Rubén Casas
Rubén joined The Urbanist's board in 2022. He is a scholar and teacher of rhetoric and writing at the University of Washington Tacoma. He is also the faculty lead of the Urban Environmental Justice Initiative at Urban@UW. In his work and advocacy, Rubén examines how cities and the institutions that comprise them imagine, plan, and build in ways that promote and/or discourage community and a sense of place.
New legislation in Olympia could help us rethink and reclaim the street as a true public easement. If passed and its provisions delivered, we can look forward to streets that are not only more welcoming of public life, but a lot less deadly to all users.
In Tacoma, 62% of housing units are detached single family homes. This overabundance has come at a cost in terms of affordability and urban livability. But recent zoning changes could spur a greater variety of housing.
Greening neighborhoods, boosting Pierce Transit funding by 50%, and embracing housing growth are the top three goals Rubén Casas has laid out for Pierce County under Ryan Mello's progressive leadership.
Addressing our national housing crisis will require a drastic shift in how we think about housing in our society: it needs to become a basic human right — something we are all entitled to and therefore something our government works to deliver.
In 1873, Tacomans considered laying out their fledgling city according to a unique Frederick Law Olmsted plan. The city ultimately discarded most of the plan, walking away from a greener, more park-oriented Tacoma.
Melanie LaPlant Dressel Park opened on April 11 as a beautiful park far away from the rest of the city. An elevated, wide ribbon of concrete — the roaring I-705 freeway — separates the park from its users. Tacoma should remove this barrier.
Zoning has created urban forms that are expensive, exclusionary, and unsafe — Tacoma’s attempt to reform zoning stands to create more livable and complete neighborhoods by tackling the many secondary effects of zoning.
The stalling out of major downtown redevelopment offers a chance to finetune goals.
The Tacoma Town Center, a $300-million project that is to be developed...