Monday, April 02, 2007

Seattle Cites Tacoma's Creative Revival

James Vesely, Editorial Page Editor for The Seattle Times, wrote a glowing piece on the Creative Cities initiative in his column in yesterday's newspaper.

Vesely gets it right, citing the effort as "an initiative to merge imagination and academia into a creative combination" by building on four key pricipals articulated by cultural guru Richard Florida, who has been part of the initiative from the start.

While the Seattle (dba "regional") press has been at times disdainful of all things Tacoman, its been consiostently supportive of the Creative Cities inititative. When will Tacoma's local press do the same?

1 comment:

  1. Good article which states:

    OK, I buy that, but neighborhoods are creatures of a greater city, and while Tacoma's downtown looks pretty good compared with 10 years ago, it must reach for the sidewalk vitality...

    Exactly. And Tacoma is not going to get a walkable downtown like Portland or Seattle if we retain a city planning code that still requires surface level parking lots and parking garages with each building throughout downtown.

    If we want a more successful and attractive downtown, which has "sidewalk vitality" we need to enact urban planning laws that allow us to do so by removing Tacoma's antiquated off-street parking requirements

    Longing for a downtown like Portland yet retaining our antiquated sprawl mandated building code is counter productive.

    ReplyDelete