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If Seattle's non-murder violent crime rates are high, I suspect it's because we report a larger percentage of them. Said differently, I bet high-murder cities have lower reporting percentages for other violent crimes.
Good point. If someone selling drugs on the corner is robbed that doesn't get counted. If that drug dealer is killed..well murder isn't easy to hide. Also people that immigrated illegally are known to underreport being victims because they want stay off the radar of the authorities. Less so now but I'm sure that it's still a thing. Then there are departments that have been caught reducing the severity of crimes like LAPD and others.
Yes. Some projects will take substantially longer. They're also figuring out big questions on alignment, station locations, etc., for all the non-UC phases. For example will Ballard get a bridge or a tunnel and what street will it connect to (maybe 14th).
Thanks. I think that everyone with money already allocated is in the same boat. Even worse are the ones that didn't. I don't expect to see many new major rail proposals in the next couple few years outside of what the feds have already allocated, like the NE corridor upgrades.
Thanks. I think that everyone with money already allocated is in the same boat. Even worse are the ones that didn't. I don't expect to see many new major rail proposals in the next couple few years outside of what the feds have already allocated, like the NE corridor upgrades.
Yea, I expect similar for the most part though perhaps we'll be surprised by some reforms to US capital construction costs and procedures though that's unlikely to happen in the near future.
Seattle does have substantially more under construction and its urban neighborhoods are currently more urban than those of San Diego. That should be weighed against the fairy large number of surface parking lots in San Diego's greater downtown area which may see very rapid mid-rise/high-rise construction. The two are definitely peer cities in a lot of ways.
Good point. If someone selling drugs on the corner is robbed that doesn't get counted. If that drug dealer is killed..well murder isn't easy to hide. Also people that immigrated illegally are known to underreport being victims because they want stay off the radar of the authorities. Less so now but I'm sure that it's still a thing. Then there are departments that have been caught reducing the severity of crimes like LAPD and others.
Well, even if you just want to use murder as the metric for measuring violent crime, Seattle is still not as safe as what you would call the "top tier" cities, like San Diego or San Jose. It has had a higher murder rate than places like Boston and SF over the last few years as well. The most high crime areas are places the average tourist wouldn't go, but there is a fair amount of sketchy activity happening downtown and in other tourist areas as well, and you get weird stories like this pretty regularly.
That said, Seattle is still a relatively safe city by US standards, it's just not on the same level as places like San Diego. Tacoma 30 minutes south of Seattle is now decidedly unsafe, with a murder rate that is among the highest on the West Coast for cities above 200K.
Well, even if you just want to use murder as the metric for measuring violent crime, Seattle is still not as safe as what you would call the "top tier" cities, like San Diego or San Jose. It has had a higher murder rate than places like Boston and SF over the last few years as well. The most high crime areas are places the average tourist wouldn't go, but there is a fair amount of sketchy activity happening downtown and in other tourist areas as well, and you get weird stories like this pretty regularly.
That said, Seattle is still a relatively safe city by US standards, it's just not on the same level as places like San Diego. Tacoma 30 minutes south of Seattle is now decidedly unsafe, with a murder rate that is among the highest on the West Coast for cities above 200K.
To be fair, part of the lower crime rate for SD, and something that happens with other cities with fairly large municipal boundaries, is that it encompasses a lot of often safer suburban, in terms of development, areas. San Diego is at 320 square miles of land area versus the 83 square miles of Seattle which is just over a quarter of SD's land area. Restrict SD to about equivalent land area and the murder rate likely goes up. One way of trying to get closer to apples to apples stats would be to take existing divisions of San Diego that add up to close to 83 square miles and includes both downtown and the major research university. I think going by either Community Planning Areas or City Council Districts could be a useful way of doing so. Using such existing ones would generally allow you to more easily gets stats on such. The other way to do this would be to expand out Seattle to its San Diego rough equivalent for near 320 square miles and that would definitely include at least SeaTac with the airport and municipalities in between Seattle and Seatac and a whole lot more.
I drew more totally-arbitrary boundaries in CoStar, covering core districts in each city and found the following. (In Seattle I included the U District, Ballard, south of the stadiums, etc. In SD I included University Heights, Oak Park, Southcrest...)
Under construction (they don't count condos BTW):
--Seattle office: 2.3 msf
--Seattle apartments: 9,400 units
--Seattle hotels: 463 rooms
--SD office: 2.8 msf
--SD apartments: 3,800 units
--SD hotels: 147 rooms
SD's office construction is the Navy site, Horton Plaza, 1011 Union, and a tiny space at 1445 Front. I wasn't expecting this volume.
I drew more totally-arbitrary boundaries in CoStar, covering core districts in each city and found the following. (In Seattle I included the U District, Ballard, south of the stadiums, etc. In SD I included University Heights, Oak Park, Southcrest...)
Under construction (they don't count condos BTW):
--Seattle office: 2.3 msf
--Seattle apartments: 9,400 units
--Seattle hotels: 463 rooms
--SD office: 2.8 msf
--SD apartments: 3,800 units
--SD hotels: 147 rooms
SD's office construction is the Navy site, Horton Plaza, 1011 Union, and a tiny space at 1445 Front. I wasn't expecting this volume.
Yea, that's a lot of office space. I suppose these were planned before the pandemic.
Is there much buzz in Seattle about doing office to residential or hotel conversions?
Also, what do you think is most sensible to "add" to Seattle in terms of municipalities to get to roughly 320 square miles and definitely including Seatac and Tukwila, White Center, and Burien running between Seattle and Seatac? In looking around, I also noticed that wikipedia hasn't really updated Tukwila and other entries for some of the census-designated place annexations.
Also Shoreline, Edmonds, Lake Forest Park, Kenmore, Lynnwood, Mountlake Terrace, Bothell, Kirkland, Bellevue, Mercer Island, Newcastle...I'm not doing the math but those would get you a lot closer.
There are some actual and planned conversions but not on a large scale. Most office landlords are still optimistic about offices. They certainly haven't gotten desperate enough to spend six years of rent on conversions. Actually the general view through summer was that most workers would come back, and even today CoStar projects a moderate peak in vacancies followed by a decline as construction diminishes. They're starting to see things differently as the workers have stayed at home and companies have started to respond. Until then I can count office-to-residential conversions on one hand.
Our 2.3 msf of current office construction (often life-science capable) has all started during Covid. Developers think new buildings will fare better than old ones. And life science space is in huge demand.
San Diego is good at density in outer areas, but it's not on Seattle's level in density in the core. It seems like nearly everybody agrees on that.
Evidence starts with residential density. I'm poking around census tracts and only seeing one in the core over 50k/sm, plus one more in La Jolla. Seattle has eight tracts denser than anything in SD unless I'm missing something.
Next, offices. Seattle has a huge core office presence and SD doesn't. On CoStar I mapped a huge area all the way out to Mission Hills, El Cerito, and National City and came up with just 23,000,000 sf of offices. In Seattle a similar area was 94,000,000.
We could also discuss Seattle putting 70,000 college students in dense, walkable districts vs. SD which focuses them farther away.
Notably absent in this extremely vague analysis-the size of these phantom "census tracts."
One building could account for a high density tract, right?
One reason I go by zip codes, not "tracts."
One zip code where Seattle has significant density (above city density) and population is 98105, also known as the University District.
Other cities that draw significant density from a University district-Columbus and Austin!
Notably absent in this extremely vague analysis-the size of these phantom "census tracts."
One building could account for a high density tract, right?
One reason I go by zip codes, not "tracts."
One zip code where Seattle has significant density (above city density) and population is 98105, also known as the University District.
Other cities that draw significant density from a University district-Columbus and Austin!
Yea, it makes sense that you've never used CoStar as it doesn't seem like you'd be familiar with it. You can however, use this US census tool to take a look at the different sizes of the tracts and have the SD and Seattle zoomed out to the same level. You'll see that Seattle obviously has a larger contiguous blob of highest density tracts--though on the map they only do 10,000 ppsqm and more so you'll have to hover over it to get the numbers as obviously going from 10k ppsqm to 50k ppsqm. Going by zipcodes is sort of silly since the census tracts actually get you far more granular divisions and populations given for zipcodes are themselves getting pulled from the US census and its census tracts. I understand it's a bit tougher to use perhaps, but there are a lot of tools out there.
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