Our current mayor started his path into politics by helping to get sidewalks installed in his neighborhood of Greenwood. However, there are more sidewalks needed. Residents are working to have sidewalks installed in Greenwood and needs more volunteer support.
The “Greenwood Sidewalks” Neighborhood Matching Fund project is getting underway, and the group working on it needs more volunteers to make it happen. The project includes not just sidewalks, but drainage, planted buffers, etc.
While there are many neighborhoods that make it easy to get around by foot, the neighborhood of Bitter Lake is not one of them.
A resident examined the limitations of the area and came up with some suggestions of how to make Bitter Lake more walkable.
As you can see it’s a fairly discrete area, bounded on four sides by busy arterials. Inside those arterials, there’s no reason you couldn’t have a thriving community. It already has a decent walkability score. There are a couple of parks; Greenwood boasts several restaurants and cafes; Aurora has an array of big box retailers; there’s a great supermarket just a few blocks north of 145th. There are more people coming in, too, as a series of condos are built along Linden.
But despite all the ingredients … there is no such community. The first and primal cause is that there are no %*#! sidewalks. (You hear me Mayor McGinn? Show me what the new guy can do!) But I think the problems run deeper. Look closely at the map and you’ll note that the development pattern is almost aggressively misanthropic. Everyone is isolated from everyone else!
Consider how the character of the neighborhood might be different if it were more of a grid
There’s some more good stuff there, including some history of the area, and a suggestion for us all.
Here’s the takeaway, for the few hearty souls still reading this logorrheic post: one of the biggest challenges in years ahead, as we attempt to densify and green our communities, will be retrofitting existing neighborhoods to increase walkability, sociability, sustainability, and safety. It’s worth a minute of anyone’s time to ponder how they could make their own surroundings more amenable to spontaneous, non-commercial, human-scale social interaction.
The A-frame advertisements that local businesses place on the sidewalk to attract business can get in the way sometimes. Those sandwich boards have to compete for sidewalk space with bike racks, outdoor tables and chairs, trees, and of course people.
For that reason, the city limits businesses to one sandwich board. However, recent enforcement of that rule is hurting a Pioneer Square business.
Customers at the Seattle Mystery Bookshop have been cut by more than a third since the bookshop was told to remove its second sign.
While people do need enough space to use the sidewalk comfortably, advertisements for nearby establishments can be a helpful enhancement to the causal walking experience.
At a time when businesses and Pioneer Square in general are struggling, is a one-sign limit reasonable? In Portland, businesses have to pay a nominal fee for additional sidewalk signage. Would a policy like that be an improvement here?
A new bridge has been constructed along Royal Brougham Way to provide access to Safeco Field over the railroad tracks.
This path along Royal Brougham is designed for pedestrians, especially to make it easy to get to the stadium from the light rail station just to the east. Furthermore, access to the ballpark won’t be interrupted by passing trains.
A bill to fund a network of paths for pedestrians and bicyclists has been introduced in the US House of Representatives. H.R. 4722 would provide $2 billion in grants to improve walking routes across the country.
If you’re so inclined, Transportation for America is making it easy to contact your representatives to ask them to support this measure.
