Urban Planning 101: More people are out when it’s sunny
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Couple enjoying sun in Occidental Park.

Man’s relationship with the sun is primal—especially in Seattle. People will find chairs and places to sit or stand to enjoy its warmth. Every day/all day, chairs in cafes are turned according to the sun. Pedestrians follow sunny sidewalks and well lit public squares. They alternate between sun and shade. When there’s a farmer’s market out, vendors will try to keep the vegetables in the shade. Pedestrians will put on sunglasses—we are rumored to buy more here than anywhere else.

The sun helps sales. Sometimes customers come in to a shop to escape the sun, other times the shops lose customers to street vendors—who have more spatial flexibility. Interesting examples from Tapai and LA include roaming performance troupes that travel on a truck bed while disseminating sounds of their performance in the streets. Notice the loudspeaker that’s mounted on top of the mobile mini shrine.

nakashi-truck

Another interesting thing to consider is what people buy when it’s sunny compared to when it’s raining. A team of IBM analytics experts noticed that on rainy days customers were more likely to purchase cakes, while on sunny days the choice food was paninis. Small businesses can’t guess the success of their inventory by looking at the weather and sales reports separately, but together, they can uncover a new outcome. Now the bakery knows what to bake based on the weather forecast.

ACTIONS

Check out their meeting notes and find out.

Resources:

Confront Your Fears

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John Hale from Compassionate Seattle.

“We need to get people more involved.”

He made some great points about getting ‘right’

with uncomfortable feelings of downtown by getting out and exploring. 

“If you’re uncomfortable walking through Occidental Park,

you need to confront those feelings…and get over it.”

Urban Planning 101: Small businesses put their trash bags on the street
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Back Alley, Washington & 1st Ave.

There are some logical reasons for trash lying on the streets. In an ideal world, all trash would be placed in an out of the way location where we didn’t have to see it. It stinks, it is unsightly, it is unhygienic, and it reminds us of our disproportional consumption. However, there are some advantages to having trash on the street. It is, in fact, an important prop on the theater of the street. The shop owner takes it out, often several bags of it, to the edge of the sidewalk or the back alleys. Over the course of the day homeless people rummage through it for bottles, cans, or other potential reusable items. By the next day the bags are taken by trash collection. The streetscape is activated an involved in the processes of the everyday. To many who live here, trash is an eyesore. To others, it is a transparent example of the functions of the people that live there.

What is it to you?

ACTIONS

If you’re passionate about zero waste, sign up to receive their meeting minutes, and provide them some suggestions.

RESOURCES:

Urban Planning 101: Neighborhood Literacy
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Photocredit: doodlebugsteaching.blogspot.com

Neighborhoods speak. The citizens that live in them need to understand their language.

Considering the urban background not from the abstract perspective of an urban planner but from the viewpoint of an attentive observer, I’m going to try to learn more about my neighborhood from sayings, observations, and bite-size truths. I’ll try to do short essays as I learn how to read the neighborhood.

I’m curious about the topic of neighborhood literacy, from a pedestrian’s perspective. With these Urban Planning 101 posts, I want to learn what to notice if I want to understand the neighborhood. Over time, we can learn to detect patterns in the relationships between people and the neighborhood environment.

Stand for Compassion

How the Grinch Stole Christmas courtesy Cartoon Network

So, we had a little event today.

Folks from RealChange spoke, the Mayor spoke,

a homeless person spoke, a fireperson spoke.

Then everyone gathered hands and walked in a circle. (true story)

It was all very…Seattle-confusing.

The main message: depolicing of the area was not addressed.  

I did speak with the Mayor following the event and he mentioned that Seattle does not currently collect data on where crimes are being committed which would help them more efficiently allocate resources around the city. He’s attending a half day offsite with some folks at Microsoft to remedy that. Will be interesting to hear an update of that on April 5.

UPDATE:

How can we not have data on crime in Seattle, with sites like this?

Save The Date: April 5

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There’s a meeting April 5th to talk to the Mayor. ***You can sign up here.***

  • Take a sec to read the recently released Seattle Civic Health Index report. The report finds Seattle’s civic health to be excellent, but there are key areas where we can improve, specifically in connection and trust.
  • To consider: How does Pioneer Square organize differently from other communities?
  • Most of the press has been about the viaduct. City-wide infrastructure is a main priority. From the perspective of downtown, parking and crime are still a problems to be solved.

Fill out their online survey to let them know what you would like to get out of the Seattle Neighborhood Summit and what is important to your neighborhood. To learn more about the Seattle Neighborhood Summit, check back here regularly. You can also email SNS2014@seattle.gov or call Kathy Nyland at 206.684.8069.

Seattle Center has been renovated:

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Ask the Mayor: March 2014 3/25/2014

Approaching 100 days on the job, Mayor Ed Murray joins host Brian Callanan and a live audience to discuss a range of city issues including rideshare caps, the creation of a parks district, neighborhood crime, universal preschool and more. The second half of the show focused on raising the minimum wage. The co-chairs of the mayor’s Income Inequality Advisory Committee — Howard Wright, Seattle Hospitality Group CEO, and David Rolf, president of SEIU Healthcare 775NW — joined in the conversation.