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Seattle is not anti-growth at all. I've never seen so many teardowns and new construction of already well-established neighborhoods than in Seattle. You just simply do not see that in the Greater Boston area or even in the Sunbelt remotely close to that scale. Seattle and King County do have an urban growth boundary though to prevent further suburban sprawl ruining the Cascades, so that makes the available land to sprawl quite scarce.
So no NIMBYs or lawsuits that cancel or delay developments?
In any event, I’d argue that’s still anti-growth in a way, just the inverse of most places. In LA, NIMBYs are opposed to increased density (among many other things). Some are opposed to building farther and farther out, but more so in an academic, sustainability type of way. Not passionate and personal like opposing an apartment building proposed for your block. Despite the best reasons or intentions they’re both kind of shutting the door on options for the people that come later.
Projects that comply with zoning will eventually make it through in Washington.
Some projects do get tied up in appeals, but that's mostly a delay tactic, done in the hopes the developer will give up due to cost or missing the market. One condo tower in particular likes to file suit about anything near it.
Also, State policy requires counties and cities to accommodate growth, targeting 20 years of supply (though they end up below that in reality).
Seattle and Portland are against sprawl, via voter-tested legislation. But we're not anti-growth.
Portland is waaaaayyy more anti-growth than Seattle imo. The hatred of Californians is much less of a thing in Seattle. Also, I think the desire to "keep Portland weird" is kind of antithetical to growth --- Seattle's weirdness is mostly gone by now outside of a few spots, and most residents seem to either be okay with that or are just too new to remember when it was different.
Austin is shockingly anti-growth as well. I’ve been wondering how it stacks up to the rest of the country in this regard.
Austin is certainly more anti-growth than Houston and DFW, but I wouldn't say it's that extreme. It's more like people are just somewhat emotionally scarred from being pretty much the single fastest growing city for 30-50 years almost. Even the central neighborhoods that were the NIMBY strongholds have been turned over pretty hard with transplants at this point and you are definitely seeing NIMBY issues getting defeated at the polls with consistency these days. Adler won easily, passed a light rail/subway plan, pro development council members in east Austin, etc.
Also, while it has been co-opted for NIMBY reasons there is a legimate environmental bend. Sometimes this worked against growth (stopping highway projects and whatnot) but I would also say that Austin's better maintained natural scenery is a big factor driving the growth in the first place. So my point is just because people don't want to drive freeways through the greenbelt doesn't necessarily mean that they are "anti-growth".
Austin is certainly more anti-growth than Houston and DFW, but I wouldn't say it's that extreme. It's more like people are just somewhat emotionally scarred from being pretty much the single fastest growing city for 30-50 years almost. Even the central neighborhoods that were the NIMBY strongholds have been turned over pretty hard with transplants at this point and you are definitely seeing NIMBY issues getting defeated at the polls with consistency these days. Adler won easily, passed a light rail/subway plan, pro development council members in east Austin, etc.
Also, while it has been co-opted for NIMBY reasons there is a legimate environmental bend. Sometimes this worked against growth (stopping highway projects and whatnot) but I would also say that Austin's better maintained natural scenery is a big factor driving the growth in the first place. So my point is just because people don't want to drive freeways through the greenbelt doesn't necessarily mean that they are "anti-growth".
We really need road improvements though. I mean, we can do without the access-roads. I personally like 45 in South Austin due to its lack of access road and somewhat nature friendly design (along with the trail next to it) - if more parkway like tollroads could be designed like that in lesser dense areas and especially toward the western suburbs it would really help things move along.
Honestly if I had my way I would also rip up the Access Roads along I-35 between Round Rock and Buda, they do nothing more than contribute to blight. Use the additional real-estate to widen the GP lanes and build express lanes in the median with no exits for X-amount of miles.. ..and Express Lanes under central Austin area as well. On long sections with no interchanges, build land-bridges by digging the highway underground in certain relatively small sections for nature friendly walkability across the highway while all the businesses along the access roads would be bought up and converted into park / trail space and the Highway would act as a branch corridor to trail / park space throughout the city for those who are walking / biking.
Yes.. ..unrealistic I know.. ..but thats what I would do.
Another thing I think that would really help Austin out, is disable traffic signals when traffic volume becomes light. They do this along Bee Caves Rd and also along FM620 out in Lakeway. It helps ALOT.
Atlanta's suburbs are hopelessly balkanized into small cities that have sprung up to try and resist the city's expansion. They're the reason we haven't had an outward MARTA expansion in decades, and the mere proposal of an outer beltway was enough to tank a governor's career.
When I lived in Clayton County back in the early/mid 2000s I remember talking to somebody who was born and raised there who talked about the pushback when a proposal came up back in the 90s that would have ran MARTA (or commuter rail) from Atlanta to Macon and people in Clayton were against it due to "crime."
What's ironic was that I moved to Clayton not knowing the stigmas around Atlanta and it seemed like a stable suburban area (and never had any issues). But going to other areas of Atlanta when I said I just moved down here and said that I lived it Clayton, people where like why did you move there ... due to "crime" lol.
Atlanta, though, doesn't seem like anti-sprawl. It's been 20 years since I lived there, but remember back then once you got to Lovejoy, there was nothing but a Wal-Mart (Lovejoy) between Jonesboro and Atlanta Motor Speedway. Looking at Google maps, that area is nothing but subdivisions now, so people must not be avoiding that area.
Portland is waaaaayyy more anti-growth than Seattle imo. The hatred of Californians is much less of a thing in Seattle. Also, I think the desire to "keep Portland weird" is kind of antithetical to growth --- Seattle's weirdness is mostly gone by now outside of a few spots, and most residents seem to either be okay with that or are just too new to remember when it was different.
Also Portland has a height restriction of what I believe to be 500 feet downtown? The dream of the single family home is alive in Portland!
So no NIMBYs or lawsuits that cancel or delay developments?
In any event, I’d argue that’s still anti-growth in a way, just the inverse of most places. In LA, NIMBYs are opposed to increased density (among many other things). Some are opposed to building farther and farther out, but more so in an academic, sustainability type of way. Not passionate and personal like opposing an apartment building proposed for your block. Despite the best reasons or intentions they’re both kind of shutting the door on options for the people that come later.
Agreed. This is the type of Anti-NIMBY-ism policies that lead to far more expensive Housing. The best example being all of Canada. Because all their major cities have some sort of growth boundary, even though their building a high amount of apartments/condos it's still far below the necessary demand. Which in it's own way a form of NIMBY-ism. I think urban growth boundaries are fine, but way too many cities have them that can't actually stay affordable while having an urban growth boundary.
Not really. West Coast and Canadian cities are expensive primarily because we don't allow dense infill in most places, and development is artificially expensive for that and other reasons.
Washington State requires that cities accommodate 20 years of theoretical growth. But the projections are only done every several years, and then they take time to filter to local policy. It's much less than 20 years of capacity by then.
Meanwhile, we focus growth into nodes, which aren't very big and don't have enough redevelopable land. This means the land is too expensive.
Most of our core cities have liberalized former single-family-zoned areas to allow multiple units, but that's generally new and mostly just matters when it's time to tear down an old house.
Then we pile on process, excess design standards, and fees. These represent a large percentage of the cost for anything new. The only good thing is we let developers figure out how much parking they'll need in many cases.
A house will tend to be expensive in a growth management city. But homes of other sorts don't need to be.
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