A reality check for Puget Sound

Every day, 60,000 people travel to and from the University of Washington. For many, a time-consuming trip is made worse by rising fuel costs and an outmoded transportation system.

What if we could change this? What if students, faculty and staff lived in communities with transportation hubs that provided efficient connections to not only our campuses but other job centers as well? What if everyone in our region could live like that? Can we create such communities? We must try.

Since 1980, King, Kitsap, Pierce and Snohomish counties have grown by 1.2 million people. As housing costs climbed, people moved farther from job centers to new communities where the car is king.

That growth isn't going away. In fact, it's accelerating. By 2040, our region will grow by 1.7 million people and add 1.2 million new jobs, according to projections by the Puget Sound Regional Council (PSRC).

How much more sprawl will occur to accommodate 1.7 million new people? How many miles of new roads will we need to build? These kinds of questions are the wrong ones to ask. They rely on assumptions from the 1950s, and have us planning for the 20th century, not the 21st.

To help reframe the issue, the University of Washington College of Architecture and Urban Planning joined seven organizations to hold the landmark April 30 Reality Check event at the University of Washington, catapulting these issues to the forefront of regional leaders' minds. The diverse group of participants, from conservationists to developers, worked in 30 groups to map a future with 1.7 million more people, and surprising agreement emerged.

Business leaders and community activists alike understood that the business-as-usual approach to growth will undercut what we value, and we must take a new tack that will allow the region to prosper and maintain our quality of life. Resoundingly, Reality Check participants called for greater leadership and action to address critical regional issues.

Leading the charge, Reality Check's organizers — Urban Land Institute Seattle, PSRC, UW College of Architecture and Urban Planning, Enterprise Community Partners, Cascade Land Conservancy, Master Builders Association of King and Snohomish Counties, Futurewise, and the National Association of Industrial and Office Properties — formed the Quality Growth Alliance: A Framework for Sound Action.

The alliance is pioneering a new path focused on the future, leveraging each partner's resources and expertise to establish common ground, building on the Reality Check consensus that we must do a better job in our urban centers.

Participants brought widely divergent views on growth to Reality Check, or so they thought. In the end, they learned that they actually agree more often than not.

Every one of the 30 groups, for instance, felt the key to accommodating growth is the creation of walkable, compact communities in urban centers. The vast majority said that we should invest more in multimodal transportation infrastructure and strive to protect the natural environment.

No matter what the challenge — congested roadways, a lack of affordable housing or shrinking open spaces — land use is the common thread.

With research assistance from the UW on the climate-change impacts of land-use decisions and other growth-related issues, the alliance will provide land-use expertise to those places where most growth is expected to occur. We'll research local and national best practices, providing community and state leaders with the most current research to inform good land-use decisions. The alliance will highlight success stories by hosting an awards program.

One of the most exciting endeavors is the alliance's Decision Commons. In collaboration with Microsoft, the city of Seattle and the Seattle Chamber of Commerce, the alliance is creating a virtual decision-making tool. Planners and municipal leaders will be able to create and see three-dimensional views of the street-level experience of more people, jobs and investments in our urban centers.

On Sept. 23, the alliance will release the results of Reality Check and unveil our action agenda. We're moving forward knowing that the influx of 1.7 million new residents and 1.2 million new jobs is a pivotal opportunity to strengthen our economy and preserve the Northwest way of life that continues to draw people here.

With a strong foundation of broad commitment to a shared vision, the Quality Growth Alliance is poised to act on a 21st-century agenda.

Mark Emmert is the president of the University of Washington.