[mhays]

Seattle goes to great lengths to protect single-family areas, including a lot of neighborhoods near Downtown. So our core will always be limited, with tendrils extending outward and denser urban villages dotted around.

There are plenty of negatives to this, but also a lot of positives. Since the comprehensive plan of 1994(?) focused things more specifically into the urban village districts, most of them have gone a long way toward achieving critical mass, particularly in the last eight years or so.