alt Hacker NewsIf you haven't lived in Seattle, it's hard to understand the problem. It's multifaceted; business climate, generally poor quality of the city itself as a walking / working destination, extremely hostile to business city government, and greener pastures (literally) east across the bay, which happen to be closer to some very large headquarters.
The die was largely cast when Amazon called Seattle's bluff during COVID and relocated, but so much needs to be done to make the city itself an attractive place to live and work, and there is so little planning, zoning or effective change happening it seems likely to be decades before I could imagine a truly vibrant city core. Even when I write that, it seems unlikely. As we speak, Seattle is aiming to become the highest tax jurisdiction in the country, higher even than NYC, because ... revenues are down. It's a disappointing response to a serious urban problem.
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Seattle's DT business district had always been uniquely bad. Everything is for office workers and closes at 5pm. There is nothing else but offices and restaurants serving coffee for breakfast and workplace meeting suitable lunches.
It is an example of piss poor planning and urban design.
>If you haven't lived in Seattle, it's hard to understand the problem.
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>greener pastures (literally) east across the bay
Well obviously you haven't lived in Seattle because if you did you would know the body of water separating Seattle and Bellevue is Lake Washington. Not a bay.
How did Amazon relocate? I think most employees are still traveling to SLU to their offices.
The city has a notorious open air drug market within 2 blocks of one of its main tourist attractions at Pike Place. Downtown is generally not a pleasant place to visit.
I've lived all over the country, both in big and small cities, and most recently in the Seattle area (across the lake in Kirkland) for 4 years.
Seattle has trappings of a city, but socially it doesn't feel like one in the way Chicago and NYC are (ok they're bigger, but hear me out -- it's not the size, it's the people). To me, Seattle feels like Cleveland but with more money.
I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but I would visit different neighborhoods from Capitol Hill to ID to Northgate to Ballard (I liked Ballard the most) almost every weekend, and everything just felt so subdued compared to a city that is truly alive. I had to take trips to Vancouver -- a similar city but more alive -- just to get my dose of city energy. Even Lynnwood WA -- a suburb -- had more energy.
The city itself has too much monoculture -- predominantly tech bros or hipsters or nature people -- but that's not enough diversity to create true energy.
The food scene was uniquely mediocre relative to its wealth and size. It had pockets of good stuff, but overall just very little risk-taking and experimentation in the restaurant industry because of the economics (min wage is $21.30 which is fair to workers but hard for small business owners) and insufficient population density to turn tables at a high rate (the land is fragmented by water and mixed elevation), and high proportion of food-as-fuel population.
Seattle attracts who it attracts because of what it is -- introverted, nature loving, affluent in a countercultural way. But this does not create a vibrant city.
Seattle's social energy resembles that of a paradoxical population who want to live in a city but are secretly suburban people.
Seattle here. The problem isn't that there's too little "planning" or "zoning". Where that's relevant, there's too much. The city has used those tools over and over to slow growth and tack on requirements for businesses.
I'm not aligned with the new mayor's business-hostile policies. But as far as making the city better for walking, things are going very well. We've been narrowing crossing distances, improving sidewalks, putting in concrete separation for bike lanes, we even finally kicked cars out of Pike Place Market. There are parks improvements in progress across the city to improve restrooms and fix dangerous spots. And the number of people in tent encampments has dropped dramatically, it's become rare and short lived in most of the city.
I suspect that we will continue to recover, despite the capital gains tax. It'll just be slower than Bellevue.