The Urbanist was founded in Seattle in 2014 by a group of volunteers frustrated by a troubling gap in our civic infrastructure. The region was short on solutions-focused journalism that started from then-radical premises the region had a housing crisis and climate catastrophe on its hands and should be building far more housing and decreasing car dependency. The need to add lots of housing and get people out of their cars to curb climate pollution, in turn, required fundamentally rethinking much of the traditional orthodoxy about how to plan and manage cities.
Ten years later, our region’s political landscape has shifted dramatically towards the positions The Urbanist has held since the beginning. It is no longer radical to suggest that we are in a housing crisis — and that we must do more to bring more housing online, fast. It is no longer radical to suggest that massive investments in public transit are needed to meet our climate goals. Our readership has grown from hundreds to hundreds of thousands. One thing hasn’t changed: The Puget Sound still needs informed, solutions-focused coverage of our issues.
That means that we need your support. We’re still not able to pay all of our writers everything that we think they deserve. We’re still not able to expand our full-time team to bring on additional coverage areas. We are still reliant on (incredible) unpaid volunteers for our events program, which takes a lot of work and is how we know so many of you came to our organization. There’s more to do, and we need money to do it well.
If you’re able to give and find value in what we’re doing, I strongly encourage you to give. If you’re already giving and have room to grow, I encourage you to give more. Every dollar counts and helps us build power for the world we want to win.
Thank you for reading. Thank you for supporting us. And thank you for a great first 10 years of The Urbanist.
NOTE: The Urbanist has switched to a new donor platform that has more features for subscribers, like being able to adjust your credit card yourself. If you have any questions, please email finances@theurbanist.org. We’ll be planning multiple anniversary celebrations over the coming months. Keep an eye on our new Events calendar for details.
Rian Watt
Rian Watt serves part-time as a Senior Advisor to the The Urbanist's Board of Directors, responsible for a broad portfolio including board management, revenue, and organizational growth. Prior to serving as Senior Advisor, Rian served part-time as The Urbanist's Executive Director from 2023-24, as Chair of the Election Committee from 2019-2023, and on The Urbanist’s Board of Directors.