I went to Seattle and toured around a number of new communities. A few were nice infill projects replacing community housing, others were brand spanking new and located far out of the city. I personally feel they are a dramatic improvement from traditional suburban development … but, hey, you be the judge.
Enjoy!
High Point - West Seattle.
Issaquah Highlands - East of Seattle. This development uses all sorts of new urbanist/neo-traditional styles with a bunch of home builders making for some nice variety. It is hard to tell whether the commercial area (which I didn't get any shots of, sorry) will sustain the community, and hopefully grow over time. I guess time will tell.
This area had internal paths to access the homes with shared parking on the periphery. The parking buildings are the deep red ones with granny flats on the second story:
Rainier Vista - Columbia Way and MLK Way, South Seattle
Nice photos! These houses look pretty nice, some of them have craftsman and Victorian features. They've got the form down pat: good density, close to the street, garages not the most prominent feature on the house, etc... The real question is, are these areas walkable? and are there places to walk to, like schools, groceries and services? How is the public transportation?
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Excellent! I like both of those, and great pictures.
Flar, Issaquah Highlands is new urbanist on the edge of the metro. It probably has decent bus service by "edge of metro in US" standards.
High Point is a mixed-income replacement for old public housing (similar to a handful of others locally) in the West Seattle area within the city limits. Bus service should be pretty good though I doubt it has "trunk line" service (unless you walk to Admiral Junction). That part of town is very walkable though hilly.
I like the public housing redos. Others include New Holly and Rainier Vista in Seattle, Salishan in Tacoma, one in Bremerton, one in White Center...I'm forgetting some. They're generally around 1,000 units on 100 acres, which is significantly more housing than before (I like higher densities than that, but 16,000/sm isn't bad assuming 2.5 per unit). They always mix income levels, which is also new and very advantageous.
Hey, thanks folks, and thanks Mhays for answering Flar's question. I figure i'll give my two cents as well ... I got the impression High Point, Rainier Vista and Othello Station (not pictured) were in neighbourhoods that were established enough that walking was a feasible option ... and that there were things to walk to. Rainier and Othello are transit oriented along the LRT on MLK Way, having the transit stop and commercial within a 5 minute walk.
I didn't really explore the environs of High Point, but saw many people, both dog walkers and commuters around the area. It's also as Mhays said within Seattle and in a relatively dense area.
Issaquah is a different story. They are clearly trying to create a commercial hub which is right on the edge of the community. Although it is on the edge, it is also the main and possibly only access into the new community ensuring ample traffic for business. As Mhays mentioned, there was a transit depot there as well, and it had a big park and ride facility. As for service frequency, I have no idea ...
All in all these were very cool new neighbourhoods.
Great pictures. Thanks for posting.
A residential neighbourhood with good density, although I'm not too fond of wood siding and using only wood for the exterior envelope of buildings (there are some notable exceptions, of course).
I don't see these revival "Victorian" houses enduring the passage of time in too good of a shape, as opposed to the real Victorian buildings and houses that were build with brick or stone and are still standing in decent condition all over London, for example.
^^different regions build with different materials, there aren't many brick houses out west. Plenty of frame Victorians survive today.
Also, thanks for the info mhays and 4orty4th
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I really like these houses. They look nice. I personally wouldn't live in these locations because of the people I know there. And the architectural difference isn't well incorporated. I like different. But the houses are nice.
Plus it's highpoint and it's not an area I really like.
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I like the craftsman style/"woodcentric" design of a lot of these houses. And this is a very interesting thread to see. As much as I absolutely LOVE Seattle, it's kind of nice to see what exists outside of it. We rarely get to see these outer fringe areas, so thanks for the great photo tour!
Interesting. Reminds of some of the new subdivisions going up in parts of metro Vancouver, especially Surrey.
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Nice photos! These houses look pretty nice, some of them have craftsman and Victorian features. They've got the form down pat: good density, close to the street, garages not the most prominent feature on the house, etc... The real question is, are these areas walkable? and are there places to walk to, like schools, groceries and services? How is the public transportation?
My friend's younger brother who works for Microsoft just moved from downtown Seattle to Issaquah (though I don't know if it's this development). It'll be interesting to ask him these questions next time I see him, but I don't know if he's the type to even take public transportation much.
Issaquah Highlands was supposed to have a big Microsoft Campus but they keep scaling it back and delaying it (while taking over more space in Redmond and in the new towers in Downtown Bellevue and expanding in Seattle as well). So basically everyone there is commuting somewhere else. A friend lived there for a while and got tired of living so far from everything. It made me a bit uncomfortable when I went to visit her - it seemed like one of those places where "they moved the headstones but not the graves."
I've spent some time at High Point and at New Holly - they both seem pretty successful. Both areas have received stuff like new library branches and the mixed income thing seems to be working so far. The old public housing developments they replaced were pretty grim by Seattle standards.
Incidentally - I don't think there's a lot of wood on those buildings - from what I saw going up I believe they mostly used Hardiplank or some other cement board.
I absolutely love what they did with the Rainier Vista development. I was just over there on MLK and it looks 1000% better than what use to be there. With the lightrail running down the middle of MLK it looks like the perfect neighborhood with more development to come.
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