Working the Middle Scale [Transect]

WORKING THE MIDDLE SCALE DOUGLAS KELBAUGH Downtown Seattle skyline Photo: Todd W. Bressi This essay was prompted by a request to do a review of Mark Hinshaw’s book, Citistate Seattle. More specifically, I was asked to contrast and compare the smaller-scale focus of his book with the larger-scale focus of my book, Common Place. This is a worthy and timely question as Seattle soars to new economic and cultural heights, and I will engage it obliquely in a letterly way. Mark Hinshaw’s book (and David Sucher’s earlier City Comforts) has highlighted for me and perhaps others the dif- ference between a strategy of urban microsurgery and one of grander planning. This dichotomy is not unique to Seattle, but it does make for an interesting discussion as this good and livable city transforms itself into a great and distinguished city—if, indeed, it wants to be great and distinguished. That may be the bigger question, because I contend that it different and more difficult to for a place to become great than to become livable. First, let me say that Seattle is doing as well as any American city at making itself livable, attractive and vital. Hinshaw has uncannily, with sensitive antennae and writing skill, put his journalistic finger on exactly where and precisely how it is succeeding and failing. He hasn‘t missed a place or subject and his debunking of five myths about Seattle—rain, coffee, company town, flannel shirts and its phobia for Cali- fornians—in the introductory thumbnail sketch is brilliant. But is Seattle acting and thinking big enough for all its recent wealth and energy? Certainly, its private sector lead- ers at Microsoft, Boeing, Starbucks, Nordstrom and REI are thinking big about market share if not dominance. But they are thinking big in ways less and less local and more and more global. Corporations that come to the metropolitan area to mine its favorable lifestyle may later move on to greener pastures elsewhere after they have consumed this latter day resource—much as entrepreneurs and speculators once depleted the area of fur, coal, timber and fish. Mayor Schell is eminently capable of thinking big about the public sector. But the Lesser Seattle syndrome, so passionately moderate and resistant to making bold or visionary moves, continues to hobble efforts to build a city that exceeds the sum of its parts. It has allowed a city to develop a strong chorus but few world-class soloists, i.e. a relatively high average in its architecture and neighborhood fabric, but few masterpiece buildings, streets or squares. There are some fine individual buildings to be sure, but I can only think of a few truly memorable streets (parts of Broadway, lower Madison, Lake Washington Boulevard, Alki Avenue, Fifth Avenue, First Avenue, in Pioneer Square and around the Public Market, which, ironically, is the only place downtown where the view corridor to the bay is blocked). As for larger-scale unity and coherence, I can only think of the University of Washington campus, the Olmsted necklace of parks and possibly Seattle Center (more a family room than a living room, as one of Hinshaw’s essays generously calls it). The city’s infrastructure of great bridges, locks, stadia and highrises are essential but insufficient elements of a great city. As Hinshaw points out, the state and region have thought and acted boldly and courageously about growth management and environmental issues. The Vision 2020 proposal remains a model for modern citistate planning. The Sound Transit project is regional in scale and mode, as is the mountain-to-sound greenway. Regional governance may be a long way off, but a regional mentality is emerging. The next step is some sort of regional revenue sharing, which will allow the metropolis to concentrate on competing against other citistates rather than be distracted and drained by local municipalities fighting each other for tax base. There is also a PLACES 13:2