If you browse Seattle Twitter enough, you’ll see that the city’s transportation system is awash with controversy, ranging from outrage over a record number of pedestrian and cyclist fatalities to a reputation for notoriously bad drivers to the all-too-frequent escalator breakdowns at light rail stations.
However, one bright spot in all of that is the redesign of Northeast 43rd Street between U District Station and 15th Avenue Northeast, with online urbanists readily heaping praise on the project.
“43rd between the Ave and Brooklyn is so good, and I know it’s sad that I make a big deal out of one tiny stretch of road but it rocks so hard to only have the occasional bus rolling by while I eat at a shaded picnic table 50 feet from the station I’ll use to get home,” wrote a Twitter user named Jesse on June 5.
“[T]he best street in the city,” wrote Ryan DiRaimo in response, an architect and creator of the popular urbanist account “push the needle.”
Before the street’s makeover, it was an ordinary cracked concrete road with relatively narrow sidewalks. The street had also been closed to through traffic for years due to light rail station construction. Over a three-year period between 2018 and 2021, the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) conducted outreach, planning, surveyance and construction at the site. This included removing curbs, widening sidewalks, adding a bike lane and barring most non-transit vehicular traffic from the street.
The wider sidewalks allowed the U District Partnership (UDP), a nonprofit organization that advocates for the interests of small businesses, residents and visitors in the neighborhood, to set up the cyan picnic tables and red sun shades that line the street. The ample outdoor gathering spaces are part of SDOT’s new street cafe permitting program.
“They’re almost always full on sunny days especially,” said Katy Ricchiuto, the urban vitality manager at UDP. “But even on days that aren’t super beautiful, they’re really highly utilized. I think the widened sidewalks are really the only reason why that was possible to get through, and then also to have public space, and that’s something I think is really important that came out of that project.”
For Peter Trinh, who was SDOT’s design lead on the Northeast 43rd Street project, one of the goals of the redevelopment was to reclaim more space for pedestrians and other users.
“The paradigm is kind of about shifting or reallocating space from vehicles back to pedestrians,” he said. “Although the space is still utilized by transit and some vehicles, we kind of were hoping that it would be a space that could easily be activated.”
Trinh added that the project has become something of a model, with urban planners from across the country reaching out to SDOT to learn about how it implemented this pro-pedestrian paradigm and curbless streets.
Christa Dumpys, the outreach lead of the project, said that the key to success was SDOT’s extensive community engagement and partnership with groups like UDP.
“Especially right there on 43rd, [the] majority [of] our businesses are owned by people of color,” Dumpys said. “That engagement piece was so important to us to make sure that we had that open line of communication. Construction is impactful, you can’t get around that. But just making sure that there were no surprises. When issues did come up, we addressed them immediately.”
Amid the isolation of neoliberalism and a suburb-centric car culture, more people have started discussing the concept of having a “third place” where people are able to gather or relax away from home or work. Classic examples include coffee shops or bars, but increasing attention has also been focused on how to better design cityscapes to facilitate social interaction. Northeast 43rd Street presents a compelling example of a successful third place. People across class divides can meet, sit, eat, rest and socialize along the street, free from hostile architecture or the requirement to purchase something.
“We want people to feel like they can spend time there in a safe and comfortable way and enjoy a day, and hopefully get food from the neighborhood and enjoy,” Ricchiuto said. “Our intention was to make it feel like an inclusive and public space.”
Guy Oron is the staff reporter for Real Change. He handles coverage of our weekly news stories. Find them on Twitter, @GuyOron.
Read more of the June 21-27, 2023 issue.