By Peter Steinbrueck from Crosscut Seattle

Our region is struggling to meet housing needs in an environmentally responsible way while maintaining affordability and quality of life. With passage of the statewide Growth Management Act and establishment of urban growth boundaries, we have been searching for successful ways to contain growth within existing urban areas. Western Washington is expected to grow by 1.7 million people and 1.2 million jobs by the year 2040. Where and how will all those newcomers live? Nationally among cities, Seattle — the most populous city in our region — ranks low in population density and is zoned predominately single-family (more than seventy percent of its land area). As green as we consider ourselves, we are still an auto-centric culture that enjoys a relatively low-density, suburban lifestyle.

At a workshop sponsored by the Urban Land Institute, 256 regional civic and political leaders, architects, planners, and developers gathered to consider growth scenarios for the four-county areas of King, Pierce, Kitsap, and Snohomish. Their assignment: Place mounds of Lego blocks, representing anticipated jobs and population growth through 2040, over a map of Western Washington. It was a painful yet revealing exercise as participants, struggling where to place Legos, made tough choices about which areas should accept more growth. Towers of Legos toppled over the  urban cores and established neighborhoods of Seattle, Bellevue, Redmond, Bremerton, and Everett, but no one proposed starting new cities, nor dared to blanket rural and unincorporated areas with new development. It became very clear: to accommodate new growth, we face tough choices.