Old-timers mourn the quirky, affordable city that existed before the tech boom reshaped South Lake Union and drove up rents citywide. But others argue the jobs and investment made Seattle a world-class city — so which is it?
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Add your commenthot take: Seattle was never that quirky. it was quirky for white people with trust funds who wanted to cosplay as bohemians. the 'character' everyone mourns was already pretty exclusionary before bezos showed up.
My grandmother ran a Vietnamese restaurant on 12th Ave for 22 years. Her landlord tripled the rent in 2015. She closed. That restaurant was Seattle's character far more than any Amazonian's cold brew subscription or whatever. I don't want to hear about world-class anything.
World-class city? Sure. World-class traffic, world-class rents, world-class number of people sleeping on the sidewalk outside a world-class glass biosphere. We really nailed it.
I moved here in 1994 and watched this city transform in real time. Used to be you could rent a two-bedroom in Capitol Hill for $650 and everybody you met was either in a band or working on some weird art project or both. Now my old landlord's building is a luxury condo and the 'weird art project' is a tech bro's meditation app. I don't think Amazon ruined Seattle's character exactly — I think it just bought it, repackaged it, and sold it back to us as a lifestyle brand.
My parents bought their house in Wallingford in 1987 for $89,000. It's now worth 1.4 million. So yeah, 'ruined' is a complicated word when your retirement fund is tied up in that appreciation. I feel genuine grief for what the city used to feel like AND genuine relief that my parents aren't worried about money. Both things are true and I refuse to pretend otherwise.
The framing of this question bugs me. 'Grew up' implies the old Seattle was immature or provincial. That's the attitude that makes longtime residents feel erased. Quirky and affordable isn't a phase a city passes through on the way to becoming something better. For a lot of us it was just... home.
I actually work at Amazon and I'm so tired of being the villain at every dinner party north of the ship canal. I pay taxes here, I volunteer, I shop local, my kids go to Seattle public schools. At what point am I allowed to just be a neighbor?
Grew up in Rainier Beach. Amazon headquarters is in South Lake Union which is basically a different planet from where most actual Seattleites live. People acting like the whole city changed overnight need to zoom out. My neighborhood changed because of neglect and disinvestment, not because of too much Amazon money.
Actually Amazon's main campus has been in Seattle since the late 90s — they were founded HERE in 1994. The big South Lake Union expansion started around 2010-2012 but saying they 'moved' here in 2010 is just wrong. And Seattle's population was already over 560,000 before the major tech boom. Just wanted to flag that because this kind of revisionism drives me crazy in these conversations.
anyone who says this made seattle 'world class' has clearly never spent time in an actual world class city. we got a few glass towers and lost every decent dive bar. incredible trade
To everyone defending 'old Seattle' — can anyone on here honestly tell me they would turn down the job market that came with all this? Be real. The musicians and artists complaining about displacement mostly mean they wish OTHER people had been displaced instead of them. I say that as someone who plays in a band on weekends and works in cloud infrastructure Monday through Friday.
I just moved here from Des Moines eight months ago so take this for what it's worth, but from the outside Seattle still feels genuinely weird and creative compared to most American cities. Maybe you all are comparing it to a version of itself that only exists in memory now? Every city changes. At least this one still has the market and the water and good coffee on every corner.
Amazon moved its HQ to Seattle in 2010 which is when everything changed. Before that the city had like 400,000 people and was super manageable.
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