Growth can’t be stopped, so you better be prepared

What exactly is a “bedroom community?”

Usually, the phrase refers to a city or area that springs up next to a larger, more metropolitan city. The residents work in the city, then go home to their “bedrooms,” only to repeat the cycle the next day.

Under those criteria, a quick morning survey of virtually any southbound highway would indicate that Shoreline and Lake Forest Park are bedroom communities, along with all of Snohomish County.

But traffic doesn’t tell the whole story.

Where people go, services and jobs follow. Sure, Mountlake Terrace was designed by a developer in the 1950s as a place for returning military veterans to find affordable housing, but those vets and their families wanted more. Soon came a downtown core, then I-5, then an industrial area and more retail areas. Now, even city documents call it “a metropolitan suburb.”

If somewhat different in details, the stories are similar for Mill Creek, Lynnwood, Lake Forest Park and Shoreline: starting out as one thing and maturing into another.

A councilman in Edmonds recently called his city a bedroom community. Edmonds may be the one local suburban exception, starting out as a industrial mill town, then adding bedrooms for the workers and their families. Now, along with beds, the city includes a major transportation hub, a port district, a key north-south transportation corridor, multiple business centers and a regional hospital.

The regional metamorphosis is continuing.

In 2007, there were nearly as many jobs created in Snohomish County as in King County. Together, the 45,900 jobs in both counties make this area’s economy the hottest in the state and the state the hottest in the nation.

Clearly, there’s more going on here than sleeping.

Growth — people — are coming here. That growth can be managed, directed, accommodated, encouraged, discouraged, but it can’t be stopped. People are coming, looking for better jobs, for a better life. The people already here had better be prepared.