Northgate was doing fine but the writing was already on the wall as recently as 2017. The owners have demolished the middle (Nordstrom store #2 is almost completely gone) to make way for the hockey practice facility and several new office buildings, a couple of hotels, and apartments.
With, as you might imagine, retail on the bottom and a lot of walking space in the middle.
> You can’t throw a stone without hitting a mixed use box!
Sure, because developers and individuals have figured out that mixed use, if done OK, means stuff is more accessible. The problem is that we've only a handful of places where we zone to build mixed use so the spaces are super expensive because developers like to maximize profit.
We gotta catch up on housing, though. The close-in 'burbs are zoning for offices offices offices and not for people to live there.
Offices don't vote, so you can charge high taxes. Build a house and raise the taxes and you may be voted out. Or even build a house and a different party member may buy it and take your town in a different direction.
What I'm sick of is all of the suburbs doing their level best to try to convince businesses to not locate in the city while also complaining about the "housing crisis" and "traffic crunch" that their own policies caused.
Everybody griped that Seattle wasn't zoning for housing at the rate it zoned for offices, so the city has started upzoning and now the 'burbs are doing the exact opposite of what they lobbied the city to do for a decade.
Yea. That is the sad truth. I used to be a hard core YIMBY believer and advocated for more urban densification and taller buildings etc. etc.
Then one day I found out that the city was planning on building new student housing on the park where my daughter and I went to play every day. All of a sudden I found my unbridled YIMBYism becoming a lot more circumspect and nuanced and it turns out I was actually just a massive hypocrite. Urban densification is Great! and I still believe it is the right solution (just not in _my_ back yard).
PS: Now that I've moved 2 miles down the road and no longer go to that particular park I'm far more open to the long term benefits of it being used for student housing.
I think what is helpful is to define values. I think most people would value a park nearby - but how much park. A 500 acre park per apartment is obviously too much - you couldn't have a city, and I'm not sure if there is enough land in the world. You wouldn't want 1 square cm per apartment either - the few parks you would keep wouldn't hold all the people who want to use them. Someplace in the middle is a compromise - but I'm not sure what.
For the most part I don't think that the law should limit what buildings can be put up - factories/stores/housing can all share a neighborhood. However even if chemical factories don't release anything, there is still enough fire danger that they should be separated from anything else. Worse some chemicals are safe on their own but if they leak to a neighbor the combination is dangerous so such things need to be kept apart.
I don't really feel like trying to come up with a proposal of what the rules should be, but what we have isn't right.
Northgate was doing fine but the writing was already on the wall as recently as 2017. The owners have demolished the middle (Nordstrom store #2 is almost completely gone) to make way for the hockey practice facility and several new office buildings, a couple of hotels, and apartments.
With, as you might imagine, retail on the bottom and a lot of walking space in the middle.
> You can’t throw a stone without hitting a mixed use box!
Sure, because developers and individuals have figured out that mixed use, if done OK, means stuff is more accessible. The problem is that we've only a handful of places where we zone to build mixed use so the spaces are super expensive because developers like to maximize profit.
We gotta catch up on housing, though. The close-in 'burbs are zoning for offices offices offices and not for people to live there.