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Old Posted Nov 14, 2011, 5:20 PM
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Pac NW Plannergeek Honeymoon - Seattle 3/4: Neighborhoods


Capitol Hill

In all my years on the forum everyone has always said that Capitol Hill is Seattle's best urban neighborhood, but I have never gotten a good impression of what it's like despite all the threads here over the years that have included pictures of it.

And so it was a high priority for me to visit. Having done so, I can see why it's hard to understand. East of Broadway Capitol Hill felt like any denser-end bungalow belt neighborhood. West of Broadway it seems to have always had larger buildings, mostly warehouses and small apartment buildings. I assume at one point there were detached houses west of Broadway too, but nearly all have been replaced. I guess what's ultimately odd to me about Capitol Hill west of Broadway is that it's filled with apartments, but at a scale and in a layout that I am unused to seeing.


























Beginning with this picture of a weekend farmer's market, the next several all show Broadway, or buildings along Broadway.











Gay-friendly church on Republican Street. lol.




These are east of Broadway.










Cal Anderson Park:












International District:

In any other city it would be called Chinatown. I suppose International District makes more sense, since there are clearly a lot of Japanese too. Two things about the neighborhood struck me, in particular:

1. It's probably a lot like DC's Chinatown was 30 years ago, before gentrification made ours unrecognizable.

2. Everyone spoke English. Clearly a large portion of the Asian population here has been in the US for multiple generations. That was unexpected.

Obligatory arch picture, before seeing the rest. We should have a Chinatown arch thread, because every city has got one.

















Nice little square. Don't know its name.






University District

I love a good college ghetto neighborhood, and therefore I love the U District. I also love that its main drag is "University Way" instead of "avenue" or "street". It's more special that way.

















Love the walk-up window.






Green Lake and Roosevelt

We stayed near the southeast corner of Green Lake, and walked from there through Roosevelt to get to the 70s series bus line, which is how we traveled downtown and just about everywhere else. Fairly typical bungalow neighborhoods with commercial main streets.













Green Lake and its surrounding park.










Ballard is a neighborhood nearby that I didn't make it to. Apparently it's popular with the bumper sticker crowd.





That's all for now.
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Last edited by Cirrus; Feb 20, 2012 at 4:52 AM.
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  #2  
Old Posted Nov 14, 2011, 8:06 PM
OhioGuy OhioGuy is offline
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Enjoyable collection of photos!
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  #3  
Old Posted Nov 14, 2011, 8:31 PM
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Loving each set. While SSP is for learning about other places...gotta admit I'm a Seattle photo whore.

Regarding the "scale" of Capitol Hill projects, I assume you mean our 65' (sometimes 45') height vernacular over a bungalow base, vs. highrise or townhouse. It's sort of like DC's 160' or whatever it is...everything gets built to that height. The limit on Broadway itself was increased a few years ago, hence the 45' shown in one photo, followed by more recent 65' projects. All of this aligns with our prevalance of 5 over 1 woodframe (and sometimes light gauge metal studs), which is substantially cheaper than concrete. A reduction in parking ratios, with a broader area of zero requirements, has also helped with the current flurry.

The International District is very multicultural. It encompasses the original Chinatown, the old Nihonmachi (Japantown) that largely went away in WWII, and Little Saigon, a strip mall and warehouse district on the other side of I-5. As for generations, there's been a core since the 1800s though numbers have gone up sharply since the 80s. Of course the role of the ID has diminished as the population has diffused and various Asian cultures have retail all over town, particularly in the eastern "tech" burbs and southern "affordable" burbs. As the aerial thread showed, it's a mix of new buildings and old ones, and pretty downmarket despite a fair amount of new stuff. There are always some buildings that aren't inhabited except retail...it's always a restaurant destination.

Ballard is a bit more of a center than most urban village districts. It has a hospital, a movie theater, and a lot of seaport and industrial activity as well as the Ballard Locks. It was originally founded as a separate town. Because it's always had a large area of low-density commercial, and it's a little above average in prosperity, it's a natural place for a lot of new housing. Small parts of it even allow 85'. In classic Seattle fashion it's not "done" yet, with plenty of gaps to fill, but Downtown Ballard is a good place for an urbanity stroll, lunch, and a 1/3 mile walk to the locks.
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Old Posted Nov 14, 2011, 8:44 PM
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Originally Posted by mhays View Post
The International District is very multicultural... it's a mix of new buildings and old ones, and pretty downmarket despite a fair amount of new stuff.
In the second to last Int'l Dist picture there's a yellow "apartments for rent" sign. It's a little hard to read at the scale shown here, but at full size it is clear: Studio units for $502 / month.

That's... astonishing.
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Old Posted Nov 14, 2011, 8:53 PM
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is seattle generally considered among the "big american cities?" like, i know the metro size etc., but would your average, non-ssp, 45-year-old dude consider it as such?
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Old Posted Nov 14, 2011, 8:54 PM
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Capitol Hill looks like an extremely liveable neighborhood. Great pictures.
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Old Posted Nov 14, 2011, 8:59 PM
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Cirrus -- Had to look that one up! Turns out it's the Alps Apartments, which were renovated a few years ago aided by federal and local funds. To extrapolate from a couple sources, the units might be a couple hundred square feet...117 units in 28,558 square feet, including hallways etc. (Can't link to a password-protected news article about funding)

http://info.kingcounty.gov/Assessor/...Nbr=5247801920 (includes exterior photo and square footages)

http://www.cohorealestate.com/apartm...apartments.htm
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Old Posted Nov 14, 2011, 9:01 PM
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Originally Posted by kool maudit View Post
is seattle generally considered among the "big american cities?" like, i know the metro size etc., but would your average, non-ssp, 45-year-old dude consider it as such?
By parallel measures, it's probably 25% smaller than Montreal, guessing. But much less dense and transit oriented. Moving in the right direction on both.

We're below the Boston/SF/Chicago/DC group in transit usage. But above the rest.
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Old Posted Nov 14, 2011, 9:24 PM
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People think of Seattle as a "big city," but not as one of the country's largest. If you asked a bunch of Joe Average Suburbanites to name 10 American cities, I'm guessing Seattle would be on some of the lists but not all of them.

I will say that Seattle felt much larger than I expected it to feel.

If *I* were to make a list, I'd put New York and LA in a tier of their own. After that, I'd put Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, Philadelphia, and DC in a tier together. I'd list Seattle in the third tier, along with Dallas, Houston, Detroit, Miami, and Atlanta. Before visiting I might have been tempted to list Seattle in the next tier down, along with Phoenix and Minneapolis, but having been there it seems bigger and more urban. For the record, my subjective list allows more urban cities to "punch above their weight," and penalizes more suburban places. I'm less interested in how many suburbs a place has than I am in what the urban core feels like.
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Old Posted Nov 14, 2011, 9:26 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by kool maudit View Post
is seattle generally considered among the "big american cities?" like, i know the metro size etc., but would your average, non-ssp, 45-year-old dude consider it as such?
My sense is that we're considered one of the biggest second tier cities - in the company of but larger than places like Minneapolis and Denver. We're #12 on the Census CSA list (which doesn't include Miami and Phoenix) and #15 on the Census MSA list.
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Old Posted Nov 14, 2011, 10:25 PM
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My sense is that we're considered one of the biggest second tier cities - in the company of but larger than places like Minneapolis and Denver. We're #12 on the Census CSA list (which doesn't include Miami and Phoenix) and #15 on the Census MSA list.
I would agree with what you and Cirrus are saying. Seattle definitely is on an average American's big city list, but maybe not top-10... close, though.

I built myself a spreadsheet last week, trying to score "where I can live" in case I need to broaden by life-planning a little. For my spreadsheet, I started with a combo of 2010 census CSAs/MSAs - CSAs for cities that have them, combined with MSAs for those that don't (Miami being the largest, but also including San Diego, Phoenix, Portland). It seemed the most intuitive starting point to me.

I'm sure Cirrus will get to this in part 6 or 7 of his photo bonanza, but one city that really does bat above its weight is Portland. #25 on my combined CSA/MSA list by population, but in the same tier as Denver, Minneapolis, etc. for sure. Maybe not in the eyes of average Americans yet, though. We need to get Portland a baseball team, that'll help.

Anyways, thanks for the pics Cirrus, glad you guys had such a great time. Keep 'em coming!
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Old Posted Nov 14, 2011, 10:42 PM
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Nice look into the neighborhoods.
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Old Posted Nov 15, 2011, 4:43 AM
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Awesume pictures
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Old Posted Nov 15, 2011, 4:13 PM
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For the record, my subjective list allows more urban cities to "punch above their weight," and penalizes more suburban places. I'm less interested in how many suburbs a place has than I am in what the urban core feels like.
yeah, i feel the same way. seattle is interesting in that it melds the two. the 2010 census indicated that seattle proper has barely 25,000 more people than portland, but the metro area with its vastly larger suburbs has well over a million more. it's no coincidence that it feels much larger and international, even if portland may have an edge in urbanism.

nice pictures again. hope you got to stroll down 15th ave while you were in capitol hill. two of my favorite brunch spots are within a block or two of each other there (coastal kitchen and smith).
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Old Posted Nov 15, 2011, 5:36 PM
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Right. That's why Baltimore and Pittsburgh don't rank above Dallas, despite being more urban by any definition.

15th Avenue? After checking a map, I do not think we made it that far east.
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Old Posted Nov 15, 2011, 11:30 PM
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I've always considered Seattle a large mid-sized city.

Nice pics. Green Lake seems like a very pleasant area.
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Old Posted Nov 17, 2011, 3:52 PM
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Nice pictures. All of these neighborhoods look like interesting areas to explore.
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Old Posted Nov 17, 2011, 7:54 PM
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Loving the fall colors and "cosy" vibe to Seattle. It all looks more urban and aged than I'd expected.

Such a shame Seattle didn't follow Vancouver's lead with transit development in the past...looks like a lot of these neighborhoods could've been nicely linked.
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Old Posted Nov 17, 2011, 9:13 PM
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We said no to a 90% federally-funded subway system in the late 1960s. That's also roughly the time that new highrises got outlawed in most of Seattle, which is still the case. Fix those two things and who knows.
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Old Posted Nov 17, 2011, 9:15 PM
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We said no to a 90% federally-funded subway system in the late 1960s.
Details?
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