By John Fox and Carolee Colter

You probably don't know this because no one down at City Hall thought to tell you, let alone ask for your opinion on the matter. But quietly two weeks ago, the full Seattle City Council unanimously voted to increase the city's 20-year residential growth targets by more than 30 percent.

On top of that, they committed the city to increasing its total share of King County's anticipated residential growth from 32 to about 37 percent during the period 2006 through 2031.

Without a doubt, this will set the stage for and provide the justification for still more upzones – at the expense of the livability and affordability of our city.

Every seven years, the state's Growth Management Act requires counties and cities throughout central Puget Sound to reassess actual employment, population and housing unit figures and then if necessary readjust their 20-year targets to accommodate their assigned share of the region's growth.

If an area has seen a lot of job growth but falls short in adding the housing needed to accommodate those workers, a jurisdiction could be required to upzone and add buildable capacity to meet those new projected targets.

The goal is to concentrate most of the existing growth within existing urban centers around the region and thus prevent sprawl, preserve open space, reduce auto miles traveled and reduce our carbon footprint.

We couldn't agree more with these goals. The problems lie in how these goals are implemented, how the growth is apportioned and the degree to which politics may intervene and as a practical matter actually subvert these critical goals.

Nowhere are we seeing these problems emerge more than here in Seattle with the setting of these new targets for our city.

Data from the Puget Sound Regional Council shows that many cities on the east side of the lake and other parts of the region have fallen far short of reaching their designated growth targets. That is not the case at all for Seattle.

Other areas hit with huge amounts of growth have been in the unincorporated areas and at the margins of the five county area, far from light rail and urban center locations and not at all consistent with the goal of preventing or containing sprawl.

In 2005, Seattle's 20-year target was set at 47,000 units or 2,350 units per year through 2024. This ensured Seattle would absorb about 30 percent of King County's residential growth target.

However, according to numbers we've just obtained from the city, despite the economic downturn, Seattle added more than 21,000 housing units from 2005 through 2009. Another 7,000 units are about to be brought on line.

And while we hear from city officials that the number of permit applications from developers has fallen due to the economy, that has not yet been reflected in these newly released, astonishingly high figures – three to four times the annual amounts of new housing that were normal during the last 20 years.

In just five years, we’ve reached more than 60 percent of our 2024 citywide residential growth target.

Ballard, Greenlake, Pike/Pine, Capitol Hill, the Downtown core, West Seattle and most of the city's designated urban villages have reached or greatly exceeded more than 100 percent of their targets.

(Note it's precisely in these high-growth areas and during high-growth periods citywide that redevelopment has caused the greatest loss of our existing low-income rental stock. For example, expensive condominium development in Seattle wiped out more than 2,000 low-income rentals during the period 2005-2007.)

Even at these high levels of growth, a city analysis shows that Seattle has enough capacity under current zoning to accommodate more than 110,000 more housing units. So why increase our growth targets?

Clearly, it's to provide the ammunition for special interests to justify still more redevelopment in our communities. Only by moving the goalposts can you argue that we haven’t crossed the goal line.

In spite of such unprecedented growth, there’s an enormous push for still more density, especially around existing and proposed rail stations and in areas zoned for multifamily development. Some of it is driven by pro-rail enthusiasts seeking to add densities they believe are needed to pump up Sound Transit ridership.

But, a lot of the push comes from the usual place – developers who benefit from such policies.

These and other forces are making a concerted effort to do away with the neighborhood plans drawn up over the last decade to manage growth responsibly in our communities.

While such neighborhood plans obviously haven’t deterred the growth we’ve seen, at least they’ve worked to protect a degree of livability in those communities while that growth occurs.

More of our tree canopy, open space, streams and our stock of affordable housing remain because of the countless hours of resident involvement that went into the development of those plans. The things that make this city livable aren’t derived by planners or elitists dictating to the neighborhoods. They come from the grassroots.

And the grassroots, thank heavens, are fighting back.

Several community organizations and activists recently challenged the city’s decision to go ahead with upzones in low-rise, multi-family areas without even proper environmental review.

And, groups in southeast Seattle and Beacon Hill recently challenged the city’s revocation of key elements in their neighborhood plans.

More of this kind of activism is desperately needed, however, or we’ll lose the “great growth debate” along with our city’s character.