Weekly Digest: February 28th - March 7th 2022
Here's a selection of The Urbanist's most compelling articles from the past week. You can catch up on other recent articles directly on our online magazine or never miss a story by adding us to your RSS feeds.
This week we are hosting an online meetup with Anna Zivarts, director of the Disability Mobility Initiative (DMI) at Disability Rights Washington. The event will be hosted by reporter Ryan Packer.
Zivarts has worked to bring the voices of nondrivers to the planning and policy-making tables. Through DMI, she built a 200-person nondriver storymap, compiled the expertise in these stories into a groundbreaking research paper that she presented to the AASHTO Board and launched a #WeekWithoutDriving challenge for elected leaders to understand what it’s like to get around without driving themselves.
We hope you will join us! Please register for the meetup here.
Featured Articles
West Seattle and Ballard Light Rail Tunnel Options May Not Require Third Party Funding
Light rail tunnels to West Seattle Junction and Ballard took a step closer from dream to reality thanks to Sound Transit’s latest analysis suggesting the cost for at least some of the tunnel options would be comparable to the elevated default option. The catch for Ballard Link is that the cheaper tunnel option still puts the station at 14th Avenue NW, farther from Ballard’s historic core. Previously, the agency has said additional tunneling would require third-party funding — which it would likely fall on the City of Seattle to raise, as nobody else was volunteering to chip in the hundreds of millions of dollars that could be required. Read
Bill to Sunset Community Councils Holds Big Stakes for Kirkland and Bellevue
This week the Washington State Legislature will bring to the senate floor HB 1769, a bill to sunset the Houghton (Kirkland) and East Bellevue Community Councils. The community councils were instituted in the late 1960s after their jurisdictions were annexed into the cities of Kirkland and Bellevue. Since then the community councils have held veto power over land use planning within their designated areas, which has allowed them to wield influence over zoning. Read
Bellevue Council Update: Comprehensive Plan Outreach and Managing Growth
With a unanimous vote to close out last night’s meeting, Bellevue City Council officially approved the upcoming years-long outreach process for the city’s Comprehensive Plan Update. Although the evening also featured some interesting discussions around noise ordinances and economic development (and I encourage you to read the play-by-play if you’re interested in those types of things), I’d like to particularly focus on this this city council vote, because this outreach process lays fundamental groundwork for how Bellevue will grow and develop over the coming decades. Read
Proposed Digital Equity Bill Needs Support to Increase Broadband Access
For a long time, Washington’s digital divide worried many groups of people who saw its harmful and inequitable effects: librarians, teachers, tribal governments, and community-based organizations that help workers struggling to feed their families, to name several. And then the COVID-19 pandemic happened. All of a sudden people were cut off from friends, family, and critical school communications if they had unstable internet connections or unreliable cellular service, or didn’t have money to repair their devices. Read
Seattle Moves Toward Devoting Street Space to Freight
As the city works to integrate its different modal plans — pedestrian, bicycle, freight and transit — into one unified “Seattle transportation plan” in advance of the major update to the Comprehensive Plan in 2024, the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) is working to clarify when it might create dedicated space for large freight trucks, a mode a number of city policies seek to prioritize but which has no specific dedicated lanes on the city’s streets. With this new policy, the department is adding a new factor to debates over some of the city’s most contested street space. Read
The Urbanist Podcast: Lots of Housing Going Up Above Seattle Safeway Stores
In this latest podcast episode, reporter Ray Dubicki and I discuss a notable housing trend in Seattle, the conversion of big-box Safeway grocery stores to mixed-units developments creating hundreds of units of new housing. My recent article on the 734 homes proposed at the site of the University Village Safeway grocery store in Northeast Seattle attracted some buzz, but it’s far from the only Safeway mixed-use development in the mix. University District, Queen Anne, Magnolia, and Capitol Hill Safeway sites all have development projects in the works as well. Read
Amendment Guts Key Climate Provisions in Growth Management Bill
Last night the Senate Ways and Means committee advanced House Bill 1099, but, as they did, they gutted much of the climate-focused bill. Earlier versions had aimed to add a climate element to local Comprehensive Plans required under the Growth Management Act (GMA). However, an amendment proposed by Sen. Kevin Van De Wege (D – 24th Legislative District, Sequim) removes many references to climate change, as well as the climate change mitigation goal added to the state’s GMA. Van De Wege also opposed HB 1099 and the Climate Commitment Act last year. Read
Federal Regulations on Digital Marketplace Spur Concerns for Local Businesses
It is evident that the disruption of COVID-19 has not affected all businesses equally. Restaurants closed, events cancelled, travels postponed, and many small, BIPOC-owned businesses in South King County continue to face systemic barriers to success and equitable access to emergency relief resources. These pressures compound on minority-and-women-owned establishments already combatting threats of gentrification and displacement. Read
Honor Wallingford's Streetcar History By Building Dense Housing and Transit
Beginning with my great grandmother, three generations of women in my family lived in a craftsman home that has since been flattened into the public parking lot next to the Trader Joe’s in the University District. My grandparents met on that very doorstep. And you know what? That the house is gone is just fine. I understand the love of a place. I feel comforted in any place where salal grows. I even understand resistance to change and uncertainty, although they too are as certain as death and taxes. Seattle has a rich history that should be celebrated, grieved, explored, and even questioned. The craft of exploring the stories of those before us is a vital thing. But to explore history as a means to an end, especially one that would prevent change rather than encourage growth with intention, may perpetuate social problems by preventing forward progress. Read
Legislature Must Cut Highway Expansion and Protect Transit, Safety, Maintenance Funds
The $16 billion Move Ahead Washington transportation package faces a large funding gap after State House passed a version of the bill Tuesday that cut a controversial exported fuel tax, which had earned the ire of leaders from Oregon and other nearby states but had raised $2 billion in revenue over 15 years. Ideas are floating around how to balance the package in conference committee, but none are without their detractors. It’s clear the best fix is to cut highway expansion that would take the state backwards on its goals of promoting climate justice and reducing pollution anyway. A recent poll also indicates highway expansion is not popular with Washington voters, further strengthening the case for prioritizing funding for other investments like transit and affordable housing. Read
Transpo Notes: Café Streets Extended, Green Lake Outer Loop Advances, Metro Delays Service Improvements
This week’s Transpo Notes highlights include details on: Sound Transit’s new ticket vending machines, the Green Lake Outer Loop project, transit service changes, Angle Lake Station transit-oriented development, and café street and outdoor dining permit extension in Seattle. Read
Take Action for Greenhouse Gas Reduction Goals in Growth Management Bill
As a parent, I am worried about another summer where our children can’t play outside for weeks at a time because they will be exposed to the worst air quality in the world. Destructive wildfires filling the air with toxic smoke have increased in Washington and are disproportionately impacting our vulnerable populations. We know that climate change and the resulting increase in the average annual temperatures will continue to dramatically elevate the risk and severity of forest fires and other climate related events. Enacting long overdue reforms to the Growth Management Act (GMA) this session is necessary to meet our state’s climate goals, protect our wildlands, and ecosystems. Read
Microsoft Helps Fund 235 Affordable Homes Near Bellevue's East Main Transit District
A collaboration between SRM Development and the nonprofit Downtown Action to Save Housing (DASH) is set to bring 235 homes near the future East Main Link light rail station in Bellevue. The 4.55 acre site is currently the home of a partially-constructed hotel building, which, by the end of 2024, will be converted into 100 units of housing available to those earning less than 60% of area median income (AMI). A second building, set to provide 135 units of housing for those earning between 80% and 100% AMI, will begin construction later this year and is slated to open by the end of 2023. Read
The Urbanist Podcast: How the Cold War Suburbanized America
The tragic military attack on Ukraine by Russia has upended the world, making us think differently about things we took for granted even a couple weeks ago. But the new tension and uncertainty we are experiencing is something that influenced government policies in the United States for 40 years. One of the most profound, but also overlooked, impacts of the Cold War is how fears of a nuclear strike by the U.S.S.R. fueled the construction of highways and the suburbanization of American life. Read
Legislature Passes Sound Transit Enhanced Funding Bill, But Fails to Lift Backyard Cottage Ban
Another set of bills died Friday as another legislative cutoff passed, but a bill boosting Sound Transit funding options was not among them. Senate Bill 5528 authorizes “enhanced service zones” within the Sound Transit Taxing District to raise funds to speed up existing Sound Transit 3 (ST3) or deliver additional projects. Unfortunately, House Bill 1660 failed to pass the senate, which means statewide accessory dwelling unit (ADU) reform appears dead this session. Read
Market Street Developments Are Creating a New Urban Neighborhood East of Ballard
There’s a spot just inside Seattle’s Gilman Park where the scent of turned earth and new asphalt mingles with that of cooking grains coming out of West Woodland’s Brewery Row. At this rare moment, the scent of construction is stronger. Surprisingly for the neighborhood, there are currently fewer breweries than construction sites within three blocks of the park. And more construction is coming near Market Street to the previously quiet neighborhood on the eastern edge of Ballard. Read
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