The Seattle Times on King County's "urban village" developments. The article quotes a representative of 1,000 Friends of Washington as saying, "Should [urbanite house buyers] be there at all, or should they be closer to Seattle?" The answer, of course, is we'd be happy to be closer to Seattle, if we could afford it.

I like the urban village idea, but I'd need to see schools, quality grocery stores, and public transit conduits before I'd buy. If there's nothing stopping these things, then I might consider living with suburbia-with-sidewalks until they come, but why don't these neighborhoods have them now? Is it just because the developers wanted to fill the residential properties as quickly as possible, to incentivise the commercial properties? And how is bus access? Would I still need a car to get to a library, or to work?