Seattle's sense of itself could get a healthy challenge next week when Portland author Matthew Stadler talks about how suburbs increasingly have more diversity and vitality than cities.
It's an obvious point to anyone who's visited Bellevue or Burnaby, which are more diverse and affordable than much of their nearby cities. We can quibble with some of the details of his argument, but it's clear that the major cities are now just part of a metropolis rather than its only center. That's a reason why transportation and development issues need to be region-wide rather than just within city boundaries.
Here's how The Stranger describes Stadler's idea:
He wants to reorient the way we read the city, the way we experience it, the way we code it. He also wants a City Beautiful movement—not a movement where beautiful buildings are forced on the public for the improvement of our ugly souls, but, in a Kantian reversal, a movement where the public projects beauty onto buildings.