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.
Polls closed last night in the recall election of socialist Seattle City Councilmember Kshama Sawant. Initial counts show Sawant trailing by almost 2,000 votes in the first ballot drop. King County Elections initially estimated 6,665 ballots remain to be counted, which makes Sawant's six-point deficit steep, but not necessarily...
We are excited to be joined by Dongho Chang for our monthly meetup on December 14th. Our transportation reporter Ryan Packer will be moderating the conversation with Chang, who is a widely respected voice on transportation and traffic safety issues. Chang spent nine years as City Traffic Engineer at...
Some motorists think they should be above the law
Automatic traffic cameras are being installed in eight Seattle locations and three state legislators are "crying foul" and fretting over expected impacts to their constituents. Senator Kevin Van De Wege (D-Sequim) posted a press release on his webpage stating the trio...
Single family zones overwhelmingly swung for Mayor-Elect Bruce Harrell, Councilmember-Elect Sara Nelson, and Seattle City Attorney-Elect Ann Davison, as new precinct-level final results map verify.
Harrell's 17-point victory over Council President Lorena González was the most resounding, while Davison (the first Republican elected in Seattle in decades) won by just...
The Seattle City Council approved the City's 2022 budget on Monday after a few dramatic last-minute amendment showdowns. Advocacy groups quickly set to work framing their victories and pointing to losses to be rectified in future budgets.
For example, Seattle Neighborhood Greenways pointed to the tripling of the Vision Zero...
The Seattle Police Department (SPD) has a special privilege granted to no other department in the City. The City allocates funding to SPD for positions the agency admits it cannot fill next year. Using rosy projections for hiring and separations, Mayor Jenny Durkan hopes to boost the agency to...
Crosscut's opinion section is dead, the publication's new executive editor M. David Lee III announced last week. The move will deprive Seattle of another major venue for thoughtful opinion pieces. The reasoning? Apparently, the board of Cascade Media (which runs Crosscut and KCTS public television) thought the opinion section...
Councilmember Herbold has proposed shelving the Center City Connector streetcar project once again and diverting $2.4 million in funding to Citywide hiring incentives.
The Seattle City Council released its consent package of amendments yesterday with 205 amendments included in four voting groups and will hold a final public hearing today...