Forward Thrust Part 4: Carrying Forward Thrust’s Ambition Into 2018 and Beyond
The 1968 and 1970 Forward Thrust campaign was a slate of 13 ballot initiatives, put before voters in Seattle and King County to correct...
Mayor Durkan Boosts Funding for Police and Transit in Proposed Budget
Mayor Jenny Durkan delivered her first budget address today at Fire Station 10. While the mayor had broadcast her desire to trim department budgets...
It’s Easy to Gouge Your Tenants in Seattle, Mercer Mega Block RFP Promises
While housing advocates have been calling for social housing on the City-owned Mercer Mega Block site and other publicly-held land, the Durkan administration is...
Wonkabout Washington: Road Map for Washington’s Future
Quick quiz: Can you name all fourteen goals of Washington state’s Growth Management Act? Would you guess that addressing climate change is not one...
SDCI Delivers Vacant Building Monitoring Report
A year after the city adopted new vacant building maintenance and demolition laws, the city council received a monitoring report and briefing on the...
Why Small Efficiency Homes Have a Big Price Tag
A proposed development in the Central Area demonstrates why Seattle's micro-housing of the present does not offer the affordability of the past.
At 159 12th...
Urban Village Boundary Contractions? No Thanks.
In my Sightline piece from May, I described how homeowners in Wallingford have worked for decades to block housing via downzones, increasing development burdens, and...
Bring on the Clusterwohnungen
A few years ago, Seattle ran an interesting experiment on radically densifying low rise neighborhoods with microhousing--a typology of small, minimal units that provide...