Is Seattle the New Singapore?
That's what mossback Knute Berger argues in his latest Seattle Weekly column.
As near as I can decipher his rantings, Berger thinks that density and gentrification in Seattle are tantamount to becoming a police state in the model of Singapore. Also, houses in the city are unaffordable. And, oh yeah, the University Village is--gasp--basically just a tony shopping mall.
Really, it's hard to know where to begin.
According to Berger, increasing Seattle's density is functionally equivalent to gentrification, which in turn implies Singapore-style law and order:
Proponents argue that the [neo-Victorian] laws work, the streets are safe, and that such rules are necessary for dealing with high urban density. As Seattle floats atop a real-estate bubble that increasingly makes the city affordable mostly to the affluent, we can probably look forward to more laws intended to make the whole town more like Singapore (recycle or else!). That is part of the price of urban gentrification, the signs of which are everywhere.
It's precisely these sorts of hysterics that make it hard for me to take anti-density arguments seriously.
