Land Use

Redmond’s Aggressive Code Update Imperils 2,500 Homes Planned Near Overlake Station

Redmond has a grand vision for the Overlake neighborhood, which is set to get light rail by 2025. Redmond land use policies have funneled...

Unraveling the Problem Called Interbay

Early this year, a call went out that the Interbay Armory Advisory Committee was looking for community proposals on what to do with 25...

DEIS Shows Options and Urgency of Pending Backyard Cottage Reform

Seattle, a city of 348,000 homes, has built just 579 backyard cottages since 1994, the year the region also enacted an urban growth boundary...
The Armory site in Interbay composes 25 acres. (State of Washington)

Could the Interbay Armory Become a Mixed-Use District?

The armory in Interbay could find itself revamped from a military installation to a new urban district. In 2018, the Washington State Legislature tasked...

Walla Walla: A Washington City Without Single-Family-Only Zoning

Walla Walla flew under the radar in 2018 when the city adopted zoning changes entirely eliminating single-family zones. These zoning changes alongside the new...
The intersection of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Way and Othello Street.

Othello’s Transit-Oriented Housing Boom

The neighborhood near the Othello Link light rail station in Seattle’s South End has seen an impressive boom in market-rate and affordable rate housing...
A graphic of blue and green mountains with the skyline of a city in front of them with the words WA Can't Wait in a white box on the left corner.

What It Will Take to Close the Illegal Growth Loophole in 2022

Note: This article was revised on 10/29/21 to reflect Futurewise's decision to rename the "vesting loophole" as the "illegal growth loophole" to more clearly...
Bellevue square parking

Bellevue’s Parking Obsession is Climate Arson

During my research and writing of the Downtown Bellevue development articles, I actively estimated the amount of parking spaces that Bellevue had recently added...