Towards a Denser Seattle

Yesterday Eric de Place held forth over pollution and urban design on the Cascadia Scorecard site. Examination of a 2000 Larry Frank study of Puget Sound vehicle emissions per household (which he doesn't link to and we can't find - C'mon Eric, it's the web) leads him in this direction:

It turns out that the strongest land-use correlate to low household emissions is not residential density, but job-site employment density. That is, from a statistical standpoint, it matters less whether you live on Capital Hill or the Sammamish Plateau than whether you work in downtown Seattle or Bothell. The difference, I suppose, is that downtown Seattle and other places with high employment density are well-served by transit and are generally easier to get to with lower vehicle emissions than more far-flung workplaces.

What de Place doesn't do, however, is finish drawing the line to yesterday's Seattle Times article on the mayor's designs on downtown, which basically trumpets the Vancouverization of Seattle. According to this study and Cascadia Scorecard's interpretation of it, density is most beneficial from a pollution standpoint when it applies to commercial space, and residential density (which is big in Vancouver) has less of an impact.