Seattle business interests battling Greens and neighborhood groups over a downtown development project. No, this isn’t a story about the tunnel replacement for the Alaskan Way Viaduct. In “
Seattle & the Roots of Urban Sustainability: Inventing Ecotopia,” historian Jeffrey Craig Sanders examines the creation of Emerald City fault lines that continue to dominate local political debates. Sanders, a Washington State University assistant professor, spends much of his time looking at the 1960s battle over Pike Place Market. Influenced by a wave of “urban renewal” projects across the country paid for by federal dollars, the downtown business community wanted to redevelop the iconic market.