Doug Trumm
Doug Trumm is The Urbanist's Executive Director. An Urbanist writer since 2015, he dreams of pedestrianizing streets, blanketing the city in bus lanes, and unleashing a mass timber building spree to end the affordable housing shortage and avert our coming climate catastrophe. He graduated from the Evans School of Public Policy and Governance at the University of Washington. He lives in East Fremont and loves to explore the city on his bike.
The Seattle Police Department (SPD) has a $15 million budget surplus resulting from a high rate of officer attrition over the past two years. With Mayor Jenny Durkan's backing, Councilmember Alex Pedersen (District 4) introduced an amendment to the mid-year budget update that would have allocated $3 million of...
Ahead of the 2023 election, the seven Seattle City Council districts are set to be redrawn using 2020 U.S. Census figures to rebalance each district's population level. The bureau's population estimate for Seattle came back surprisingly low -- 24,000 lower that the April 2020 estimate of 761,100 from the...
Nikkita Oliver is our featured guest at The Urbanist's monthly meetup on September 14th. Oliver (they/them) is a community organizer, cultural worker, artist, attorney, and executive director of youth diversion program Creative Justice. They are fresh off a first-place primary finish in their campaign for Seattle City Council Position...
Whistleblowers in the scandal around Mayor Jenny Durkan's missing texts and mishandling of public records requests have filed suit against the City of Seattle for retaliation, the Seattle Times reported late last night.
"The seven-page complaint — filed in King County Superior Court by Stacy Irwin and Kimberly Ferreiro —...
King County officials are scrambling to distribute $145 million in American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds to tenants and are far behind schedule. Those delays could spell disaster for thousands of tenants who will no longer enjoy protections from Governor Jay Inslee's eviction moratorium "bridge" emergency order by October...
Policymakers get ahead of themselves sometimes, especially when it comes to the complicated world of housing policy. How often do we stop and ask if our system can produce the results we seek -- things like stability, affordability, quality, equitable access, and narrowing the racial wealth gap? Will tinkering...
Yesterday, the Seattle Community Police Commission (CPC) announced that Bruce Harrell had declined their invitation to a mayoral candidate forum on police accountability and public safety, leading them to cancel the event. Both leading candidates are promising to increase police accountability and reduce incidents of racial bias and excessive...
King County Elections finalized Primary Election results on Tuesday and Seattle's data wizards quickly went to work conjuring maps showing precinct-level results. What emerged was a familiar pattern: left-wing candidates dominated in Seattle's urban villages, the densest neighborhoods where much of the city's growth has been funneled by zoning...