profits, and citizen activists who advocated truly visionary ideas during the Green Futures Charrette. From reclaiming street rights-of-way for urban agriculture, to re-establishing a salt-water marsh in SoDo that would also treatment waste water, the ideas propose a new way of thinking about Seattle's long-term future that is not simply one of taller buildings and more freeway lanes.

About Open Space Seattle 2100

Open Space Seattle 2100 is a coalition of urban leadership that facilitated a year-long public discourse and planning process, sponsored in part by the City of Seattle, the University of Washington and the Urban Land Institute. This process engaged citizens in collaborative visioning of Seattle's future open space network. The University of Washington's Department of Landscape Architecture in the College of Architecture and Urban Planning has joined with leaders and citizens from civic, environmental, professional, neighborhood, and community groups to create plans for connected open space that will serve residents, businesses, and our natural systems for the coming century. The project was led by Nancy Rottle, ASLA, RLA, and Brice Maryman, ASLA, LEED™ AP. Brice wrote an article that was published in the spring June edition of the newsletter of WA APA’s Puget Sound Section. Pictures from the charrette are included therein.

Lagoon by Kenichi Nakano & Pietro Potesta

For more information, several resources are available:

Website

Blog

Opinion Piece in the Sunday, 8/13/06 Seattle Times

Charrette results

Office location:

Open Space Seattle 2100
348 Gould Hall
Box 355734
Seattle, WA 98195-5734

Contacts for additional information:

Brice Maryman, Open Space Seattle 2100, (206) 310-7254
Heather Trim, People For Puget Sound, (206) 382-7007
John Barber, Parks and Open Space Advocates, (206) 324-1548

NEIGHBORHOODS

VISUALIZE DELRIDGE
Katherine Cote, University of Washington Student Representative to WA APA

Ion Arai, a UW graduate student in urban planning (right), discusses analysis and recommendations for neighborhood economic development. Photo: Lee Roberts.

In June 2006, the University of Washington College of Architecture and Urban Planning (CAUP) successfully completed Visualize Delridge: Planning for the Future of the Neighborhood, a collaborative planning document prepared by Master of Urban Planning students and the Delridge Neighborhoods Development Association (DNDA).

The Visualize Delridge plan was a project born out of the University of Washington (UW) office of Educational Partnerships and Learning Technologies, and was completed through a six-month urban planning studio led by a Department of Urban Design and Planning (DUDP) professor, Branden Born, and a DUDP doctoral student, Alon Bassok. The focus of this studio was the Delridge neighborhood of West Seattle, located just south of the West Seattle Bridge and the site of historic disinvestment and economic hardship. In recent years, the booming Seattle real estate market has attracted homebuyers and developers to Delridge, one of the city’s last remaining places for affordable housing.

In response to potential resident displacement through land speculation and development, DNDA was formed in 1996 by resident Paul Fischburg to improve the quality of life for current Delridge residents through community-based development projects. Among DNDA’s goals are preservation of affordable housing, increase in economic opportunity in the neighborhood, celebration of the diversity of cultures in the neighborhood, and preservation of environmental quality, especially along Longfellow Creek.

DNDA’s major successes include bringing a Seattle Public Library branch to the neighborhood, constructing over 50 new units of affordable housing, and renovating the old Cooper Elementary School into a community cultural center with artist live/work spaces. The UW and DNDA planning studio was a cooperative effort to help DNDA assess the current desires and conditions in the community to inform their future projects.

In the first of two planning phases, students prepared in-depth background reports on the Delridge neighborhood conditions, including topics such as past planning efforts, community services, environmental and land use issues, demographics, and community context. Using this background information, students then planned and hosted a community meeting, attended by 35 residents, to gather additional input on what opportunities and challenges existed in the community and what residents would like to see in the future of their neighborhood.

The top concerns voiced by residents in the first community meeting guided the students’ planning activities in the second phase of planning. Residents were concerned with pedestrian safety, especially along trails and public hill-climbs. Residents also expressed their desire to see more pedestrian-oriented businesses along Delridge Way, including a grocery store. DNDA also asked the DUDP studio to help identify and assess possible opportunity properties for development.

In phase two of the planning process, students and the DNDA identified five priority focus areas into which the students would conduct in-depth research and analysis.

The final document included the following focus areas:

• Housing
• Economic Development
• Opportunity Spaces (analysis of parcels for future redevelopment)
• Trails (especially connecting to the Longfellow Creek Legacy Trail)
• Urban Design

The final planning document is a user-friendly collection of text, maps, drawings, and data tables. One highlight of the Visualize Delridge plan was a graphic representation of two possible redevelopment schemes for the Louisa Boren Middle School property. This property is currently a temporary home for other Seattle schools displaced during building renovation. Cleveland High School currently occupies the campus, and there are no long-term plans for the property after Cleveland leaves. This property is an important community asset, and could serve as a location for additional affordable housing, open space, and businesses.

Another highlight is a detailed description of an alternative grocery store model that would both provide residents their most requested business and also be profitable. Through market analysis of the Delridge area, students determined that, because of the relatively low population density (customer base) of the neighborhood and lack of a site large enough to accommodate a big-box store, a traditional grocery would not be economically viable. As an alternative, the DUDP studio developed a model of a smaller-scale ‘express’ version of a major grocery chain, with on-line ordering which could be supported by the neighborhood residents, while also drawing customers from the 16,000 commuters passing through Delridge each day.

The Trails and Urban Design sections envisioned improved signage and other pedestrian amenities, which would encourage pedestrian use of the community’s extensive trail network. Students used GPS and mapping software to create a GIS map of formal and informal walking routes around Delridge.

At the end of Phase Two, students once again held a community event at Louisa Boren Middle School to unveil their recommendations and visions for Delridge. Over 50 people attended this closing event. Students spent time discussing with residents how, over the course of the studio project, the community’s input had been transformed into potential projects and recommendations. Since its completion in June 2007, DNDA has already used the Visualize Delridge plan to guide strategic planning for future programs and developments in the Delridge area.

FILM SCREENING

FREE ON OPENING NIGHT
Krishna Bharathi

For planners living in the Seattle area or visiting for the weekend, a unique architectural film series can be found at the Grand Illusion Cinema in the University District. Special free screenings are featured on the opening day of each film. Friday openings begin 10/20/06 and conclude 11/3/06. Note the seating capacity is limited to 70 people, so aim for early arrival. This small theater is located at 1430 NE 50th Street in Seattle.

The series, which receives support from the University of Washington and the AIA Young Architects Forum, offers films that highlight a cross section of diverse attitudes toward practice in the design professions. More information about the theater and the schedule for the series can be found at www.grandillusioncinema.org.

Film Summaries

Living with the Past, Historic Cairo
Cairo is one of the few medieval cities in the world that remains relatively intact. This is a portrait of Darb al-Ahmar, a neighborhood in the old city now facing a process of radical change.

Mille Gilles, A Thousand Gilles
The thought & ideas of French philosopher Gilles Deleuze, and his impact on creative work & communities around the world. Interviews with architects, Greg Lynn & Lars Spuybroek, musicians David Shea & DJ Spooky, artist Lydia Dona, designer & software developer Bernard Cache, organizational theorist Jules Koster, & professor / film & media analyist, Patricia Pisters.

Kochuu, Japanese Architecture/Influence & Origin
A visually stunning film about modern Japanese architecture, its roots in Japanese tradition and its relationship to modernist Scandinavian design. Tadao Ando, Sverre Fehn, Kristian Gullichsen, Kiso Kurokawa, Toyo Ito, Juhani Pallasmaa & Kazuo Shinohara featured.

Screening Details

Living with the Past, Historic Cairo
Maysoon Pachachi / 2001 / 56 minutes
free on opening Friday only, 10/20/06, 7 & 9 PM

Mille Gilles, A Thousand Gilles
Ijsbrand van Veelen / 1997 / 44 minutes
free on opening Friday only, 10/27/06, 7 & 9 PM

Kochuu, Japanese Architecture/Influence & Origin
Jesper Wachtmeister / 2003 / 53 minutes
free on opening Friday only, 11/3/06, 7 & 9 PM

NO ON 933: HAVING FUN YET?

HANDS-ON GUERRILLA TACTICS FOR THE EPIC 933 BATTLE
Dulce Setterfield
Campaign Volunteer

With a candidate’s campaign underway and a new role with an unique venture looming large on my 2006 calendar, I questioned whether to volunteer for the NO on 933 campaign as well. In August, after hearing Joe Tovar speak at a Brown Bag seminar, I decided to seize the opportunity to do something unique, with the resources at hand. I dedicated my long neglected bicycle to the campaign.

A yard sign was soon mounted on the bike, using the two-faced panels to straddle the seat. Pedaling around with a campaign sign was not the point; it was hardly possible with the seat blocked anyway. My bike had not been ridden for over a year while I struggled to overcome a frozen shoulder. So it was no sacrifice to simply walk the bike to my local branch of a regional library, just five minutes from my home, and park it for 10 hours. The Port Orchard library is visited daily by hundreds of people from countless walks of life, seven days a week. A sign shouting NO on 933 was now conspicuously positioned in the sightline of approaching voters and their younger family members. Because the library has voter registration materials and related signage just inside the entrance, the message that now is time to think about voting is reinforced.

Late summer weather forecasts looked much more favorable to bicycle activity than to seasonal fish migration. So besides locking my bike to the rack at the library’s entrance on a frequent basis, I moved it to an area in front of a community center on occasion. One Saturday, my bike loitered near the entrance to the local farmer’s market, because political campaigning is banned within the marketplace. On a Sunday, my bike lounged in front of a lively going-out-of-business sale, next to Highway 166, where the traffic flow slows to a crawl through downtown Port Orchard. Monday, the bike reported to its duty station at the library.

I haven’t spotted any signage sprouting on other bikes in my area but I hope I have conveyed how easy it is to create a mobile unit that can be strategically dispatched and repositioned as needed. Am I having fun yet? Yes. Have I received any negative comments or become a target for airborne tomatoes? No. Any positive comments? When I walked my bike on the public moorage dock on a warm weekend, boat owners called out to me and asked about 933. In fact, two out of three said they would be sure to read their Voters’ Pamphlet.

Thinking out-of-the-box and taking action accordingly comes naturally to me. So far, it’s been fun and stimulating to gain visibility for a statewide campaign in one small town. I invite others to invent new avenues with which you can feel you really do make a difference. If perchance you are already in the thick of mainstream campaign activities, bravo and carry on!

If sharing my use of homegrown tactics inspires scattered, mobile units elsewhere or even burgeoning, coordinated brigades, I’d like to see proof of the snowball effect across Washington! Because I am the WA APA member who was recently appointed to serve as the editor of Planning Northwest, please send any photos of mobile units to me at newsletter@washington-apa.org, for consideration in an upcoming edition of the newsletter.

PLANNERS ON THE MOVE

PRINCIPAL ENGINEERS, CAD TECHNICIAN, INTERN JOIN BHC

BHC Consultants in Seattle hired James Lutz as a Principal Engineer and Cathy Hall Poshusta as an Engineering and Marketing Intern.

Other recent hires at BHC include Jeffrey Howard, Principal Engineer and Glenn Castillo, CAD Technician. Both are pictured below. BHC Consultants, an APA member, is a locally owned and managed professional municipal services firm.

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

HONING CHARRETTE EXPERTISE

From 11/06/06 through 11/10/06, charrette training and certification opportunities await you in Portland, Oregon. Both introductory and advanced modules are offered at Portland State University.

These courses are accredited through AIA and AICP. For more information and to register, visit the National Charrette Institute (NCI) website at www.charretteinstitute.org.

You may also call (503) 233-8486 extension 3#.

FROM THE EDITOR'S DESK

NOW IS THE TIME: SEIZE THE MESSAGE
Dulce Setterfield
Newsletter Editor

Don’t let another October slip by without promoting National Community Planning Month!

American Planning Association is equipped to help local planners promote the National Community Planning Month message. Take a look at a plethora of helpful items now available at no cost from the national APA website. The graphic above is one example of your download choices. Let’s not let Washington be last to get aboard the promotional train or miss it all together. We can’t afford to allow our neighborhoods, cities, and counties to lose this timely opportunity to bolster awareness of planners’ pivotal role in communities and also boost interest in public participation. The role of planning commissioners and other volunteers could also be explained.

APA wants to hear from local planners as they promote public awareness of community planning this month: how do we best tie this theme to specific recent achievements, emerging issues, and ongoing challenges? If you choose to use any APA products in your local awareness campaign, you might let APA know the highlights of your experience and the outcome. The website includes a link called Submit Your Activities, which will tell you how to share your story in a single paragraph that can later be shared nationwide. Of course, our own Chapter of APA would like to hear as well.

APA’s promotional menu includes the following:

• Suggested Activities
• Youth Outreach
• K-12 Schools
• Youth Groups
• Media Kit
• Logos

In the media kit, explore these items:

• Sample Press Release for Local Use that can be locally customized
• Fact Sheets on the Practice of Planning
• Great Communities Take Planning
• Meaningful Citizen Participation: The Public Voice in Planning
• Professional Planners: Helping Create Lasting Value
• Technology for Improved Planning
• Public Service Announcements (PSAs) to be read on local radio stations

You may also want to explore Tips from APA's Communications Guide.

• Discover ways to use National Community Planning Month to build greater support for planning in your community among elected officials.
• Move outside of your comfort zone and try a new way to communicate about planning during National Community Planning Month.
• Reach out to and work with potential allies and collaborators as well.

Seize golden opportunities to collaborate.

In the county I live in, a regional library system is responsible for nine branch locations. The library’s public relations executive offered to lend her influence and expertise to arrange generous exhibit space and support in as many branches as respective jurisdictions are willing to seize. Normally, a branch manager approves and schedules each exhibit and only a small glass case is available to community groups. In this case, the executive offered to coordinate throughout the system to make shelf space, floor space for easels, plus wall space available, as appropriate. A library is just one place where planners may discover goodwill and enthusiasm for promotional and educational exhibits. And libraries engage in long range planning, too, so the community planning message aligns with the interests of library executives.

At publication time, I haven’t heard that even one of the numerous jurisdictions within my county has embraced the idea planted weeks ago. But October isn’t over yet. As editor, once the national promotion wraps up, I hope a least one success story emerges from a planner or planning ally in our state that I can publish in the newsletter. A single paragraph or a longer article is welcome, with a photo or two if appropriate.



PLUNGING INTO THE NEWSLETTER ROLE
Dulce Setterfield
Newsletter Editor

As the incoming editor of Planning Northwest, I’m suddenly at the receiving end of content sent to newsletter@washington-apa.org. As I hit stride in the editor role, you may notice subtle refinements to our monthly online newsletter. I do not have an agenda of proposing and implementing sweeping changes. Rather, I am tapping a wellspring of questions as I delve into my new volunteer job.

Following the October board meeting, I want to flesh out a purpose statement for the newsletter, prior to considering any far reaching vision that may arise or focusing on the most devilish of many details. As planners, we are accustomed to beginning with a clear purpose articulated. Because I didn’t find one carved in stone or inscribed in pencil, ink, or a digital image when I came aboard, the first question that popped into my head was, what is the purpose of the monthly newsletter? Additionally, how does it augment other communications, such as the Chapter’s listserv, the website, and conferences? What are the best linkages, if any, with Section newsletters (two are published quarterly), with national APA’s publications, and with any external organizations of interest?

If any readers have strong views on how Planning Northwest delivers value in their workplace or with related activities, how it might deliver greater value to their Section of WA APA, or even how it might seem irksome (or worse) at times, I would like to hear. I don’t plan to launch any pesky surveys to gather input regarding the newsletter in the foreseeable future, but I invite impromptu input, ranging from a timely factual correction to an occasional rant or rave, from pragmatic suggestions to brilliant ideas.

With the Fall Conference attracting planners from all over Washington, October is a stimulating time to plunge into the editor role. I expect to bring home a bounty of fresh insights and contacts, as schmoozing, listening, and brainstorming with conference attendees are some of my strong suits. Home for me right now is the Kitsap Peninsula. Yes, I am a member of WA APA’s smallest section (based on recent headcount). For over three decades, I’ve been a Washingtonian and have lived in four counties in the Evergreen State, including cities with populations ranging from 5,000 to the size of Seattle. I’ll provide more about my background in a later edition. For now, trust that my background is broad enough that I feel comfortable with and interested in the full spectrum of subjects relevant to WA APA.

Meanwhile, if you would like to share a glimpse of your background, accomplishments, key insights, and forward thrust of your career, please consider becoming a subject for the now-and-again “APA Member Profile” column. This feature was introduced earlier this year. As long as it provides value to readers and the planners who are profiled, it is an easy feature to sustain. Look at archived issues of the newsletter to see what questions are typically asked and consider whether you have a recent photo of yourself to accompany your profile. Even a photo of your favorite off-the-clock pursuit might be acceptable, as long as you comment in the profile and/or provide a caption, so the context can be grasped. If you are hesitant to be profiled but admire a particular planner or related professional within WA APA, please submit a nomination to add to a shortlist of shortlist of potential profile subjects.

A way to highlight your latest career step, rather than profile your entire career, is to submit a blurb about your move to the “Planners on the Move” column, which was also added to the newsletter this year. It is published as often as there is content to merit inclusion. Besides a brief account of a recent career move, head shots and other photos are welcome, in JPEG format. Please optimize image files for Web publishing (72 dpi), to streamline publishing in the newsletter.

If you have read this far, you must be a true devotee of Planning Northwest, so consider whether you would like to make a unique, ongoing contribution as a reviewer of emerging APA-affiliated publications. As editor, from time to time I am invited to download a complimentary review copy of a new publication for the purpose of review and critique. While reading the latest publication and preparing a critique might be stimulating and rewarding, I would like to delegate that role to an enthused member. Please be in touch if you are commitment-capable and would get a kick out of becoming possibly the first person in the Pacific Northwest to read whatever is hot off the press, then commenting succinctly on its relevance to colleagues statewide.

Notify me if you would like to volunteer as a reviewer or explore this option further. The most recent sample publication provided for review was the summer edition of the Planning Commissioners Journal. The tagline is “News and Information for Citizens Planners.” The seasonal theme is the relationship of agriculture and community, with articles addressing subjects such as farmland protection and getting farm products to markets. Please contact me by October 21 at dsetterfield@wavecable.com if you feel a burning desire to immediately read and review this journal. Please tell me why you feel you can write timely, concise, insightful reviews that planning professionals would appreciate. If an immediate review assignment is not possible but you want to be considered for a role as a reviewer in 2007, please contact me accordingly. In the future, an occasional book may be available for review, in addition to periodicals.

ANNUAL FALL CONFERENCE

OUR SHARED FUTURE KICKS OFF IN YAKIMA

The annual conference of the Washington Chapter of APA was opening in Yakima while publication of this newseltter was completed. Look for stories and photos from the conference in the November newsletter.

CHAPTER-ONLY MEMBERSHIP

REMINDER

Last year the board approved a new chapter-only group membership opportunity.

This membership is available to planning commissions, city councils and commissions, tribal councils, and board members of non-profit organizations and other professional associations.

Up to 10 members may be included in a group membership. The group rate if $150 and is administered by the chapter office.

To obtain a group membership form or learn more about the benefits of this membership, contact Anna Nelson, AICP, Membership Committee chair, at (206) 382-9540 or anelson@buckgordon.com.

NEWSLETTER DEADLINE

MONTHLY NEWSLETTER

Have a project you want to highlight for planners across the state? An issue you think more planners need information on? Planning Northwest is always looking to highlight projects and research of our members. If you are interested in having an article published feel free to contact the editor.

The deadline for the newsletter is the first of every month, preceding the publication month. Please submit all newsletter articles to newsletter@washington-apa.org.