Futurewise
Futurewise works throughout Washington State to encourage healthy, equitable, and opportunity-rich communities and to protect our most valuable farmlands, forests and water resources through wise land use policies and practices. Founded to help support implementation of the first-in-the-nation Growth Management Act, we focus on directing equitable growth into our urbanized areas and preventing the conversion of wildlife habitat, open space, farmland, and working forests to subdivisions and development.
It’s official: we’re halfway through the 2021 state legislative session. Wonkabout Washington is back with a legislative low-down, highlighting the Washington Can’t Wait campaign priorities, along with a few other key land use bills to keep your eyes on. Let’s get into it!
Washington Can’t Wait: Well on Our Way...
The 2020 legislative session promises to be like nothing we’ve seen before due to the impacts of Covid-19. Legislators will be meeting entirely virtually, providing both new opportunities for constituents to engage on legislation and limitations on the number of bills that will be up for consideration. On top...
How have you been breathing lately? Not well I’m guessing. The last few weeks have seen Seattle, along with cities up and down the West Coast, choked in a surreal, oppressive smoke. For the last six months, it seemed that the outdoors was the only safe haven from Covid-19....
On Tuesday, July 21st, Futurewise hosted Addie Candib, Pacific Northwest Regional Director of American Farmland Trust for a conversation about the threatened state of farmland in Washington. You can watch our entire conversation on the Futurewise Facebook page.
Before we dig into our conversation with Candib, let’s start with an...
As we enter month three of life in a pandemic in Washington, planners, and community organizations are grappling with how to adapt our engagement work when in-person conversations are no longer feasible. What kinds of community engagement is possible during a pandemic? Is it possible for community engagement to...
We’re all socially distancing here in Washington but last
week we convened a group of land use leaders in Olympia for a discussion about
how to successfully bridge generational divides in urbanist organizing.
In 2018, after over a year of community engagement, Olympia passed legislation permitting “missing middle” housing types across...
Futurewise Legislative Wrap-Up: The Story Behind House Bill 2427, the GMA Climate Goal Bill
At Futurewise, we believe that local government planning needs to more directly address climate change. We need planning that helps us reduce emissions, especially from transportation, and we need planning that helps us adapt to the...
Last month we gave readers of The Urbanist a preview of Futurewise’s 2020 legislative agenda. This month we’re going to do an overview of another critical area of our work: our legal agenda. Futurewise’s staff attorney, Tim Trohihomivich, Director of Planning and Law, has been with the organization for...