A Curious Eye

Mayor Mike McGinn is expected to announce today that the planned half-mile north Broadway streetcar extension will receive $1.75 million in federal grants. When a planned $1.25 million in city funds are added, the $3 million total should be enough to fully design a potential $25 million track project.

This spur would connect to the First Hill Streetcar now under construction, from the 2016 Capitol Hill Station to the existing International District/Chinatown Station. The First Hill Streetcar opens in early 2014, with the north Broadway extension to arrive a couple years later. Both will have a 10-foot-wide bicycle lane separated from traffic, but streetcars will be slowed by running in the general traffic lanes.

The Puget Sound Regional Council (a consortium of local governments assigned to distribute federal funds) includes $850,000 for Broadway in its regional awards for 2013, and is expected to allocate another $900,000 from a federal congestion relief and air-quality program.  The half-mile extension enjoys widespread support from Capitol Hill business and community groups.

Read more at SeattleTimes.com

Something quite transformational is going on here, something that belies the  “American Dream.” The dream for many is no longer the house surrounded by a big lawn with a two (or three) car garage. That dream for many, is a nightmare. For many others, the ideal has shifted massively.

One of the fascinating new tools that has served to educate buyers about the type and quality of neighborhoods is the scoring system called Walk Score, which was created by a Seattle-based company calledwalkscore.com, and has spread across the country. The site evaluates neighborhoods by using a complex algorithm involving proximity to supermarkets, restaurants, medical services, and other things that people need on a daily basis. The methodology has been improving and now takes into account geographic discontinuities like freeways and ravines that make proximity more difficult.

So fast has Walk Score been brought into the mainstream that real estate agents across the country now advertise homes with their  Walk Score indicated. The Brookings study made us of this mapping analysis to conduct its comprehensive assessment of various neighborhoods. High Walk Score neighborhoods are consistently coming out on top with respect to value per square foot. (To be fair, raw values in many suburban locations are still higher, but that is due mainly to the size of outlying properties.)

Keep reading at CrossCut.com

Looks like Seattle’s Gay Ghetto is shifting from Capitol Hill to West Seattle

Is the image worthy of being censored? I don’t think so.

Doesn’t sound like this will happen, but it would have been cool