Introduction

Seattle, the financial, industrial and service centre of the Pacific North-West has an unsurpassed physical setting on Puget Sound, out of reach of the moist Pacific fogs and cold winds. Located on originally wooded peninsulas between the Sound and the 20-mile-long Lake Washington to the east, almost all parts of the city have views north-westwards across the Sound to the Olympics, or eastwards across the Lake to the Cascade Mountains. To the south the majestic Mount Rainer, with its huge snow-field even in summer, has a palpable, spiritual presence which cannot be blurred by the Tacoma smog. Seattle is regularly rated near the top of the list of the most liveable cities in the USA (Boyer and Savagean 1989).

With a population of just over half-a-million, Seattle is home to about one third of the population of the Puget Sound urban region. While population is expected to grow by about 14 per cent over the next 20 years, employment growth is expected to be over twice that figure in an urban area which has virtually no green field sites.

Like San Francisco, the city suffered a disastrous fire (in 1889), but the subsequent rebuilding helped to give it the architectural homogeneity it enjoys today (Collins et al. 1990, p. 146). Despite well advanced urban renewal plans a citizens' ballot in 1971 saved the city's historic Pike Place Market, without doubt its greatest historic attraction, and citizen activism was also responsible for designating the first historic district nearby in Pioneer Square.