Buildings don’t create a neighborhood, the neighbors do.
Creating a neighborhood requires us to work together in pursuit of shared community. The type of community that is distinct, welcoming, accessible, caring, and neighborly and only realized through the unique and diverse people who make it up.
Lately, I’ve thought about what community will mean if the HALA recommendations become official policy. It was after the Mayor announced the “Grand Bargain,” two weeks ago, that I came across a Sightline Institute blog post by Alan Durning, titled, HALA and the $100,000 Question. What struck me were the comments, as those comments and concerns are being raised in discussions of the proposal devised by the Mayor’s Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda.
One blog commenter, lamented, “I live in Roosevelt/Ravenna so I know about density and welcome it. But…if you throw “rowhouses” up, you will change the neighborhoods. The backbone of this city is our neighborhoods (no matter what developers or downtown interests think). Radically change those neighborhoods and you will not know Capitol Hill from Wallingford.”
And while I recognize that generic rowhouses may transform the lived environment of a neighborhood by limiting potential for expression or distinctiveness of housing, the buildings or houses do not create a neighborhood.
The people who make up a neighborhood are who create it; one can know a neighborhood by its people.
It was Barbara Kingsolver, in her 2008 Duke University commencement speech, who articulated this point well, “[There] is an ancient human social construct that once was common in this land. We called it a community. We lived among our villagers, depending on them for what we needed. If we had a problem, we did not discuss it over the phone…We went to a neighbor. We acquired food from farmers. We listened to music in groups, in churches or on front porches…We participated. Even when there was no money in it. Community is our native state.”
If we are afraid that generic looking buildings will shape our hearts and our minds into generic attitudes and actions – that will somehow dramatically affect our views – then we have reason to be concerned. If, instead, we allow that concern to help us reframe the situation as an opportunity to have more, diverse neighbors creating character and community and care for one another, we can find ways of renewing Capitol Hill.
For instance, what if for every new building we held a welcome party for our new neighbors? Or what if everyone felt invited to get involved in their community? Creating a neighborhood starts by walking outside our door and greeting someone. Ask them how they are doing and wait for an answer.
And as our neighborhood is populated by the many types of people who make up any major metropolitan city – so too we have people who struggle with mental health, chemical dependency, or addiction.
September meeting
Join us Thursday night, September 24th at 6:30 PM at 12th Avenue Arts building (1620 12th Ave). We will discuss the L.E.A.D program, which redirects low-level offenders engaged in drug dealing or prostitution activity to community-based services, instead of jail or prosecution. Plus we’ll explore the state of mental health in Washington, stories about addressing gaps in the system, harm reduction, and many ways to reduce the stigma for people experiencing addiction or behavioral health issues. Come make a difference and make an impact in addressing mental health and supporting programs like L.E.A.D.
This is a nice sentiment, much nicer than the (barely) veiled racism that goes along with sweeping statements about “preserving neighborhoods”. With the UW study on the history of segregation in neighborhoods like Capitol Hill, it’s interesting that the sudden focus on preserving historic neighborhoods only comes up when discussing affordable housing, not the hundreds of sites being bulldozed for sterile, forcibly stylized condos.
Low income housing, scattered and varied in size, is needed throughout Seattle – not only to encourage diversity but also to right the wrongs of the past and pave the way for the future.
Just about every premise in your comment is false. Preserving neighborhood character has been an issue on Capitol Hill at least since the Neighborhood Plan was written. That developers and their supporters have decided to stoop so low as to equate that interest with racism is one of the slimiest episodes in Seattle politics in the last few decades. Danny Westneat refuted the HALA committee’s claims on this subject quite thoroughly.
The types of buildings and other physical attributes very much influence who can live and do business in a neighborhood. This has to be explained to a member of the CHCC?
Oh Danny Westneat, who wrote an inflammatory article in which the comments are filled with alarmist NIMBYs?
I am against rampant development which contributes to the loss of affordable rent in high
TRG, I can understand where the premise of your comment comes from and I also think you understand that, in fact, I’m trying to illuminate the nuance between a physical “neighborhood” (the general area/physical location/buildings) and the spiritual and cultural “neighborhood,” which, I believe, exists within all of us and comes alive in community, with neighbors and friends. And, in the Capitol Hill I dream, people are welcome here – they are welcome to create a neighborhood with us all, renters and owners alike.
It sounds like you have a knowledge and interest in our community’s development, would you like to grab coffee? I’d be interested to chat more. [email protected]
Oh Danny Westneat, who wrote an inflammatory article in which the comments are filled with alarmist fear mongering and racism?
I am against rampant development which contributes to the loss of affordable rent in high density areas. This could be combatted with rent control for multi-unit housing or subsidized scattered units. Every block is already being bulldozed. What are we trying to preserve at this point?
However there is also the issue of the skyrocketing cost of single family homes which is displacing low income and minoritized peoples throughout the city. The central district is the only historically black neighborhood and is disappearing. What do you say to that historical character not being preserved? Loosening restrictions on single family zoning is not going to destroy the sanctity of Seattle neighborhoods. The impact is grossly overblown and what people are truly fearful of is allowing diversity to populate your neighborhoods. If two blocks of affordable duplexes or townhouses get built in Ballard the city will not burn to the ground. Get a grip, Seattle.
So are you saying that the sort of gentrification/development in the CD is not racist? Lets see, pricing out people of color and treating the area like a place for white people to come to buy drugs (the pot shops….and 23rd and Union is no less a drug corner now than it ever was in prior years. Just different dealers, now they are white and have a store front) and now a place for techies to temporarily hang their highly paid hats does not impress me as anything healthy for a city.
“Preserving neighborhoods” has to do with the environmental and architectural character of the parts of a city. Kill that and you no longer have a city. In Vancouver BC Chinese investors are ripping out turn of the century Victorian houses and replacing them with boxes-of-people that no one short of white collar or tech can afford to live in. People there of a variety of socioeconomic circumstances are alarmed.
The writer of the article is spot on about people needing to pull their heads out and act like neighbors (and I have seen some real cretins amidst the supposed enlightened, young hipsters on Capital Hill with regard to being oblivious to anything or anyone other than themselves) but “density” is a trigger word for unrestrained greed. Developers across the world from Bellevue to China will make money off of Seattle and working people of all colors will get hosed as will seniors and anything that remains of less than upper income families of color.
If a stranger greeted me, it would do nothing but put me on high alert. That’s how unusual greetings are in Seattle, unless it’s a greeting to get something out of someone like their entire wallet or some of what’s inside. Be it canvasser or mugger. This is a city, not a dorm.
Max…you are quite correct that the issue is that Seattle is now being treated like a dorm. The basis is for a community is not so much behavior, but the basis of what creates that behavior. If the city is filled with aPodments, 1BR and studio rentals, then none of those people who live in them don’t have anything invested in the community. They are consumers, rather than active participants with a vested interest in their home and community. They do not care if they eat from a national chain or a local establishment and they do not care if they get to know you since there is a good chance that neither of you will be there in 5 years. That is why the Amazon (tech) business model of hiring single people under 30 and people who rely on the host company for their visa is so destabilizing to the community. It is transient and not community-based.
I apologize for not having seen the data for what you’re suggesting, which I believe (if I’m reading your comment correctly) is “none of THOSE PEOPLE [emphasis mine] who live in [apodments, 1br, studio rentals] don’t have anything invested in the community.” And I do not think you can prove that, which makes the argument a bit flimsy and, at the very least, anecdotal. People who rent are neighbors and members of the community and our community council welcomes anyone to our meetings and events whether they have the privilege of owning a home in Capitol Hill, long-term renters, to newcomers. We’re not in the business of otherizing any person from our neighborhood.
Thanks for the well written post. It gets to the heart of what makes a neighborhood. Getting to know one’s neighbors and only formulating opinions of them *after* you’ve gotten to know them rather than presupposing that new folks are all bad(different) than the status quo. A friend of mine just shared the Parable of Polygons with me today. http://ncase.me/polygons/ which speaks to the need to desire some amount of difference around us rather than hegemony. With that desire, one will get diverse neighbors.
As a single, blue collar gay man who was born at Virginia Mason and lived at 15th and Denny (before the GH daycare center was built) I’ve worked my jobs and managed apartments for years to save for a down payment on my own former drug house fixer upper , slowly, on my own, being able to live in, fix up, sell and re- purchase what weren’t very appealing homes in a modest way.
My goal being moving back to Capitol Hill. I still managed to engage with most of my neighbors and communities in every neighborhood I lived in, five in total, experiencing caring relationships and communities each time.
I have lived in my current residence on the Hill twelve years and am familiar with most of my neighbors within a three block square area, most of those were living here early on. The new folks who move in, if they respond at all, have been welcomed and engaged with in the same way as everyone else my neighbors and I have met,but they seem more insular somehow, even after conversations or sharing meals, just rush by without a hello.
I have lived with being different for a long time (even within my own community) and I try to understand others that don’t want to engage the challenge seems, among others, that perhaps, because of the greater proportion of newcomers, that some have no experience with neighbors that are lower income, older, of color, or disturbed in some way. My sense of that lack of empathy is what has diminished my quality of living on Capitol Hill and it saddens me greatly yet it’s still important to continue trying to engage and rewarding when it occurs.
As far as engaging neighbors and even strangers in a friendly way, one step that would make a difference is if everyone unplugged their earbuds and/or stopped staring at their screens when they are in public. A little eye contact and a smile go a long ways towards fostering “community.”