True, most urban villages have lots of room to grow in their current zoning, even counting reality rather than just theory. (When a three-story building can be replaced by six stories, that's capacity, but it probably won't happen because the three-story building will be too expensive, not to mention have its own constituents in many cases.)
While a lot of realistic capacity exists, it's getting eaten up at a furious pace in several cases, like Ballard, West Seattle Junction, Pike/Pine, the U District, etc., each of which has a small forest of tower cranes The 2024 growth projections appear likely to be exceeded substantially in some UVs. Land prices will rise pretty quickly....in some areas, the remaining sites by 2015 will be the ones who didn't want to sell/build (or couldn't) in the current and recent booms, or have tough geometries/adjacencies, or are too small to be cost-effective, etc.
That's related to the height discussion. There's demand for highrise housing, offices, and hotels, and some of that demand prefers highrise, or prefers the sort of density/proximity that highrises do best. Further, as UVs start to get tight (within a decade), we'll have a choice....(a) let the capacity get tighter and grow less, (b) upzone outside the UVs, and/or (c) upzone in the UVs.
I doubt we'll see highrises in most UVs. But some make sense. Northgate and Roosevelt near the train stations, the U District in general, maybe central Ballard and West Seattle Junction. As for South Lake Union, it should be a slam dunk. It should be a shorter wing of Downtown, like Belltown aside from its larger business presence.
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"Alot" has never been a word.
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