At first glance the topic areas for last Friday's "Design for Livability: Sustainable Cities Forum" might seem too diverse to be discussed at a single event.
Presentations on market-based approaches to wildlife protection and how to market community spaces and plan for neighborhood business districts were just a small sampling of topics heard by the 200 or so architects, city planners, attorneys and environmentalists in attendance at the two-day event.
Despite the wide-ranging topics, discussions at the conference centered around one common theme—creating vibrant, livable communities in the Puget Sound region. According to several of the speakers and conference organizers, doing so may be essential to preserving the natural environment and quality of life in the Puget Sound region as millions of expected new residents arrive in the coming decades.
Strategies for Managing Growth
Cascade Land Conservancy (CLC)—which co-sponsored the conference with AIA Seattle and the University of Washington's College of Built Environments—has more than a passing interest in promoting livable communities. Livable communities are an integral part of the organization's long-term Puget Sound growth management strategy plan known as the Cascade Agenda.
Looking into the future, CLC writes that the region's population could more than double to the size of about 15 present-day Seattles by 2100. Such significant population growth inevitably poses the question: Where will all these people go? The Cascade Agenda is designed to answer that question by offering a plan and call to action to protect the Puget Sound region's natural environment by simultaneously conserving rural landscapes and creating more vibrant and livable communities.
Many of the conference's presentations and discussions focused on the same push for livable communities that is integral to the Cascade Agenda. According to Johanna Brickman, Director of Sustainability for Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Architects, if we focus on creating vibrant cities that people want to live in, we preserve rural landscapes from becoming far-flung subdivisions.
"Great places make living and working in a shared community enjoyable," Brickman said in her morning presentation on designing environmentally-friendly neighborhoods called "ecodistricts." (For more on Brickman's ecodistricts presentation, check out Seattle Transit Blog's coverage of the event here).
Ingredients to Making Great Places
Like the ecodistricts presentation, most panel discussions focused on transforming city streets and neighborhoods into vibrant centers of activity.
Attendees at the conference's morning session heard a discussion about "Creating and Activating Great Places" from Karen True and Sarah Phillips, board members of Friends for Third Place Commons in the City of Lake Forest Park. Third Place Commons, a community gathering space created in 1999 in what was once an under-used shopping center, has since become a vibrant hub for the community, hosting more than 1,200 events annually that range from book talks to world music festivals. Referred to on their website as a "model of the potential of public-private partnerships and the role they must play in a civil society," the Third Place Commons meeting areas are located in a privately-owned bookstore, but managed by Friends for Third Place Commons, a community-based nonprofit organization.
True and Phillips partially attributed the site's success to its accessibility, pointing out that the site is easily reached by bus, car and bicycle (cyclists can use the nearby Burke-Gilman Trail). Location aside, True and Phillips emphasized that communities have a need for social gathering places. "It wasn't our job to create [the events]," True said. "We just had to administer the space and get out of the way."
In the afternoon attendees chose from a variety of panels focused on incorporating green development into the region's cities and neighborhoods.
One idea presented at the "Great Streets/Great Places" session involved converting auto-centric city streets into green streets that incorporate sustainable design features and provide ample space and amenities for bicyclists and pedestrians.
According to Nate Cormier, a landscape architect with SvR, green streets are just one example of designers working to make cities and neighborhoods more attractive places. "We're confronted daily with evidence of serious environmental threats," Cormier said. "There's no shortage of solutions."
Cormier specifically pointed to Seattle's decision to transform a section of Bell Street into a green street, with widened sidewalks and green landscaping, as an example of what is possible. (Read Northwest Hub's coverage of the Bell Street project here.)
Downtown Seattle Association President Kate Joncas also endorsed the green street concept during the same panel discussion, arguing the strategy is vital to the economic competitiveness of downtown. "A high-quality streetscape is probably going to be the best key to our economic future," Joncas said. "If we're the best place to come because of the quality of the experience, we're going to be extra competitive."
Joncas pointed to Chicago's success with the Magnificent Mile, a popular pedestrian-oriented section of Michigan Avenue in the city's downtown, as an example of the positive economic impact good street design can have on downtown businesses.
Notable among other panels were presentations on strategies to make environmentally-friendly improvements to city zoning codes and integrate bus rapid transit (BRT) into neighborhoods. (Also check out coverage of the BRT panel by Seattle Transit Blog's John Jensen here.)
Speaking a Common Language
According to the Cascade Agenda website, the agenda was designed as a call to action to "each and every one of us to imagine the future we want for our children and our grandchildren." However, realizing that future will take more than imagination.
CLC Urban Policy Director Alison Van Gorp said the conference was designed to bring together professionals who can work toward implementing Cascade Agenda's goals in their professional lives. "We want to bring those different disciplines together and leave them with a common language going forward," Van Gorp said.
[Editor's Note: This article was updated to correct the title of Johanna Brickman, who was incorrectly listed as an architect. She is Director of Sustainability for Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Architects.]
