Michael Burnham, E&E reporter

SEATTLE -- Tree-toppling gales, rushing flood waters and blinding blizzards tested the limits of this famously soggy city this winter, but at least one patch of Gore-Tex Nation took the storms in stride.

High Point -- an experimental "green" neighborhood in West Seattle -- sopped up record precipitation through permeable streets and sidewalks and roadside ditches planted with hearty grasses, trees and shrubs. Runoff drained to an artificial pond that filtered pollution before letting water trickle to a salmon-bearing stream.

Tom Phillips, a senior project manager with Seattle Housing Authority, is wild about High Point's back-to-nature drainage system. "See that? That's about as high as the water will get," he exclaims. The football field-sized pond was about 10 feet deep with as much room to spare.

And while the sublime stormwater-treatment system won't thrill everybody, it's what makes High Point quintessentially Seattle and perhaps points toward the future of all American neighborhoods.

More than 700 one-story ramblers were built in Seattle's High Point neighborhood for laborers at booming shipyards and aircraft plants in 1942. The city's housing authority is redeveloping the area as an experimental "green" neighborhood. Photo by Michael Burnham.

The U.S. Green Building Council, the increasingly influential body that fomented a revolution in the design of "green" office towers, plans to tackle suburbia next by integrating environmental sustainability principles into houses, streets and sewers. Joining them are "new urbanists" who aim to transform abandoned factories and moribund strip malls into bustling neighborhoods where people put more mileage on sneakers than SUVs.

But the utopians face a tough task. While surveys show a growing number of homebuyers would pay a premium for a greener dwelling, most people put a house's looks, location and price ahead of saving the planet when it comes time to sign the mortgage papers. So as developers continue to plant rows of McMansions on farmland, sustainability advocates are trying to change decades-old attitudes about energy-hogging homes and commutes.

"In terms of the whole package -- green design, stormwater management, mixed-income housing, new urbanism -- High Point is the real test case," Phillips says. "Nobody's looking at neighborhoods in a holistic way yet. It's up to the developer how far they go."

Reviving a neighborhood

From the top of West Seattle -- the city's highest point -- the craggy Olympic Range fans out to the west, Mount Rainier to the south, Elliot Bay to the north and to downtown to the northeast. The million-dollar view is shared by working-class immigrants, wealthy executives and earners in between.

Cresting the hill is 35th Avenue, which for years separated West Seattle haves from High Point have-nots. The dividing line dates to 1942, when the Department of Defense built more than 700 one-story ramblers to house laborers for booming shipyards and aircraft plants. High Point's homes resembled barracks -- homely structures devoid of porches and charm.

The neighborhood declined after the Housing Authority designated High Point as low-income housing in 1953.

Stormwater drains to High Point's artificial pond, which filters pollution before the water trickles to a salmon-bearing stream. Photo by Michael Burnham

Crime grew more common by the 1990s, and High Point residents were isolated among a looping network of newer, suburban-style streets. Mold grew on the wood-paneled homes and crumbling sewer pipes leaked. And when it rained, runoff swept oil, pesticides and grime into salmon-bearing, Longfellow Creek.

A few years ago, the city began razing the old High Point and starting over. The 34-acre master plan -- drawn up by the Seattle Housing Authority and hometown architecture firm Mithun -- features a commercial nook for a coffee shop, dry cleaners and restaurants, as well as a doctor's office, library and central park.

The plan calls for 1,600 compact houses, townhouses and apartments. More than 500 of the units are market-rate homes; the rest are for residents who earn between 10 and 60 percent of the county's median income, $74,300.

High Point -- now half-finished -- seems old-fashioned. Its planners want to take the neighborhood back to an era when people knew their neighbors, and worked and shopped a walk or bus ride from their homes.

'American Dream,' circa 1950

High Point's planners are trying to change a U.S. development pattern more than 60 years in the making.

Today's sprawling suburbs of large houses and large lots were made possible by federal highway and housing laws from the days of FDR and Eisenhower. Those laws enabled GIs returning from World War II to sign low-interest, long-term mortgages on houses in leafy suburbs and built interstate highways to take them to jobs in the city.

The epitome of the suburban boom was Levittown, Pa., which in the 1950s became the nation's largest planned community constructed by a single builder. The town's 17,000 houses spread over 5,500 acres of lower Bucks County. The new American dream -- a "Levittowner" ranch home with carport and lawn -- could be had for $11,000.

It was a long way from the old walk-up in the city.

"With low-interest loans, you could buy more house than you could before," notes John Norquist, a former Milwaukee mayor who has taught urban policy at the University of Chicago and other schools. "And because of the mass-production of mortgages, builders could mass-produce houses."

Some of the forces that enabled the new American dream, however, also eroded traditional city life, he adds.

While new highways made it possible for people to live far from work, zoning laws first popularized in the 1920s made certain few would walk to their jobs. Zoning segregated residential from commercial and office development throughout most of the country by the 1950s, Norquist explains.

While Miami, Denver and other cities are reforming zoning laws to promote mixed-use development, most newer municipalities still have separate-use zoning embedded in their DNA, he says.

"The Main Street you see in old pictures of cities -- you can't build that today because it's illegal," Norquist says. "You need special-use permits in most cities."

>> Go to part two of the story.