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.
Amazon is planning a distribution center at a coveted site in Mount Baker, Brian Miller of the Daily Journal of Commerce reported Tuesday. Despite zoning allowing 145-foot towers and top notch transit that includes nearby access to Mount Baker Station, plans envision a low-slung warehouse and a colossal parking...
Former Seattle City Councilmember Tim Burgess is back with a charter amendment setting a host of new mandates around homelessness, none of them funded by the measure. Asked how he responds to criticism this is an unfunded mandate, Burgess has pointed to a payroll tax he vigorously opposed as...
President Joe Biden released his much anticipated $2.25 trillion dollar jobs and infrastructure plan today. Republican congressional leaders were quick to brand it as an overly large grab bag of progressive priorities, saying that like it was a bad thing. The breath of investments is a strength, but it...
In a unanimous vote Monday, the Seattle City Council guaranteed the right to counsel to tenants facing eviction proceedings. Sponsored by Councilmembers Kshama Sawant, Tammy Morales, and Andrew Lewis, the legislation sought to get ahead of a wave of evictions feared when the eviction moratorium, put in place to...
Nikkita Oliver entered the race for Seattle City Council with instant name recognition, having finished a close third four years ago in a run for mayor. Oliver's profile rose even farther last year during the months of protests against police brutality.
Perhaps the most iconic moment of the summer was...
A group of tenant advocates and progressive organizations are banding together to push for new renter protections in a “Stay Housed, Stay Healthy” campaign, starting with a kickoff event from 6:00pm to 7:30pm on Monday, March 29th.
The event is spearheaded by the Seattle Transit Riders Union (TRU) and co-sponsored...
Urbanists have been hoping that arrival of light rail to North Seattle would transform single-family sprawl oriented around I-5 and a 160-acre publicly-owned golf course to a dense neighborhood oriented around transit and accessible public green spaces.
On March 18th, the Seattle Office of Planning and Community Development (OPCD) released...
In 2018, Mayor Jenny Durkan made a splash by embracing the idea of enacting downtown cordon tolling to reduce car congestion, pledging to realize the scheme in her first term. On Tuesday, reporting from KUOW confirmed her administration was no longer pursuing that plan. In its place, they are...