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Note:  This post originally appeared on Alex Steffen’s blog. 

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“Strategic urbanism” is a concept I’ve been thinking a lot about lately. It was brought to mind again by Adam Greenfield’s extremely interesting notes on Ed Glaser’s Triumph of the City.

In North America, in the broadest of strokes, we might classify our approaches to the challenges of urban growth over the last four decades as laissez-faire development, NIMBY opposition to change and tactical urbanism.

Most development is still essentially laissez-faire: developers with enough money can more or less build what they want. Sure, most places have some form of zoning and most state/provincial and local governments attempt to steer development to at least some degree through provision of infrastructure and tax policies. Increasingly, many places even have some degree of formal neighborhood/urban planning. But, in general, these efforts tend to just carve some rough boundaries around what developers can build.

Mostly, the reaction to this has been NIMBYism: attempts (seen in their best light) by local residents to oppose developments they think will cost the community more than they’ll benefit it. In practice, though, NIMBYism has devolved into knee-jerk opposition to change, and efforts by small factions with narrow interests to block any new developments by jamming the public process, using frivolous lawsuits, filing environmental challenges and so on. It’s rarely the case that NIMBYs represent the wider public interest (in far too many cases, the opponents of new developments’ concerns essentially boil down to a desire to keep parking easy to find, a demand that their property values should trump all other concerns and/or a fear that more affordable housing will bring in “undesirable elements”). Worse, even when their attempts to block some new project are truly genuine and reflect a desire to preserve some community value, mere opposition to change is never effective. That’s because in any city that’s not actively declining, the forces of change are inexorable. Population growth, the renewed preference for walkable urbanism, cohort replacement, gentrification, energy and climate problems, the logic of real estate investors… all these things mean that desirable urban neighborhoods will not stay the same no matter what anyone does. In reality, choosing “no change” almost always just means less change guided by the public realm and planning, and more pushed by the sheer force of money.

Tactical urbanism is something I find totally cool. It might best be summed up as investing effort in small, readily achievable projects that have the effect of altering their immediate surroundings in ways that promote good urbanism. We might think of tactical urbanism as “street hacks.” Such hacks include everything from food carts to parklets to guerrilla bike lanes. (You can look at lots of good examples in this free book.) I’m a fan, and think smart cities should be hotbeds of tactical urban innovation.

The problem is, that I think the rise of tactical urbanism actually reflects the paralysis of city-wide and systems-focused efforts. People stripe bike lanes at night at least in part because the city isn’t doing enough, fast enough, to make shared streets safer for bicyclists. People launch pop-up stores in part because the process of launching a new retail store or restaurant has become so time- and capital-consuming. People “chair-bomb” in part because so few genuinely inviting new public spaces are being built. And young people especially are trying so many new living arrangements because it’s too damn expensive to live in cities that are building effectively no new housing (in a city of a million people, growing rapidly — and subject to the pressures of smaller household sizes, gentrification and a newly resurgent urban housing market — a few hundred or even a few thousand new units a year makes essentially no difference). Tactical urbanism is cool; but the enthusiasm with which we’ve all embraced it is a tell for what we don’t talk about, which is fundamentally broken city governance.

A caveat is that in some cities, good planning has advanced despite opposition from some business interests and NIMBYs alike. But, still, only in a handful of them have the actual on-the-ground changes been large enough to achieve the sort of impacts that could produce changed systems. Though some of the success stories are startling, most of the time, North American planning is incrementalist in nature, given little actual power and small budgets, left with broken processes elected officials are fearful to reform and able to employ only a limited selection of tools to encourage positive moves. No universal law mandates that this be so.

The opposite of all this would be strategic urbanism. I’m not sure yet what strategic urbanism would actually look like, but it would certainly start from the presumption that good cities can’t thrive with broken governance, and that aggressively choosing good changes is the only path that will work. It would have to add the magnitude of density and new infrastructure that affordability, better-functioning systems, social justice and sustainability demand, while deciding to effectively preserve the qualities of places we most value.

Imagine your city actually met its needs for housing affordability, quality of life, service provision, auto-dependence, climate emissions and economic prosperity: what would it need to have done?

This might require both much more proactive encouragement of the kinds of development, commercial investment and design we want, and mechanisms for actively preserving the things about our cities we don’t want to lose. It might demand a different local politics, one based on making hard choices to shape change, rather than ineffective opposition to change or simple money-driven decision making. It might take governance as interested in economic development, capacity-building, the adaptive health of community institutions and a vibrant debate as in the classic planning silos of land use, transportation and utilities. It might demand a city whose citizens had chosen a strategy with the acumen, power and heart to to actually win the future they want, instead of simply trying to stave off the worst case scenarios they fear.

I’ll come back to this topic when I have more time. But strategic urbanism does seem to me a useful frame…

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Alex Steffen is one of the world’s leading voices on sustainability, social innovation and planetary futurism. You can follow Alex on Twitter at @AlexSteffen.

Last month, we took a street for an evening. We acquired no permits, held no visioning meetings, received no funding. We took an unloved, underutilized piece of public right-of-way and transformed it into a place of potential, a pocket of social interaction. Maybe a touch grandiose, sure, but we did temporarily add life to a street in a way that’s not normally allowed.

This intervention was grounded in three findings:

1. Cities are broke – Budgets are contracting and we have to reconceive our expectations of what the city can/should provide for the public realm.
2. Streets are underutilized – 33% of Seattle is in the public right-of-way. Streets like the Summit stub (see photo above) have a capacity of 2000 cars/hr, yet are used by less than 100 cars/hr.** When land is underused and redundant (especially public land), we should look for better uses of that land.
3. Our space and time are precious – The land underneath the Summit Stub is worth about $500,000.*** Is that really the best investment of our limited resources and space? Should we have to wait months or years to make it better?

So, through action, we propose a simple fix:

1. Change the process: For less than the current price of permit review, we transformed the space. With communally donated parts and labor, we don’t need millions of dollars to make great urban spaces.  The city just needs to designate space and let the neighborhood do the rest.
2. Change the mindset: We need to ditch the notion that the city is a fixed entity. The life of a city is dynamic and the way in which we plan for and use our public space should reflect that understanding. We need a system that allows for temporary action, for phased development, for experimentation. Maintaining the status quo may be easier and won’t upset anyone, but it’s also inefficient and inequitable. Worst of all, it’s boring.

On June 14^th, we’ll be transforming the Summit stub again. As a real time case study, we’re learning about how a dead space can be converted to a living one.  Lighter, quicker, and cheaper. Show up and help shape the future of our public realm. More information at facebook.com/rpcollective.

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Seth Geiser is an urban designer who clearly has some time on his hands.  Kirk Hovenkotter is an urban planner working professionally at a city and likes, nay loves, transit.

For those who hope for the kind of transformational change that will be necessary to create a truly sustainable and resilient Seattle, the City’s disproportionate reaction to Mayor McGinn’s recently proposed set of regulatory reforms is a far more important issue to tackle than the reforms themselves.  Consisting of relatively modest, low-hanging-fruit tweaks to the land use code intended to enhance livability and the local economy, the proposal has generated an astounding amount of opposition, most recently with a crowd of naysayers at a Council hearing that succeeded in getting one major component of the proposal thrown out.

The psychology behind this scenario is complex. The ugly legacy of urban renewal still casts its shadow, and at the core we’re dealing with a wariness of change that is basic human nature.  But while this attitude can be an obstacle to progress in many U.S. cities, here in Seattle it has festered with a mix of timid political leadership and an expectation that everyone must be not only heard but appeased, to form a singularly toxic political dysfunction that would be an entertaining intellectual curiosity if it wasn’t so potentially detrimental to the future of the City.

This is not to say that Seattle is making no progress. It is. But considering all the brainpower, wealth, and environmental concern to be found among Seattleites, our eccentric political culture is the biggest impediment to public policy that would bring Seattle to the international forefront of sustainability.

The Developer Stigma
Consider McGinn’s regulatory reform proposal as illustrative example.  First of all, as played up in the Seattle Times, the fact that some of the people on the advisory group have connections to the development community is apparently all we need to know in order to conclude that it’s all about lining developers’ pockets.  Never mind the reality that Seattle has one of the most progressive development communities in the country.  And never mind that developers know a thing or two about putting up buildings, which happen to be something that we want more of in Seattle, both to satisfy demand from people who want to live here, and to garner the local and regional benefits of smart growth. And never mind that urban infill redevelopment has the potential to be a massive economic engine that fills the gap left by the decline in construction of sprawl.

Why is this knee-jerk enmity of developers so prevalent in Seattle?  Where are the existing development horror stories that people are so afraid of repeating?  Sure, there are a few clunker buildings here and there, but by and large Seattle’s built environment is good and getting better. And Seattle is a city thick with corporate influence—so why do developers take so much heat for being fat cats?  I see no rational answers.

What’s Not To Like?
The piece of the reform package that was shot down last week would have allowed small commercial establishments in some multifamily zones, as a strategy to help “bring back the corner store.”  First of all, how, one might ask, would this benefit developer interests? It doesn’t, and in fact one could argue that it is against their interests because it would open up competition for the retail spaces that are typically part of new mixed-use projects.

There are no doubt some who fear the invasion of ludicrous commercial uses—A topless barbershop!  A corner Walmart!—but these concerns are irrational and deserve to be ignored as such. Others object more judiciously to new uses that would be “out of character” with the neighborhood, that handy catch-all phrase for anything someone doesn’t particularly like.

But wait, last I checked I thought we progressive Seattleites were supposed to be all enamored with exactly the kind of small independent businesses that this policy was designed to promote. And don’t we all love the idea of the kid running to the corner store for a quart of milk? What on earth is everyone so afraid of? It’s like Seattle’s angst-ridden debate over backyard cottages all over again.

Too Much Walkability?
Some residents of Capitol Hill expressed more nuanced objections:  Why allow commercial uses in more areas when there are already so many empty existing street-level retail spaces, and when many urban villages in Seattle have great walkability as is?  In response to Walkscore being cited to support the latter, Walkscore’s Matt Lerner tweeted that he “never imagined a high Walkscore would be used to prevent walkability.” Furthermore, the code would apply to areas across the entire City of Seattle, which has plenty of neighborhoods that lack walkable access to stores and services.

It is true that street-level retail is less viable when spread out and diluted. However, the reason many existing spaces aren’t landing tenants is because they are too expensive, or don’t have the right spatial layout, or are poorly located. Indeed, a common complaint about new mixed-use buildings is that the retail spaces are too large and expensive for small-scale independent businesses.  The proposed reform would have helped open up affordable, usable alternatives to these spaces—otherwise known as creating economic opportunity for the little guy.

In any case, as we have learned from the current glut of vacant street-level retail spaces scattered across Seattle, a flexible, market-based approach to small-scale commercial is likely to be more successful than trying to mandate where it should or shouldn’t be.  After all, that’s how Seattle’s best neighborhood centers developed in the first place, organically creating the kind of practical, livable mixed-use urban form that we’re trying to emulate today.

Naysayers Win
Given how relatively benign the commercial use proposal was, it’s apparent that much of the opposition was driven by indignation over being left out of the process. Yes, Mayor McGinn deserves some blame for that, and yes, Seattle’s residents have much insight to contribute. But I have to wonder if some opponents are letting their indignation preclude a fair assessment of the issue at hand. If it’s a good idea, who cares who proposed it? Is the full-on, dragged-out Seattle process really necessary for every policy decision?

In hindsight, the smarter political approach would have been to put stricter limits on the proposal, such as a smaller allowed floor area, or an exclusion of particularly objectionable business types. This would have helped ease concerns and diffuse opposition, and there would always be the opportunity to update the code after people got more comfortable with it over time. Incremental change is better than no change.

And what of the Council’s acquiescence to the naysayers? Those who testify at Council hearings do not necessarily reflect the sentiments of the entire community—especially at hearings in the middle of the day when most people work.  Nor do neighborhood group leaders necessarily speak for the majority in their neighborhoods. And on my read, the views expressed by Capitol Hill residents who were agitated enough to show up at last week’s hearing are not shared by most people who live in “vibrant, walkable urban centers,” in contrast to what Councilmembers apparently assumed.

The fact that a few dozen motivated naysayers so easily swayed the Council to abruptly kill a thoughtful policy proposal a year in the making is classic Seattle-style political dysfunction. And if Seattle’s electeds continue to be incapable of providing consolidated leadership in the face of opposition to relatively painless policy changes like McGinn’s regulatory reform, we might as well forget about ambitious goals such as carbon neutrality that are guaranteed to involve far more challenging policy and politics.

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Dan Bertolet is a Seattle resident and the creator of Citytank.

(P.S.  The regulatory reform proposal also contains two other components—adjustment of the SEPA categorical exemption, and elimination of off-street parking requirements within a quarter mile of frequent transit—that have already generated controversy, and will no doubt stir up more as they are taken up by Council. I’m hoping that my masochistic tendencies will sufficiently motivate me to address these in followup posts.)