Once again at the darkest part of the year, we gather in the spirit of Krampus, the Christmas demon who takes bad children into the woods and eats them. Festive holidays demand horror, more than family and gatherings provide. What’s more terrifying than looking into 2024?
So here are eight important things for the coming year. It’s G.O.R.E., but not all bad. Goals where we want to put our energy. Obstacles where we see stumbles coming. Resolutions where we want to try better. Explorations where it could get interesting or all go wrong.
As always, the surprise will be prognosticating correctly. The upcoming 525,600 minutes holds a lot of opportunities to screw things up. Whether it was putting money on the Mariners playoffs, thinking Elemental would have solid worldbuilding, or dropping my phone off an Alaskan ferry, I know that I found a good number unique missteps to make in 2023. I hope you do better. Good luck, all.
Goal: Subscribe better
It appears that a death rattle of late stage capitalism includes moving from an ownership economy to a rental economy. As state-sized corporations transition to extract more resources from consumers, no one gets to purchase things any more. You only get a license to borrow shows that can be retracted or a lease to rent hedge-fund built housing stock that can be flipped.
You know an issue has gotten big when there’s a completely new industry of apps that specifically cancel subscriptions. And it’s accelerating as platforms that once disrupted larger broadcasters are themselves shattered by upstarts or their owner’s idiocy. No longer is casting done broadly when every individual content creator has a distribution list. Subscribe to The Urbanist here.
So, saying “subscribe less” is going to be really difficult. The goal could be to subscribe better. No, we may not have opportunities to worm our way out of renting from a big company. But the most egregious smaller subscriptions – music, videos, and books – have a lot of competition. Most of that comes in the form of the public library, where you can find pleasant seating and plenty of things to read and watch for free. And cheap printing, so you can really stick it to the ink cartridge cartel. Kinda gives some insight to why libraries are at the center of the culture clashes these days.
Obstacle: Feeling done
House Bill 1110 was a big change to state housing policy, requiring cities to include missing middle housing, such as townhomes, triplexes, and cottage courts, in almost every residential zone. That follows the 2022 push for a legislative transportation package, as well as the 2021 Climate Commitment Act and Growth Management Act reforms.
In reality, it took three years to get HB 1110 passed, as bill sponsor Representative Jessica Bateman pointed out talking about the legislation’s history. It gives the feeling of done-ness, that overwhelming urge to get comfy. Some might even point to a decade of strong progressive success in Seattle as need for a recovery period.
While rest is vital, it shouldn’t be confused with done. The next few years of comprehensive planning and climate commitment ain’t going to get themselves right. There are a couple of topics that have been simmering on the back burner. First and second in line should be implementing HB 1110 properly and putting HOA restrictions against multi-family housing on the same scrapheap as race restrictions. Take a breather, but get ready for the next push to make housing more fair and affordable.
