5 Principles for Renewing Seattle's Waterfront

The heart of every great region is a vibrant urban core that embodies the spirit of the place and serves as the social, economic and spiritual heart of the community. In Seattle, the missing piece in our urban core is a spectacular urban waterfront. The best examples of urban waterfronts — Chicago; Barcelona, Spain; Sydney, Australia; Vancouver, British Columbia — capture the aspirations and imagination of their regions by creating energetic, mixed-use districts that extend the experience of their urban cores to the waterfront. Such waterfront redevelopments can be functional, beautiful and sustainable, acting as catalysts for development with a positive social, environmental and economic impact.

5 Principles for Renewing Seattle's Waterfront

So the question before us is, what should we expect from our waterfront? It’s important to first realize that the seemingly endless controversy surrounding the Alaskan Way Viaduct and Seattle’s central waterfront is more than just a transportation problem. It’s a question of what we want our city to be and how we choose to present ourselves to the world. We must consider what it means to have a connection to the waterfront and how that connection can benefit Seattle environmentally, economically and socially. We need to ask ourselves: What’s good for the ecology and socioeconomics of the region? How can Seattle create a waterfront befitting the highest ambitions of the city? What inspires us?

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