Comments on: Urban Blight

By: Models for Low-Rise Multi-Family Housing: U.S. « BUILD Blog

Models for Low-Rise Multi-Family Housing: U.S. « BUILD Blog — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 06:54:31 +0000

[...] part 2 of the low-rise multi-family series, and in response to our Urban Blight post, we want to bring the discussion back to the United States and more specifically the Pacific [...]

By: Models for Low-Rise Multi-Family Housing: Europe « BUILD Blog

Models for Low-Rise Multi-Family Housing: Europe « BUILD Blog — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 20:48:22 +0000

[...] too long ago we threw a few tomatoes at the townhouse model that has proliferated in the northwest. It felt good to get a few things off our chest, and after [...]

By: andrew

andrew — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 06:59:07 +0000

Matt – a blog post of positive examples is in the works, stay tuned.

By: Matt

Matt — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 02:35:21 +0000

Great post and comments! Though the discussion might have been more timely 5-years ago. I’d love to see a follow-up that showcases better examples of similar townhouses / rowhouses / duplexes: Fremont & 49th, PB Elemental, et al. I’m optimistic that good developers / architects will continue to raise standards for this type of product… 10-years ago Belltown was filling up with beige styrofoam boxes like Fountain Court and Belltown Court… now new construction there is steel, concrete and glass. Lets hope these things evolve too…

By: Elsewhere « Visualingual

Elsewhere « Visualingual — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 12:11:32 +0000

[...] Urban Blight: Seattle’s Crapsman typology and the architect’s responsibility, via the thought-provoking BUILD blog. [...]

By: mike

mike — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 05:17:29 +0000

yeah, but philly deserves it after what bacon did to kahn!

By: chad

chad — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 00:10:19 +0000

This stuff almost looks nice compared to the crap that hack builders throw up in my home of Philly, PA. The 6th largest city in the US and the birthplace of so many great things in our history just can’t seem to get the whole urban planning thing down. It’s sad.

Here, there are ten lousy architects that will pump our junk on the cheap for every good architect struggling to make a living due to the low standards in fees created by the former firms. Again…Sad.

By: buildllc

buildllc — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 23:47:36 +0000

Juliet – that’s a good point. There are so few options for downtown living. The architectural diversity simply doesn’t exist in Seattle.

By: Juliet

Juliet — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 23:21:11 +0000

Oh, ouch… My husband and I bought ours in 1999. We have watched over the last eight years how this typology has been evolved by the rising price of real estate, market driven demands of buyers, and a stupid building code (why require 1:1 off-street parking at all?). Luckily, our builder wasn’t driven to provide garages to meet the off-street parking–we have alley-accessed assigned surface parking and decent sized “yards”. I agree that they are vanilla, but for a first home inside Seattle I’d say we were very, very lucky. Our other choice might have been to buy in (gasp) Lynnwood. If there was an IKEA version (stylish and affordable) of a townhouse we would have bought it.

By: Charles

Charles — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 00:24:48 +0000

Oh yeah, these are all over Portland right now. Tear down one house, build this crap in it’s place. The asking prices are equally absurd. Like it was said before, the are as poorly crafted as they are designed. They’ll do it all over again in 30 years. But we’ll have to look at them in the meantime.