Neighbors gathering together to ponder the future of the city should be a good thing. After all, some of the greatest leaps in welcoming growth happened in the 1990s through neighborhood planning. This weekend neighbors will gather on Saturday, June 27 from 9 am to 12:30 pm for something called The Phoenix Project: Reviving Seattle’s Neighborhood Plans. The meeting is at the Bertha Knight Landes Room at City Hall. 

I was a neighborhood planner in the 1990s and later went to work with Jim Diers at the Department of Neighborhoods as a Neighborhood Development Manager implementing plans for the City. This period was a renaissance for growth and neighborhood activism; neighbors saw growth as an opportunity to get great things (the traffic circle became emblematic of the small but important investments neighbors wrangled from the City) for their neighborhoods. 

But today? Here’s part of a missive from Seattle Speaks Up, the group pushing for reduction of housing capacity in the city’s low-rise zones. It describes the comments of Councilmemeber Burgess at the last Planning, Land Use and Sustsinabilty (PLUS) Committee: 

Close behind Mike O’Brien was Council President Tim Burgess. His remarks leave no doubt that he considers Seattle a city divided between two classes of citizens: first-class citizens in heavily protected single family neighborhoods, and second-class citizens in the multifamily zones. As Seattle shudders under the burden of being the nation’s fastest growing city, Councilmember Burgess reiterated his firm belief that those of us who occupy less than 10% of the city’s land should be the hewers of wood and carriers of water for those who live in the affluent neighborhoods where he, the Mayor, and the majority of Councilmembers live. The claim that our elected officials are progressive is becoming more doubtful by the moment.

You can see why I don’t think neighborhood activism is what it used to be. Neighbors are angry and hostile. They feel entitled and they want growth to stop or they want to control it in their own interest. So I’ll be there Saturday. You should too. We need pro growth voices. 

The meeting announcement and schedule is copied below.

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Hello Neighborhood Planner,

The Phoenix Project, where “Neighborhood Planning Meets Comp Plan 2035” is less than 2 weeks away. We hope you are planning to join us, and to help with room and coffee logistics, we request that you please RSVP by Tuesday, June 23. If you had previously contacted us to ask if you could bring a guest, please RSVP with the total attending with you. Attached as a pdf & Microsoft word format and written below is the agenda. If there is any additional material, it will be emailed right before the event.

Please send your RSVP to mdiaz92@uw.edu by June 23.

Thank you and we look forward to meeting you!

Marisol 

 

The Phoenix Project Agenda

June 27, 2015 9:00 am – 12:30 pm (doors open at 8:30 am)

Bertha Knight Landes Room, Seattle City Hall

20 min Welcome, Introductions, kick off by Council Member Sally Bagshaw, and setting the stage by Jim Diers.

25 min Networking at tables, sharing stories

20 min Comp Plan 2035 Update, process and schedule 

20 min Comp Plan Jeopardy – EIS Edition

15 min Break

25 min Relationship between the Comp Plan and Neighborhood Plans, the role of the DEIS and upcoming Draft Comp Plan recommendation.

20 min Table discussion, compile top 3 questions from each table for the Panel

35 min Panel discussion and Q&A

§ Kathy Nyland – interim Director, Department of Neighborhoods

§ Susan McLain – Dept of Planning and Development, Deputy Planning Director

§ Tom Hauger/Patrice Carroll – Dept of Planning and Development, Comprehensive Plan 2035 Update Project Team

§ Jim Diers – Community Builder

§ Tba – SDOT

15 min Collaborating – tools to make it easier, a demo of Google Docs by Marisol Diaz and Gennevi Lu.     

10 min Close up, thank you, go forth and do good.