Seattle: Model of City Planning
Ed Note: Hey, this is our new guy David Forrester. He's a transplant from Boston so while we've tried to warn him off of reaching for the Big Dig comparisons every day, he'll probably slip a few past us at some point. Out of the gate it looks like he's unearthed historical precedent for our current situation. Give him a warm Seattle welcome.
With all of the head-shaking and hand-wringing we're witnessing over the March 13th Viaduct vote, it might be a good idea to revisit another March city planning vote. We're talking about the ill-fated Bogue Plan of 1912.
Before the vote, Scribner's Monthly hailed Seattle's comprehensive planning process as an innovation.
"Seattle has taught the country something new about city planning," the magazine lauded. Virgil Bogue, a well-regarded protege of Frederick Law Olmsted, was brought in to lead the project. The novelty that had Scribner's so smitten was the involvement of "every class of citizen" in the planning process. They formed commissions and committees and held elections for the commissions and committees. There were hearings, public meetings, lawsuits, debates, and weekly news reports. After two years of this hoopla, 10,000 copies of the completed plan were distributed throughout the city and an up-or-down vote was set.
Scribner's concluded:
[W]hether Seattle accepts or rejects the commission's report of Mr. Bogue's work, the significant and and interesting and original idea that is noteworthy of itself is the democratization of the plan, so that it comes up from the people and is not handed down to them. Other cities, in this and in many other public undertakings, may learn a helpful lesson from the example of Seattle.
On March 5, 1912 Seattle citizens rejected the plan by a wide margin. And the seed of today's process-intensive civic culture, and our present predicament were firmly planted. Thanks, Virgil.
