Seattle: Home to 1 million?

Over several decades, new condo and apartment buildings pop up at twice today's already frenzied pace. City dwellers turn increasingly to mass transit, bicycles and sidewalks.

Seattle's waterways and air quality suffer from the crowding, but the region is spared broad pollution and sprawling suburban development.

Welcome to Mayor Greg Nickels' vision for Seattle.

As regional officials study how best to accommodate an estimated 1.6 million people likely to move to the Puget Sound area by 2040, Nickels recently endorsed a plan for aggressively directing much of that growth into Seattle.

"The mayor felt it was very important to make a strong statement about focusing growth," said Deputy Mayor Tim Ceis. "We don't want to direct them to new subdivisions next to the urban growth boundary. We want to bring them into the cities."

But some say Nickels' stance is only rhetoric. Worse, they say, policies pushing such intense densification could backfire.

"You have to allow growth out in the outer suburban areas (such as) Maple Valley and Auburn and Redmond in order to take some heat off the (city's) housing prices and space," said Richard Morrill, a University of Washington geography professor emeritus. "It's a matter of some delicate balancing. The mayor's proposal is sort of one extreme point of view.

"What actually happens will be something less Draconian."

Nickels made his remarks in a letter responding to an initiative under way by the Puget Sound Regional Council, an association of governments. The group wants to establish a framework for managing growth, including 1.1 million new jobs.

Governments try to direct growth through land use regulations and mass transit and other service upgrades.

The council is updating its 1995 plan, which supported splitting growth between the densest urban areas and the least-crowded rural areas.

Instead, Nickels supports an alternative that would send 40 percent of new residents to Seattle, Bellevue, Bremerton, Everett and Tacoma. Large suburbs would get about as much.

"Although housing may be more affordable if it is dispersed in more rural and suburban areas, the cost of mandatory car ownership, gas prices and other commuting costs consumes much of those cost savings," Diane Sugimura, director of the city's planning department, wrote on Nickels' behalf.

But Morrill said the 350,000-person influx to Seattle that Nickels endorsed is nonsense. It would more than double the current rate of 4,000 new Seattleites each year. "It's so completely impossible that it's laughable," he said. Seattle's current population is estimated at 575,000.

Morrill added that Nickels' rhetoric is not necessarily harmless. If the region did adopt policies aimed at cramming so many people into the cities, it could prove counterproductive.

Crowded conditions could, in fact, drive more families to outer-ring towns such as Gold Bar, Enumclaw, Monroe and Mount Vernon, he said. "It's already happening in California, Boston and Washington, D.C."

Aiming for density has merits, Morrill said. You preserve open, rural areas. More people use mass transit. "It's forcing people out of their cars by creating high density," Morrill said.

But many people living in the city don't want twice as many residents jammed into their community, he said. And such density drives up land costs.

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Just to get to the additional 200,000 Seattleites current regional policies predict, families would increasingly need to share homes and take in boarders to accommodate them, Morrill said.

Yet, before you make room for thousands of new neighbors, consider a word of caution from UW sociology professor Charles Hirschman.

Population projections such as these for 34 years from now "have enormous errors around them," Hirschman said. "It's better than guesswork. But not a whole lot."

Nor should too much stock be put in "the government's ability to direct where people live," he said.

Yet, Hirschman said, politicians must attempt to plan.

As such, the regional council hopes to refine its growth management plans from four alternative proposals by late this year or early next year, said Norman Abbot, the group's growth director. Among more than 80 comment letters on them, the vast majority called for a "hybrid" between one plan to drive newcomers to the biggest cities, and another to push them toward the largest suburbs, he said.

And here's a snapshot of the models envisioned by the regional council:

Status quo: Growth is divided mostly between large cities and undeveloped rural areas.

Most new jobs go to the largest cities, as well as apartments, condominiums and townhouses. About 200,000 more people move to Seattle. The outlying areas continue to see construction of new single-family houses.

This will likely include sprawling suburban development. That means relatively long distances between housing and job centers, putting exceptional demand on highways and creating heavier air pollution. Yet, this alternative promises more jobs in rural areas while retaining some commitment to focusing growth in densest areas.

Big-cities focus: Nickels' favored model, this would attempt to drive growth to Seattle, Bellevue, Tacoma, Bremerton and Everett.

About 450,000 more people would live and work near transit centers, and 95,000 fewer people would move into new houses on previously undeveloped rural lands.

The largest suburbs also would pick up more growth.

Cities would see many new jobs and construction of multifamily housing developments. They would need upgrades to mass transit and infrastructural facilities.

This approach bodes for more crowding and traffic congestion in dense areas. Some neighborhoods would change in character. Urban waterways would degrade and locals could expect increased air and noise pollution.

Yet, this approach promises benefits to the broader Puget Sound area. Planners predict it would mean the less car use and more reliance on mass transit, bicycles and walking. That would mean less regionwide traffic congestion and pollution. It also holds the best potential for reducing sprawling development.

Big suburbs: This approach attempts to drive population and job growth to the largest suburbs.

Suburbs would likely see a good deal of construction of multifamily housing. Some would become employment hubs, especially in Kitsap and Snohomish counties. Town centers and shopping districts would probably be redeveloped. People would likely spend the least amount of time in their cars under this approach.

The big cities would probably see less growth than is now expected, as would unincorporated areas.

Compared with pushing growth into rural areas, this model offers better likelihood of expanded use of mass transit, and lower level of road congestion and pollution.

It would not put as heavy a toll on already dense urban cores as the big city alternative, but it also wouldn't put as many people near transit.

Small-town growth: This model disperses the burden, and the new jobs, among smaller suburbs and unincorporated urban areas.

Towns and unincorporated outskirts would likely see multifamily housing development. Rural areas would likely see increased single-family housing construction.

Because it would likely rely heavily on car use, planners say it offers the highest risk of traffic congestion and air pollution.

P-I reporter Angela Galloway can be reached at 206-448-8333 or angelagalloway@seattlepi.com.

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