Every year the SFU City Program presents a speaker in urban design, sponsored by VIA Architecture. This year, something different. Given that it’s the firm’s 20th anniversary (some will remember it as Baker, McGarva, Hart) and that they have offices in both Vancouver and Seattle, we came up with an idea to ‘celebrate’ both cities:
The idea, you see, is that two proponents of their respective cities will reverse roles, and argue for the merits of the other’s city.
That means I, as the Vancouverite, have to bump off the arguments of Peter Steinbrueck, an articulate architect and previous city councillor in Seattle, to make the case that his city is actually superior to Vancouver.
Help!
It seemed like such a clever idea, until I actually had to think about what I’d say. So Price Tags readers, how about it: what examples would you put forward to make the case that Seattle in so many ways is a much better town than this village on the edge of the rain forest?
And while you’re at it, you might want to reserve a space for the event on Tuesday, June 16 at 7 pm – SFU Harbour Centre. Email cstudies@sfu.ca or call 778-782.5100.
In addition to questions taken from the floor immediately following the debate, attendees will have an opportunity to submit questions in advance through VIA’s website at www.via-architecture.com (click on ‘The Firm’—’VIA Blog’).
Seattle has a much more “big city” feel to it than Vancouver – could be due to its age. Probably not as many height restrictions on downtown streets, so the downtown isn’t cut through by small scale retail streets like Robson or Granville in Vancouver. Also for setbacks, in Seattle office towers do not appear to be set back behind plazas like they are on Burrard or Georgia (our “ceremonial” streets). The major retail stores in Seattle seem to be much more spread out along different streets – like a district rather than linearly along just one or two streets.
For one thing they have an ecomomy based on something else (Microsoft, Boing) than people flipping houses to each other.
I would say while they do have the laid back Westcoast vibe they have more drive then we do which has led to them having Boeing, the HOs of Starbucks, Costco, Microsoft.
They have also protrayed themselves on popular tv shows giving them high global reconigtion. Something that would be nice for Vancouver to do.
Seattle has maintained a better quality of houses than Vancouver.
For some reason, Vancouver has a huge spec house industry, which for the past 30 years, has torn down old homes and replaced them with architectural garbage. So now Vancouver neighbourhoods look tacky and soulless. Neighbourhoods that have neither charming historical architecture or well designed contemporary architecture. Just neighbourhoods filled with poorly designed and poorly built tacky houses.
I don’t know why, but people don’t seem to build many new houses in Seattle. You can spend time driving around neighbourhoods in Seattle, and you won’t see many houses that have been built in the past 30 years. The newer houses that you might see are also more likely to have been designed by an architect for a specific client, as opposed to Vancouver’s thousands of ugly spec houses that are just thrown together by a draftsman to maximize square footage.
By the way, I’m not talking about the suburbs. I’m talking about neighbourhoods within the City of Seattle and the City of Vancouver. Surburban houses are equally horrible in every city.
When I first read about the debate a few days ago it crossed my mind that you might have taken temporary leave of your senses Gordon.
I like Seattle, the question is why? The downtown buildings are certainly monumental. Whether they are architecturally significant is obviously open for debate. They may have more terra cotta facades than any other city in America. They put many of their bus routes in a tunnel through city. It’s cheaper to ride transit in Seattle and it’s free to ride transit in the downtown core.
Seattle feels more vibrant and the neighbourhoods seem more clearly defined with perhaps more individuality. We have one ‘funky’ neighbourhood (the Drive) they probably have a few.
They kept the World’s Fair site and it continues to be (arguably) the entertainment heart of the city almost 50 years later. We gave ours away to a developer and 23 years later it’s still isn’t finished.
There always seem to be festivals going on in Seattle, I stumbled on a World Marimba (or drum?) Festival on a visit last year. I went down for Honkfest West a few months ago. Do they still do Bumbershoot and Lillith Fair?
You can probably get some mileage out of the Space Needle and you might want to get in a dig about the fact the Washington State Dept. of Transportation is ready, willing and able to put a second Amtrak train into service between Seattle and Vancouver (and Portland) but the CSBA is trying to pull a modern day version of the Great Train Robbery.
Oh, and they had a skytrain (the monorail) before parts of Vancouver even had indoor plumbing, (I’m exaggerating a bit).
And Seattle has lots and lots of hills.
What ever you do, don’t mention ‘The Freeway’!!!
Good luck Gordon, you’ll need it.
I think you have a problem, Gord.
One of your central arguments has to be the fact that we don’t have a freeway through our downtown and blocking our waterfront. Without doubt, the big knock against Downtown Seattle are the two freeways which cut up the downtown. Particulary the Alaskan Way viaduct which limits views, access and potential development at the waterfront!
They also have the great music musuem and the olympic statue park which can be used as pros.
There’s something profound about Seattle having unapologetically portrayed itself in a truly funny TV sit.com (Frasier) and a successful (at least financially if not artistically) movie (Sleepless in Seattle) versus Vancouver which seemingly can only aspire to be the set for some other city in these depictions. Something about Vancouver’s superficiality as opposed to Seattle’s gutsiness. This is also reflected in Seattle’s decision, albeit belately, to get rid of their elevated Alaska Way Viaducts even at a cost of $4 B (that’s BILLION!). While we smugly declare that we were smart enough to have never put up such monsters in the first place we fail to notice the first vestiges of such a system (Georgia and Dunsmuir Viaducts) remain in place and that it was by a hair’s breadth and the courage of a few community advocates that we avoided that error.
Seattle has pubs (and lots of them) – we’re not allowed to have pubs. They create great meeting places and enhance social interaction and help to liven many of the streets they’re on. Having worked in Seattle, they are a great asset to the City. It’d be interesting to find out the per capita restaurant count in each city – or on an area wide basis. I think Seattle would win.
There’s also a grittiness that is in Seattle partly due to it’s age whereas Vancouver’s such a young city (architecturally) which makes it a bit too sqeaky clean.
Streetcar in Seattle, despite being new and arguably not really serving the population at this point, IS built and will eventually serve a new population around the SLU area – Vancouver only has a heritage track, and although the olympic/phase 1 is planned, who knows if it will actually get built. Streetcar is the way cities are built[up] – skytrain just doesn’t cut the mustard. They also have light link rail connecting other cities such as Tacoma – we have skytrain…
Cultural energy in seattle – as mentioned by Wayne above – the neighbourhoods have strong identity and varying identity (think Ballard, queen anne, etc) which gives the city a richness we just somehow lack.
Sports (i know many will cringe at this) but they have successful sports team, bringing thousands out to celebrate, add identity and pride to the city, and just generally bring people together in celebration. There’s something to the ritual of getting behind your city’s team – yes we have the canucks, but it has a much different appeal and draw than baseball, football, or MLS soccer does.
Music, entertainment scene is big (bigger?) in Seattle than here. At least it seems like it. And some great venues for music.
Just try to stay clear of issues like building form (proximity of towers to one another in seattle is something like 25 feet), the Viaduct, social services, etc and you’ll do fine….looking forward to the lecture.
….just thought of another one.
Hotels – try to find an interesting, funky hotel in seattle and you’ll have plenty of choice. Try to find on in this City and you’d be hard-pressed to find more than one….not sure how that relates to making a great city, but perhaps it could allude to the number and the demographic of visitors….
You could also mention how the Seattle Area (is it in King County?) has an incredibly successful satellite city in Bellevue. Bellevue isn’t just a cluster of condos like the regional town centres around Metro Vancouver but actually has large scale hotels (including a Hyatt) and office towers – Metrotown is the only one that even comes close in Metro Vancouver thus far – and Bellevue is without a rapid transit line through it.
You could mention how Seattle has successfully implemented a vehicle levy (car tabs) – something that TransLink is struggling with.
You could mention the Washington State Ferries (although some of their ships are badly in need of repair) provide a network of routes for commuters.
You could mention developing a cruise ship terminal that has successfully stolen Vancouver cruise ship traffic.
The redevelopment of the King Street train station has been successful.
The library by Renzo Piano (?) has been very successful.
The Washington State convention centre spans the I-5 freeway and provides parkspace.
WRT highways…
State Route 167 (I think that’s the number) has a HOT lane – high occupancy toll lane – search the WSDOT internet for the website . Tolls vary with congestion and time of day.
The twinned Tacoma Narrows Bridge (opened last year) has a toll using the transponders and high tech gadgetry that will be used on the Golden Ears Bridge.
There are numerous HOV lanes on Seattle freeways, inlcuding dedicated HOV to HOV off-ramps from I-405 to the I-90 floating bridge.
The reversible express lanes on I-5 make efficient use of limited freeway space.
Check the WSDOT website for plans on replacement of State Route 520 floating bridge and the I-90 floating bridge, as well as the mentioned Alaskan Way viaduct replacement.
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Side note: Tacoma’s streetcar does not connect to Seattle (and the Link LRT will stop at Sea-Tac (north of Tacoma) for the foreseeable future). There is however, the Sounder commuter rail (like Westcoast Express) from Seattle to Tacoma and points farther south.
I can’t begin to grapple with Matthew’s view that SkyTrain doesn’t build cities. When you fly into Vancouver you can see the Expo Line as a string of towers running across the region. You may not like the details of the urban density in Burnaby — I certainly don’t — but it’s urban density. Joyce has potential, and so does Broadway-Commercial.
And I hate to point out the obvious, but Seattle is substantially bigger than Vancouver, so of course it has more “stuff.” Next time, have this quarrel with someone in Portland; that’s closer to an urban peer.
To me the most interesting difference between Seattle and Vancouver is that while both were designed by grid-minded settlers, Vancouver’s site welcomed the grid while Seattle’s defeated it.
Most of Vancouver is a very consistent grid thanks to the gentle grades of the Burrard peninsula. Seattle is nothing but obstacles. Nowhere in the city can you draw a straight line for more than a few miles without plunging into water or going over a cliff.
As someone who’s done a lot of transit work in both cities, I have to say that transit planning in Seattle is just incredibly hard. The city is laced with countless barriers to both direct routing and pedestrian access. It’s hard to create a legible network in such a shredded city.
On the other hand, there’s no question that urban greatness and “sense of place” happens more naturally in the presence of natural barriers — both water and topography. This, I think, is the essence of Seattle’s continuing potential. While both cities have spectacular sites, Vancouver’s spectacle is mostly about its relationship to the surrounding water and topography, while Seattle is often spectacular because of water and topography right inside the city. (False Creek is the exception in Vancouver’s case, and comparing it to Lake Union might be fruitful for your exercise.)
Oh, and you can give Seattle big points for putting its major universities right in the city, rather than barricaded by parklands as UBC and SFU both are. The transport problem around UW is vastly simpler than at either of Vancouver’s big campuses, because so many people just live within a mile of the campus, and walk.
Cheers, Jarrett
Large commuter ferries that dock right downtown.
Jarrett – you are right. My comments (not articulated I know…)concerning Skytrain were more aimed at the nature of the place created by skytrain versus LRT or streetcar. In thinking about seattle’s streetcar, it’s much more of a nice neighbourhood while still enabling much needed density. The main problem i have with skytrain is the barrier the technology creates in terms of communities and placemaking. The end result is impressive (as you cited with communities developing around the station) but I have a deep feeling that whilst LRT is neighbourhood ‘character’ friendly, skytrain is not.
Seattle feels like a city for living, working, and fun for the people who live there. Vancouver definitely has a much more resort-type feel. You can see this reflected in the number of big companies based in Seattle: Amazon, Microsoft, Costco, Starbucks, Boeing; the list goes on. I struggle to think of any for Vancouver.
The two freeways that cut through the downtown core certainly damaged their city center in a way that Vancouver thankfully avoided. What has been going well over the past couple of decades is how the city has been coping with these hurdles and bringing people back into the urban core. Reclaiming old industrial waterfront for sites such as the Olympic Sculpture Park and the long waterfront park/path that connects to it. The development of medium to high density housing in the Belltown district (though some will point out that this has drained that district of the edge and culture it had in the 90’s) The on street light rail line that links suburban Seattle with the downtown core and connects to new developments in the slowly recovering region bordered by the monorail, Denny Way, and the freeway. There is also that sense of place and neighbourhood culture that other commentors mentioned that exists, partly due to the city’s age but also in large part to the fact that so much of the city’s architectural history remains. Both the Gastown style, tourist friendly in Pioneer Square, in the public market of Pike Place, and also in the Capitol Hill district which fits many of Richard Floridas markers for a thriving neighbourhood in its mix of residential, commercial and cutlural spaces. Its variety of subcultures, artists and thriving gay population. As an interesting point of study by the way the parking lot sea I mentioned earlier is an excellent example of the abandoned city that Jan Gehl describes in his research. A great example of the harm car dependant urban development can cause.
“The two freeways that cut through the downtown core certainly damaged their city center in a way that Vancouver thankfully avoided. What has been going well over the past couple of decades is how the city has been coping with these hurdles and bringing people back into the urban core. Reclaiming old industrial waterfront … Its variety of subcultures, artists and thriving gay population. … ”
So, Paul, I guess what you’re saying is that Interstate 5 killed Seattle dead, but somehow the city managed to survive and revitalize itself. Is that about right?