Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Like Chicago at the turn of the last century, Seattle in the 1970s became a labo-
ratory where diverse actors linked social and environmental change, and where
they tested ideas of sustainability on a local scale and in immediate spatial terms.
Between 1960 and 1990, Seattleites set about to radically remake the idea and
physical form of the city and in the process, they invented a persuasive version
of postindustrial Ecotopia, and a model of postmodern urbanism. As a result,
as early as the 1980s, Seattle, the largest city in the Northwest, was unique-
ly poised as the leader of the sustainability movement and a symbol of urban
revival.
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Seattle's political activities of the 1970s centered around issues of water
pollution, freeway expansion, unsightly billboards, and the general em-
powerment of local residents to make decisions about how they wanted
to live and grow as residents of the city. There was an emerging recogni-
tion among urban professionals, counterculturalists, and environmental-
ists that the contemporary city form was more malleable than previously
thought.
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In other words, there were alternatives to the path of economic
and societal progress introduced by Thomson and other Progressive re-
formers in the late nineteenth century.
Local environmental activities were inspired by self-suffi ciency, do-it-
yourself activism, sustainable agriculture, and organic gardening through
groups like Seattle Tilth and the Puget Consumer's Cooperative, as well as
the work of local writers and artists.
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Of particular note was University
of Washington architecture professor Victor Steinbrueck, who gained local
notoriety for galvanizing Seattleites to preserve historic parts of the city
in the early 1970s, including the now-cherished downtown destinations
of Pioneer Square and Pike Place Market. Steinbrueck was also infl uen-
tial in reinterpreting the Seattle landscape as a place of both humans and
nonhumans. He published two popular topics in 1962 and 1973 with
sketches of Seattle's cityscapes that included buildings, hills, streets, veg-
etation, and water, forwarding a vision of a green city where people and
nature existed in harmony (see fi gure 6.1).
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Similarly, writer Janice Kren-
mayr published a column in the
Seattle Times
Sunday Magazine called
“Foot-loose in Seattle” that focused on experiencing the city through
urban hikes. She built upon Steinbrueck's vision of metropolitan nature
to include activities that would allow urban residents to experience their
hybrid surroundings.
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Their work, along with a number of other writers
and artists, reframed Seattle not as a city
surrounded by
nature but as a
city
of
nature, and envisioned a new relationship between humans and
nature that would be less focused on control and more on partnership and
stewardship.
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