Public Housing Community Goes Green In Seattle

The Seattle development of High Point is becoming one of the most environmentally friendly neighborhoods in the United States, mainly for its protection of the area's sensitive drainage bed. Constructed partly by the Seattle Housing Authority, the development will include 1,600 houses with energy-conserving design and appliances, and the community's layout encourages street drainage to run into planted soil - a natural pollution filter. Formerly, street runoff was directed into sewers that drained into a nearby creek, which is an important salmon-spawning stream.

"HOPE VI's initial goal was a radical remake, with a mix of incomes and classes, of sites where large-scale public housing had degenerated into appalling concentrations of poverty and crime."

"High Point fulfills that goal. The new homes, mixed subsidized and market rate in each block, have many front porches for 'eyes on the street' and are subtly positioned to create friendly common spaces. In place of the cul-de-sacs and looped roadways of the isolated old public housing project with its limited entryways, the streets have been realigned to reconnect with the West Seattle street grid. With artful selection of building designs and colors, there's no feel of repetitiveness or mass construction."