The Blue Ring
Overview
The Blue Ring Center City Open Space Plan is Seattle’s open space strategy for the Center City. Drafted as a 100-year vision (1MB PDF) and a ten-year implementation strategy (6MB PDF), the plan guides the development of a public open space system that is vital to the quality of life and economic prospects of a rapidly growing City. The Blue Ring serves as a mechanism for coordinating a large number of plans, private developments and capital improvement projects in the Center City and shapes a collection of current and future places into a coherent, healthy public realm. It represents years of grass-roots efforts by neighborhood advocates, City of Seattle staff, and elected officials. It also fosters an ongoing dialogue to shape a public realm that is comfortable, sustainable and teeming with activity.
The Blue Ring – The Next Decade
The Blue Ring – 100 Year Vision
Project Size
The Center City of Seattle shows the impact of steady and dense population growth. The Center City, a small basin defined at the edges by hills and bodies of water, covers only 3.2 square miles, yet today it has a population of approximately 40,000 people and 30,000 more are anticipated in less than 20 years. Counting projected visitors and commuters nearly 500,000 daily users will fill Center City streets in 2020.
Design Process, Community Involvement and Acceptance
The City of Seattle is characterized by its broad and inclusive public participation process. The strength of the plan lies in its source, a potent neighborhood planning movement. The Blue Ring consultant team was led by a multi-disciplinary group which included two architects, an urban planner and landscape architect over an 18 month period. The team’s sub-consultants included an artist, civil engineers, and economists.
The client, CityDesign, is Seattle’s urban design office within the Department of Design Construction and Land Use, which now oversees land use and area planning for the City. The client’s team included an interdepartmental review group with representation from the Seattle Departments of Transportation, Neighborhoods, Parks and Recreation, Seattle Design Commission, Seattle Public Utilities, Seattle Center, and the Seattle Planning Commission. Over ten neighborhood associations, the downtown developers and numerous public advisory boards provided input and have embraced the plan.
Urban Design Issues and Concepts
Make Connections
The Blue Ring’s 100-year vision, comes a century after the Olmsted Brother’s “Green Ring” which, in 1903, accurately anticipated the population growth and open space needs for the outer city. The Blue Ring strategy addresses and anticipates the open space needs of an evolving downtown that lacks usable open space and lags behind other major cities in proportional open space. The Blue Ring links existing, planned and proposed public and private open spaces and destinations with pedestrian-friendly streets. This strategy supports the linking of urban open spaces with an emphasis on connecting people with the water’s edge, highlighting the city’s watersheds, making art of rain and capturing views of Puget Sound.
Use Existing Assets
Constraints such as high land values and existing building coverage led to analysis of current assets to establish the building blocks for a Center City open space system. Beyond the traditional elements of existing and proposed public parks and private plazas, the City of Seattle is flanked by two great open spaces in the form of water – Elliot Bay and Lake Union. An additional asset is public ownership of street rights-of-way, which comprise approximately 38% of the total land area in Center City. In a phase of the project termed “lost spaces, found places” the team walked and biked to discover underutilized parcels of land, many of which occur under bridges or at diagonal intersections.
New Paradigms for Open Space
The plan is fiscally practical and identifies new paradigms for open space – streets as open space, light and air as open space, water as open space, and the fourth dimension of open space: time. The Blue Ring connects to the suburban Green Ring by reorganizing street rights-of-way to support open space. By employing public resources efficiently, the public realm can be used for different purposes at different times of the day, not only for festivals and parades, but also for the cycle of daily life for the increasing number of residents. A street that carries minimal traffic in the evening could be closed each day for basketball, hopscotch, tricycle riding and strolling.
Environmental Impact and Concerns
An enhanced open space system is integral to the concept of a sustainable city. A well-designed system of gathering places, streets and shorelines will provide a pedestrian-oriented environment, will reduce emissions and use of fossil fuels and will increase greenery and permeable surfaces. The plan includes sustainable principles and provides a conceptual framework and art study for Westlake Avenue, a catalyst project for incorporating these strategies into “the world’s greenest street”. Ultimately, Center City can make a positive contribution to the regional ecosystem rather exist as a distinct “constructed” part of our landscape.
Implementation
The Blue Ring strategy identified issues that are currently being addressed through specific City projects and policy changes, such as the need for revising the City’s street design manual, private concerns over public management of open spaces and the need to identify quality pedestrian connections as a legitimate mobility consideration for a downtown that deserves capital investment.
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