Cities & Planning

Throughout my career as a public transit planner, I’ve dealt with city planners and developers who are quite sure that bus service of any kind is irrelevant to city building. Most city planning professionals get little training in public transit, and for years, much of that training came laced with assumptions that rail is the […]

Two housing projects -- one in Wedgwood and one in Capitol Hill -- are running into similar issues around tree retention, parking, and scale.

Decarbonizing rail transportation is a political problem as much as a technological one.

With trout season opening on Washington’s lowland lakes this Saturday, April 27, the timing was perfect to go fishing around on the history bookshelf to

Buoyed by its light rail station and master plan, the Spring District has seen more than 2,000 homes, 4 million square feet of office, and 8,000 parking stalls recently delivered or in development.

Founder Owen Pickford reflects on a decade of The Urbanist and urges urbanists to chip in to keep this institution strong. Please make a donation during our spring member drive.

Delivering 35 new family-sized homes, Shared Roof features a unique financing model catering to a range of incomes, built-in community, and hip cafes spilling into a public courtyard. Is the model replicable? The developer thinks so.

For an office design, the financial services giant made a floor of its New York office fit the new way people work.

A site devoted to the design and social impact of transit maps - subway maps, metro maps, bus maps, rail maps, ferry maps and more!

Workers’ in-office preferences are shifting, with more employees looking for more “third places” to get work done.

Puerto Nariño is a tranquil experiment in sustainable living where motor vehicles are banned and the streets are as clean as Copenhagen's.

Greater Tacoma used to have an enormously expansive streetcar network. With just one line, Tacoma's modern streetcar network has a long way to go to catch up to that rapid transit standard.

The National Association of Home Builders breaks down the average itemized costs in each stage of construction for a new single-family home.

Almazán, Jorge and Studiolab. Emergent Tokyo: Designing the Spontaneous City. Novato, CA: ORO Editions, 2022. Reviewed by Eric Häusler Emergent Tokyo is the result of the collaborative effort of St…

Reducing the need for car travel is better for health, the environment and public safety

For new methane-based hydrogen production, it would cost less to invest in carbon capture than to pay for unabated CO2 emissions over its lifetime, analyst says

Casey Handmer Feb 2 2022 (original post) Cheaper hydrocarbons from CO2 direct air capture and sunlight. terraformindustries.com Executive Summary Terraform Industries is a bet on cheap solar, synth…

Friends and family of once local Seattle man Jason Smith are reporting that he has been tragically lured all the way out to Spokane by far more progressive housing policies and they’re worried if t…

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.

Despite the memes, new data reveals a more nuanced relationship between humans and animals.

Converting malls could create hundreds of thousands of badly needed homes.

Tokyo’s low crime rates, world-leading transportation network, and affordable rents make it one of the world’s most livable cities. Despite its incredible size, the city is also home to a large number of microspaces, which range from tens of thousands of cozy microbars and restaurants to tiny mom-and-pop shops that occupy the ground floors of many row houses. In “Understanding Tokyo’s Land Use: The Power of Microspaces,” Joe McReynolds considers the lessons that the city can (and cannot) provide for American urban policy.

The secret sauce of dense, mixed-use urbanism.

A review of "Emergent Tokyo", by Jorge Almazán and Studiolab

Little-known e-rickshaw companies like YC Electric are at the forefront of the country’s EV revolution. India’s electric rickshaws are leaving EVs in the dust Each month, this upskilled team produces...