Birds Connect Seattle, Thornton Creek Alliance, and the Orca Conservancy are among the groups trying to send the City of Seattle back to the drawing board on its housing growth plan. They’re pushing on behalf of an appeal that has been working its way through the courts since April.
The reviews are the first to take place under the 2025 Housing Accountability Act, intended to spur housing construction by reducing barriers added at the local level. Growth plan reviews are one step in a process that could lead to ramifications for governments that don’t make changes, including th
Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson and Rico Quirindongo, the city’s planning director, seem to be on the same page about revamping the city’s growth plans to allow for additional housing density. The City appears set to largely stay the course on scheduled rezone work in 2026, but queue up additional growth
District 3 Councilmember Joy Hollingsworth will head the Seattle City Council following a progressive wave election, and will be tasked with managing several distinct factions. Her first task was navigating committee assignments, where comity was prioritized over policymaking priorities.
The Pierce County Council recently greenlit a set of awards for affordable housing projects using a relatively new funding source: the Maureen Howard Affordable Housing Act. Over its short life, the sales tax has raised more than $31 million, which will contribute to the creation of 1,700 affordable
Without “bold action,” Bainbridge Island was on track to be two years late in adopting an updated long-term growth plan, according to the city’s new consultant. But with little consensus around a path forward and two new councilmembers taking office, a change in strategy may not be enough.
Four case studies show how Seattle’s new middle housing zoning incentives align with demographic shifts to meet housing demand.
The Seattle City Council added a series of series of height and density bonuses for stacked flats as they amended Mayor Bruce Harrell’s proposed update to the City’s Comprehensive Plan in September. The bonuses could unleash the city’s former single family zones to create a stacked flat multiplex bo
While Tacoma saw a small uptick in housing starts in the first months of Home in Tacoma upzones, the City’s goal to add 59,000 homes by 2050 may take additional action by the City, given current trendlines.
Reductions in the size of proposed growth centers and new tree retention rules that could stifle homebuilding were among the dozens of Seattle growth plan amendments approved this week. Council rejected moves to make the plan bolder in a number of areas, fretting over the risk of legal appeals.
The Seattle Department of Transportation is eyeing seven neighborhoods with high rates of pollution, low car ownership rates, and high collision intersections, such as South Park, Lake City, and Capitol Hill, for its low-pollution pilot program. The list will ultimately be whittled down to three pro
More than 200 testifiers weighed in on the Comprehensive Plan and dozens of proposed amendments ahead of planned votes this week. The topics of neighborhood centers, tree retention, and social housing dominated the hourslong hearing.
Seattle’s long saga of passing its state-required, once-per-decade major update to its Comprehensive Plan is nearing its end. But first, one more public hearing will be held this Friday for residents to air their grievances or do their cheerleading. Here’s our guide to the 106 amendments under consi
While the primary debate over the remade Seattle waterfront has focused on the size of Alaskan Way, a whole slate of potential public space improvements also ended up on the cutting room floor. Those include a festival pier, a pool barge, and a pedestrian street.
The Seattle City Council will spend the next month considering the 106 different amendments, which would push the city’s growth plan toward allowing more types of housing… or scale back areas where density increases are proposed.
The potential Seattle Comprehensive Plan changes, which are set to be discussed Monday, would add back growth centers around Gas Works Park, Alki, North Capitol Hill, and other areas. Councilmember Rinck also proposes legalizing corner stores and removing parking mandates citywide.
Washington State has big housing plans and ambitious planning tools, but it needs binding commitments across public, private, and social sectors to turn vision into reality. As it stands, housing isn’t being built fast enough to stem the affordability crisis.
A narrow four-member majority caved to housing opponents as the Bellevue City Council finalized zoning changes impacting the city’s lower density residential areas. Scaling back an ambitious proposal that increased flexibility for builders, Bellevue is only set to exceed the state minimum in a few a
Despite heavy attention on challenges funding transportation at the state level, shortfalls are projected to hit transit agencies and city transportation networks hardest. With few tools available to raise progressive transportation revenue at the local level, the future looks bleak without reform.
On Monday, June 23, the Seattle City Council is holding a public hearing on the One Seattle growth plan. Housing advocates must defend the 29 neighborhood centers in the plan and push to add more. Jazmine Smith lays out the case for these eight additions.
After dozens of blocks were dropped from the One Seattle housing growth plan, planner Michael Hubner downplayed the changes as minimal. The Seattle Planning Commission painted the move as pushing the city is headed in the wrong direction.
Quick decisions by a King County Superior Court ruled that two separate challenges to the One Seattle Plan’s environmental review will have to wait until the Seattle City Council makes a final decision on the growth plan.
Want a deep dive on the latest in Seattle housing policy? The Urbanist has you covered. Check out this recording and transcript of our April housing panel with experts.
Senate Bill 5148, signed into law Tuesday, sets up a brand new framework of accountability around state housing law. The bill includes a so-called “builder’s remedy” that is intended to force local governments to stay in compliance or see their zoning laws overridden.
Once plentiful across the city, small apartment buildings with flats stacked on top of one another are incredibly rare in new construction. The reasons behind that are multifaceted, and stemming the tide will take a push on multiple levels of government.
The final state budget approved by the legislature left many lawmakers disappointed, and eager to start to work on ways to restore painful cuts and reform the state’s broken tax code.
The way cities conduct public outreach and local elections stacks the deck against homebuilding, tenants, and people of color, research shows. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
Expectations are high for longtime board member Dow Constantine’s new job as Sound Transit CEO. Here’s what The Urbanist’s newsroom has at top-of-mind in the months ahead.
The final 4-3 vote represented a victory for the council’s progressives, as a debate over addressing past discrimination and improving equity turned into a partisan issue. The reversal was a setback for Newcastle’s conservative mayor, Robert Clark.
The vision that Bellevue has for parking-dominated Wilburton is thousands of new homes close to transit and trail connections. The question now is getting the details right so that development can be fostered, rather than stifled.
An interim ordinance will allow Seattle to meet a state deadline, and decide how to allow four and six units on residential lots around the city. But exactly how to do that will likely be a hotly debated issue on the city council.
In choosing how to fill a $1 billion budget hole over the next two years, Washington State lawmakers are being forced to take a hard look at deferring or even cancelling some long-planned highway capacity projects.
Seattle and King County are reeling from both immediate and anticipated impacts from the second Trump administration. Seattle Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck and King County Councilmember Claudia Balducci are leading efforts to prepare for the volatility and protect community members.
Newcastle Mayor Robert Clark pushed to remove references to promoting racial and social equity as “vague,” “subjective,” and “irrelevant,” and called climate change “subjective.” Many of his recommendations were adopted by the Newcastle Planning Commission.
Seattle City Councilmembers and top planning officials are making the rounds visiting homeowner-dominated community councils in their district to get feedback on the One Seattle growth plan.
Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SEA) set a new record of 52.6 million passengers in 2024, and the Port of Seattle is advancing an improvement plan to better accommodate 56 million passengers by 2032.
The appeals, filed by residents in Madison Park, Mount Baker, and Hawthorne Hills, seek to require additional environmental review, pushing back the City’s plan to allow more housing.
Housing advocates outnumbered opponents by a margin of 89 to 75 during a five-hour public hearing Wednesday on the One Seattle housing growth plan. Nevertheless, several councilmembers made it clear they sided with slow-growth advocates, rather than the majority demanding more housing options.
The 1,300-page environmental review of the One Seattle plan shows that the Mayor’s preferred plan would increase hardscape, tree removal, and greenhouse gas emissions, while decreasing affordable housing over broadly supported Alternative 5.
Seattle has set a goal of 112,000 new homes over the next 20 years, but is that really enough to meet demand?
With housing advocates and the Port of Seattle divided on the issue of allowing housing near Seattle’s sports stadiums, councilmembers are being forced to pick sides, after Sara Nelson reintroduced the proposal earlier this month.
The Harrell Administration has proposed changes to the Multifamily Property Tax Exemption (MFTE) that housing advocates warn could cause the affordable housing program to “collapse entirely.”
As the Seattle City Council took its first look at Mayor Bruce Harrell’s One Seattle Comprehensive Plan on Monday, Cathy Moore delivered a slow-growth manifesto, tinged with derision for renters, who she portrayed an unengaged and a detriment to neighborhoods.
By the time the Seattle City Council convenes for the first meeting of the Select Committee on the Comprehensive Plan on January 6, a group of residents from every single council district will have been pushing to scale back proposed zoning changes in their midst, all using similar arguments around
City Beautiful’s urbanism content creator, Dave Amos, recently visited the Seattle area to explore future transit-oriented development sites and the planning that is going into them. Featured in the video are future station areas like Interbay and Kent-Des Moines as well as a potential second Pioneer Square station predicated
Today is the last day for public comments in the latest round of process around the One Seattle Comprehensive Plan proposed by Mayor Bruce Harrell to guide the next 20 years of city growth. Housing advocates are pushing the City to go bigger.
In approving a unanimous update to its Comprehensive Plan, the Shoreline City Council is set to go well beyond the minimum requirements of state law in pursuit of creating additional housing options and more vibrant neighborhoods.
In a letter approved this week, the Seattle Planning Commission expressed disappointment that the draft One Seattle Comprehensive Plan doesn’t go much beyond state mandates, and pushed for changes to make the housing plan bolder and more forward-thinking.
Kirkland’s 20-year growth plan represents a step back from more ambitious proposals considered earlier this year, but it lays down a marker for where the city is headed next.
Proposed Phase 2 One Seattle Comprehensive Plan changes would focus on midrise zones, in hopes of adding additional housing capacity in existing urban centers and the 30 proposed “neighborhood centers.” OPCD hopes to introduce Phase 2 legislation in May, with council passage expected around Septembe
Seattle must embrace bold zoning changes in Queen Anne and similar neighborhoods to preserve our city’s promise for future generations. We need a lot more housing in all parts of Seattle. Seattle isn’t full. Queen Anne isn’t full.
Facing a $150 million budget deficit in the next biennium, county leaders asked for state legislative fixes that would give them a path to preserving essential services. Lifting the 1% property tax levy cap is chief among them.
All too often, public hearings increase costs and consume time without meaningfully impacting decisions. Uytae Lee of About Here digs into the history of the public hearing and its utility, and whether another paradigm is worth pursuing.
The recently passed Redmond 2050 plan increases housing capacity and aims to produce nearly 30,000 new homes by 2050, mostly downtown and in Overlake Village. However, homebuilders warn that the City is adding new obstacles that could impede housing development.
King County Council advanced a motion from Girmay Zahilay commissioning a study of a billion-dollar bond for workforce housing, but questions remain about how to guarantee the bonds and structure the program.
An updated version of Seattle’s 20-year growth plan includes additional opportunities for housing density, but mostly retains the city’s longstanding pattern of walling off lower-density areas of the city.
King County Metro is projecting a significant budget shortfall by 2028 if its current spending plan is maintained, thanks to lagging sales tax revenue, increased costs, and ambitious fleet electrification plans.
Seattle service workers are set to get a major wage hike, unless restaurant lobbyists get their way. But policymakers can support the restaurant industry in better ways than simply cutting worker pay.
Under the budget for the next two years proposed by Mayor Bruce Harrell, around half of the JumpStart funding originally earmarked for affordable housing and other investments would instead fund Harrell Administration priorities.
At least half of Seattle’s apartments are priced using algorithms like RealPage, which is facing a federal lawsuit for illegal price fixing. The Seattle City Council should ban such algorithms, Katie Wilson argues.
King County Councilmember Girmay Zahilay rolled out the Regional Workforce Housing Initiative this week, aiming to use bonding to boost family-sized workforce housing construction. Colleagues were largely supportive, but warned the devil was in the details.
President Biden has called out junk fees, but local landlords continue to charge them. Here’s what Seattle and other cities can do to address them.
King County Councilmember Girmay Zahilay lays out the case for his $1 billion workforce housing bond proposal, saying workers deserve affordable housing near their jobs.
Seattle’s 20-year growth plan doesn’t do enough to ensure that lower income residents will be able to access the vast majority of the city’s residential neighborhoods, according to King County’s Affordable Housing Committee.
A year into announcing its ambitious Downtown Activation Plan, the Harrell Administration is touting successes. But so far those are primarily spot improvements, with many big initiatives in limbo or on hold.
Light rail is finally arriving in Shoreline and South Snohomish County. Local governments have been working toward this day for a long time.
Paris aims to break the mold, using major public investment for the Olympic Games for lasting benefit to the host city. Improvements include a cleaner Seine, major transit expansion, and a new eco-district. But will those efforts go far enough to win over locals?
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.
Facing an uptick in gun violence, County officials are rolling out a 100-day campaign aimed at raising awareness, boosting gun violence prevention programs, and piloting new interventions.
The transportation levy on Seattle ballots this fall won’t grow beyond $1.55 billion, despite a push by transportation advocacy groups to go bigger. A Morales-backed amendment to increase the levy’s size failed Tuesday.
King County Executive Dow Constantine continues to tease development plans for the County’s large campus in South Downtown, but few firm details have emerged.
Seattle has a $258 million budget deficit to solve. Mayor Bruce Harrell said he rejects notions of austerity. Good for him! I’m here to help. Let’s chart a way out of this crisis that doesn’t involve slashing services and laying off city workers.
The Sound Transit Board is set to vote on betterments policy reform, limiting local jurisdictions’ ability to foist costs on the agency. But some boardmembers are accusing the agency of “bullying” and are seeking to water down the proposal.
Seattle already has draft legislation that would go a long toward implementing the state mandate to allow “co-living” micro-apartments this year, but there are some aspects that may need fine-tuning by the city council or another round of legislation next year to comply.
From e-bike rebates to congestion pricing, policy should incentivize healthy, eco-friendly choices. These six ideas can achieve a dramatic mode shift away from driving and toward transit, biking, walking, and rolling.
Comment on the draft Seattle Comprehensive Plan by May 20. Housing advocates have urged the City to adopt the “Housing Abundance Map” rather than keep exclusionary zoning.
Land use policy is a powerful tool to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and address climate change. So why isn’t it a bigger part of the policy debate? This four-part ‘Land Use and Climate Change’ series explores that question.
Research has showed the promise of guaranteed basic income programs to interrupt the cycle of poverty, and participants in King County’s pilot program told The Urbanist that it had helped them improve their circumstances.
Should Sound Transit spend an additional 10 months studying tweaks to stations in the South Lake Union area? The Sound Transit board is set to make that decision in May.
Vacant building fires have become increasingly common in Seattle in recent years. In response to the threat that these fires can pose, Mayor Bruce Harrell proposed emergency legislation on Thursday to enact additional authority to more speedily order and carry out demolition or mitigation of vacant buildings deemed an “unsafe
Reforms being considered by Bremerton as part of this year’s major planning update include eliminating parking mandates, removing height limits in downtown, and expanding neighborhoods where additional density is allowed.
Seattle City Council President Sara Nelson celebrated a shift to the right and an end to “ideological experimentation.” But progressives are pioneering lots of innovative ideas and should be stockpiling programs for friendlier climes. What are yours?
A paper trail from fall 2023 shows that Mayor Harrell’s office overruled his planning department and cut transit corridor upzones and halved the number of proposed “neighborhood centers” before release of the growth strategy.
In a bid to reactivate Downtown Seattle, Mayor Harrell has proposed easing code restrictions in hopes of filling vacant storefronts with newly permitted uses like crafting studios, greenhouses, medical offices, art installations, public restrooms, and research laboratories.
The Seattle Planning Commission has given the proposed One Seattle Comprehensive Plan a once-over. The reviews are not good.
Mayor Harrell and the city council are contemplating budget cuts and raiding JumpStart payroll tax revenue to address a $230 million budget deficit. But nonprofit leaders are warning of the impact of reducing affordable housing funding.
Builders, lawmakers, and housing advocates warn the ‘One Seattle’ growth strategy is “nothingburger” that will come up short on affordability, livability, and complying with state law. Fourplexes would be too constrained to deliver sufficient housing.
While Bellevue is projecting 225,000 additional residents by 2045, Seattle is anticipating a more modest 200,000 for its comprehensive planning purposes. In its new draft plan, Seattle adds fourplex zoning across most, but not all of the city, plus 24 “Neighborhood Centers” and one new urban center
On Wednesday, Sound Transit hosted an outreach event at Union Station aimed at building consensus and easing tensions in Chinatown. Organizer Brien Chow spoke out to argue the Fourth Avenue station option was being sidelined and shortcomings of the agency’s North and South of CID preferred alternati
The idea of how the Sound Transit board can reset with a greater emphasis on making decisions through a regional lens was one of the primary topics at this week’s Sound Transit board retreat.
The WOSCA site is a publicly owned five-acre scrap next to the south portal of the SR-99 tunnel, left over from that project. It will remain an undeveloped scrap for the time being with a temporary use during the 2026 World Cup and a permanent redevelopment envisioned thereafter. Mayor Harrell is se
Through a mix of highrise, midrise, and missing middle housing, Bellevue’s new comprehensive plan would provide capacity for an extra 152,000 homes and 185,000 jobs, potentially allowing the city’s population to more than double over the next 20 years.
Whether allowing new detached dwelling units on most lots in the state’s rural areas would undermine decades of growth planning is a question that’s been put front-and-center by House Bill 2126.
The stated goal of Kitsap County’s 2024 Comprehensive Plan Update is to maintain the county’s rural character by directing “the majority of growth toward urban areas” and supporting denser housing around transit. And while the County has some progressive ideas, the Comp Plan’s updated zoning rules don’
The draft plan still isn’t out, which is worrying housing advocates. But success is still within reach. Last year, the City of Seattle had planned to release its draft “One Seattle” Comprehensive Plan in April, but that draft has still not been released to the public after the Harrell
A proposal that would shift the system of accountability around managing housing and job growth in Washington is already receiving strong pushback from local elected officials and their advocates in Olympia as it advances at the state legislature. The fight highlights the degree to which city, county, and town governments
Plummeting permits could point to a housing slowdown and less affordable housing money after a banner year. Seattle’s housing production set a new record in 2023, producing 12,853 new homes, according to data from the City of Seattle. This is the most homes built since at least 2005,
The move could be a jolt to a long-delayed plan for the decommissioned site, spreading infrastructure costs across more homes — if the bid succeeds. The saga of building affordable housing at Fort Lawton had been shaping up to be a never-ending tale, but today Mayor Bruce Harrell revealed a twist
Ambitious development is taking Washington State’s most overlooked city from ‘Vantucky’ backwater to hip. A few years ago an Urbanist reader approached me at a meetup and offered a story tip. Sleepy Vancouver, Washington on the Columbia River across the stateline from Portland, Oregon, was beginning to wake up.
In House Bill 1110, the Washington State Legislature read the will of the people and demanded that we tackle the housing crisis more proactively by allowing middle housing in most cities and towns. The Washington State Department of Commerce has created a basic zoning template that supersedes local code if