PERSPECTIVES—It goes without saying that a great deal rests on Seattle's upcoming mayoral election between Mike McGinn and Joe Mallahan. Among the challenges the candidates face is a philosophical decision on the future of neighborhood planning.
In the 1990s Seattle embraced a decentralized approach to neighborhood planning, but in the 21st century the city has returned to a more traditional centralized approach in implementing those plans. As the city contemplates a new round of neighborhood plan updates, the victorious candidate will have to decide what approach should be taken to carry the process forward.
That looming decision about its future makes this an appropriate time to reflect on the neighborhood planning program as a whole. How does it work? How does neighborhood planning fit into Seattle’s broader political landscape? How does it affect the growth and development of Seattle’s communities?
The Early Days of Neighborhood Planning
Seattle's neighborhood planning process began in 1995 as a mechanism for addressing anticipated future growth on a local level. Just a year prior, Mayor Norm Rice introduced Seattle’s urban village strategy as part of the city’s new comprehensive plan. Intended to bring the city into compliance with the state’s growth management guidelines, the urban village approach created designated city centers to promote greater density.
In the context of densifying neighborhoods, Seattle City Council passed Resolution 29015 in 1995, “establishing a Neighborhood Planning program for the City of Seattle.” The resolution set forth broad goals such as improving the quality of life in Seattle, involving neighborhoods in future planning, and creating an environment that would foster community. The program would place most of the responsibility and resources for neighborhood plan development directly in the hands of the community.
In the late 1990s a community-based initiative for neighborhood planning was a revelation. Neighborhood planning in the hands of actual residents represented a fundamental shift from the traditional centralized approach of a city-guided planning process. More than 20,000 residents in 38 neighborhoods gathered to discuss the challenges facing their communities—such as affordable housing, infrastructure provisions and public transit—and set about figuring out ways to overcome them. Thirty-eight unique plans emerged, featuring localized goals and providing information that could be used as part of a framework for broader city planning decisions.
The formulation of the plans took four years, beginning with the first community meetings in 1995 under Rice and ending with the Seattle City Council’s ratification of the 38 individual plans in 1999 under then-mayor Paul Schell. Helping steer the process was Department of Neighborhoods (DON) Director Jim Diers, a former neighborhood activist who was hired to lead the department at its outset in 1988.
As director of DON, Diers lobbied for Seattle’s Neighborhood Matching fund, another program that supported strong neighborhood autonomy. The matching fund provides grants for neighborhood projects on the condition that the community matches that money through its own fundraising, donated materials, volunteer labor or some combination thereof. The same organizing body that made final grant recommendations to the mayor for these matching funds, the City Neighborhood Council, would now also be charged with the implementation of the neighborhood planning program.
Mayor Schell subsequently made significant increases to the size of the matching fund. A link between the two programs began to form: the same activists who organized matching fund initiatives in their communities became deeply engaged in the neighborhood planning process. And although only vaguely connected in day-to-day administration, the programs both came to represent the ideological support for neighborhood autonomy.
The early days of neighborhood planning were days of high community involvement, but also of sharp criticism. Opponents of the neighborhood planning process argued that it held many of the same flaws as the previous centralized models—affluent neighborhoods who were generally more engaged would use the opportunity to maintain the status quo in their Single Family zones. They would be able to raise more and receive more matching funds. Critics argued that city officials weren't reaching out to citizens in low-income neighborhoods enough to sufficiently to counter that imbalance.
Critics also wondered what would actually happen once the plans were adopted. Their formulation was smooth, but now that they existed, how would neighborhood plans tangibly affect future growth? Not all growth could be initiated at the neighborhood level. When it came time for the city to make big decisions about infrastructure, zoning and transportation, would it use the plans as rigid restrictions or broad guidelines to be interpreted as it saw fit?
These big questions, the big “now what?” would have to be answered by a new administration.
The Nickels Era: A Move Toward Centralized Implementation
In 2001 then-candidate Greg Nickels upset incumbent Paul Schell in the Democratic primary, and then won the November general election. All questions about how to make the recently ratified neighborhood plans into working realities would fall to the Nickels administration.
The first signs of a shift back to more centralized planning came early in Nickels' first term. Nickels immediately decided to replace Diers as director of DON. The move came without any substantial explanation (none is owed by an incoming administration), and caught many local community activists off guard—some of whom had supported Nickels in the recent campaign.
“There could be political consequences if Nickels doesn't address the concerns of neighborhood critics,” wrote Jim Brunner in a Seattle Times story dated Dec. 28, 2001. “The people most angry with the Diers decision are among the most dedicated observers of local government.”
The decision marked the start of an era in which neighborhood planning, if not officially rolled back, was not a priority for the sitting administration. In 2003 activists formed the Cross Town Coalition with the stated intention of “taking back the neighborhood planning process.”
By August of 2003, the Nickels administration had already reduced the role of activists in city politics. In a Seattle Times story called “Community Leaders Lose Influence at City Hall,” Bob Young wrote:
"The number of staff members charged with implementing neighborhood plans was cut from six to three. The Neighborhood Matching Fund was reduced by almost 20 percent, from $4.5 million to $3.7 million. And funding for crime-watch programs and Police Department community-service officers also was cut."
Nickels had also begun to plan major projects that weren’t explicitly accounted for in adopted neighborhood plans. Some of which, like a street car for South Lake Union, have come to fruition. The development begs further questions on what purpose the neighborhood plans serve—are they specific growth management guidelines, or more like suggestions?
The same Seattle Times story noted that the Nickels administration was citing previous critiques of the process in its move away from decentralized neighborhood planning. According to the Nickels administration, the Diers method of community engagement benefited a small cadre of super-activists who knew how to work Seattle’s neighborhood and district council system, which grants matching funds and approves neighborhood plans.
Deputy Mayor Tim Ceis said the decentralized planning structure was, in practice, far too narrow, and “focused on 300 or so people who sat on community councils and know how to use the system.” He questioned just who those 300 people working the system were: “We don't see enough participation by people of color, and race relations are a neighborhood issue," said Ceis in the Seattle Times story.
In a letter to the Seattle Times last month, Diers accused the now-ousted Nickels of having “killed the bottom-up planning process.” Diers claimed that Nickels failed to tap the potential of his constituents: “I hope our next mayor will understand that Seattle's active citizens are its greatest strength.”
Yet during his administration, Nickels also took strides to implement neighborhood plans. In August 2003 the DON began the process of compiling Neighborhood Priority Reports: Community and neighborhood leaders were asked to give feedback on what the City of Seattle’s website calls “prioritizing neighborhood plan recommendations.”
The process resulted in 2004 Priority Reports and 2005 updates meant to help guide the decision-making of both city and neighborhood leaders. A database was compiled to track these priorities and the results of neighborhood plan implementation, and is available online at Seattle.gov.
A Light Rail at the End of the Tunnel?
In 2007, as Seattle approached a decade since the ratification of the initial neighborhood plans, it became clear that some were outdated. Growth did not always happen as predicted, neighborhoods’ priorities changed, and new ideas about density and transportation and open space emerged. Efforts to not just reset priorities, but actually update the plans themselves needed a kick start.
Mayor Nickels’ office initiated this process in summer 2007 by sending an update proposal to city council. After a bogged down year of what Crosscut writer Peggy Sturdivant called “little progress (but much process),” legislation calling for neighborhood plan updates was finally passed in September 2008. The momentum to finally push update legislation through the city council came from pressure to adapt to the imminent arrival of light rail in Seattle.
The new legislation provides for a three-pronged approach to the updates:
1. Neighborhood Plan Updates
Ordinance 12279 puts an emphasis on updating the plans for neighborhoods that will be directly affected by light rail and where major growth is anticipated. The first three updates are currently under way for Beacon Hill, Mt. Baker and the Othello Station neighborhoods.
2. Neighborhood Plan Status Reports
Meanwhile, neighborhoods whose plans were not addressed under Ordinance 12279 will compile data to examine the “current condition of these neighborhoods relative to the 1990s vision.” Ideally, these status reports, for which the compilation process has just recently ended, will be used as guidelines to determine which neighborhood plans are updated next.
3. Neighborhood Plan Advisory Committee (NPAC)
Resolution 31085 created NPAC as a counter-measure to city officials, keeping them appraised of neighborhood sentiment and making proposals on behalf of the neighborhoods.
The City of Seattle’s neighborhood planning web page, where these priorities are listed, also includes information on how the DON and Department of Planning and Development will collaborate to move the process forward.
It’s the moving forward that presents big questions for Seattle. According to Ordinance 12279, which established the plan updates currently underway, “it is expected that resources for the 2008-2009 efforts will carry over into 2010 and 2011 so that three additional neighborhood plan updates can be undertaken.” However, there appears to be no confidence amongst city officials or activists that these resources will indeed exist.
If there aren’t sufficient resources available for three plan updates, will there be a compromise, or will there be no further updates? If further updates do happen, to which neighborhoods will they be awarded? Some call for updates in neighborhoods with active, engaged populations, others call for updates based on growth expectation or transit expansion. The ordinance itself calls for emphasis placed “on neighborhoods containing transit stations (not necessarily Link Light Rail stations).”
The emergence of light rail in Seattle has spurred the sputtering neighborhood planning program forward. But the city’s massive debt and the transition to a new administration leaves the status of the program up in the air.
The future of the program likely rests in the hands of Seattle’s incoming mayor and city council. Candidates McGinn and Mallahan will need to answer a fundamental question about the nature of planning: Should it be a centralized, top-down process, or a decentralized, bottom-up process?
