Cities & Planning

The agency is seeking feedback on its initial pedestrian, bike, bus, and transit-oriented development plans near its four planned West Seattle light rail stations. Sound Transit recently reached out to communities on the West Seattle Link Extension to gauge priorities around station area planning. The agency was specifically looking into support for particular station entrance

The Urbanist's in-person monthly meetup series is back and it's headed to Yesler Terrace on Thursday, January 11, for an event focused on Seattle Housing Authority's Yesler Terrace redevelopment. It's been a while since we've taken a comprehensive look at Yesler Terrace, and the community is brimming with new life. We'll hear from Seattle Housing

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The longtime logging town of Darrington, Washington is showing how local communities re-engage with the federal forests that surround them.

The largest beaver dam on Earth was discovered via satellite imagery in 2007, and since then only one person has trekked into the Canadian w The world’s largest beaver dam is not like human dams. It...

The energy intensity of concrete is an intractable climate problem. What about using stone instead?

Building a bike lane in America has never been simple.

Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe.

Rural Americans are trying EVs but largely aren’t sold yet.

"Hempcrete" is strong, nontoxic, and highly sustainable.

The Manobo indigenous people live and thrive on a vast wetland in the Philippines – despite dealing with dozens of storms and floods per year. What can we learn from them?

In HB 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 town planners balk at updating their

Visitors check out the latest addition to the Detroit Riverwalk, the Uniroyal Promenade, at its grand opening on October 21, 2023. Source:...

A powerful new approach can help developing countries make road construction and maintenance greener and more affordable.

The death of the whale at a Miami amusement park just before her planned release highlighted the species’ fraught relationship with humans.

After Hurricanes Katrina and Ida, a city initiative is building solar-driven disaster response hubs to increase its resilience

Eastside officials and multimodal transportation advocates broke the ribbon Friday on a small but incredibly valuable new connection between the Eastrail and the State Route 520 bike route, just east of I-405. The new elevated boardwalk, called the Northup Connector, bridges a gap of only a few hundred feet that serves as the logical place

Everyone has a natural habitat. For some people it’s a big house in the suburbs. For others it’s a cabin in the woods. Some people thrive in a high rise tower in the central business district. Mine is a Main Street town of the kind that peaked about a century ago. But there’s another more obscure en

In March, King County Metro launched Metro Flex, an on-demand neighborhood van transit service. With a handy app, users can book rides to destinations within the seven separate designated service areas in Issaquah/Sammamish, Juanita, Kent, Othello, Rainier Beach/Skyway, Renton Highlands, and Tukwila. As with any new transit service, Metro Flex extends the boundaries of accessibility

Seattle's climate plan calls for doubling bicycling, but SDOT is not building its bike facilities to handle the load. To bike to Climate Pledge Arena, home of two of Seattle's professional sports teams as well as dozens of concerts per year, from Downtown Seattle, people using the city's flagship protected bike lane on 2nd Avenue

Washington State Legislature legalized “missing middle” housing across the state, allowing more homes on a lot in the form of rowhouses, duplexes, triplexes, quadplexes and sixplexes. Seattle will now need to legalize sixplex homes citywide in areas served with frequent transit and fourplexes elsewhere. This restores Seattle to a bygone era of density, affordability, and

Last week, Spokane finalized its year-long effort to legalize more housing choices across the city. Their new code sets a statewide standard, and it should be emulated in cities large and small -- from Seattle and Bothell to Yakima and Vancouver. Recall that under the zoning package passed last year, Spokane gave itself a year

The Washington State Department of Commerce has released draft guidance and model codes to implement the state's a new middle housing law. The new law will apply to most cities with a population of at least 25,000 residents (and some smaller cities), requiring them to broadly legalize middle housing throughout residential zones. Cities in King,

Bans on gas-powered lawn equipment are spreading — meanwhile, some advocates are looking for ways to ditch grass altogether.

Bitcoin’s environmental impact grows as the price rises.

Young men living in some parts of Chicago would have been safer fighting in Afghanistan or Iraq.

Human history is shaped by our ability to feed ourselves. See how population growth is tied to farmland, and how food production's profound environmental effect shows us the need for change.