Cities & Planning

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The Washington State Department of Commerce has released draft guidance and model codes to implement the state's a new middle housing law.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.

Google partnered with Fervo, a startup that borrows oil and gas technology to access clean geothermal power almost anywhere.

Our first-of-its-kind geothermal power project in Nevada is now operational.

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Giant batteries that ensure stable power supply by offsetting intermittent renewable supplies are becoming cheap enough to make developers abandon scores of projects for gas-fired generation world-wide.

The Lower Sioux nation will soon have the only facility in the country that manufactures hempcrete.

Bollards are on the way to protect pedestrians. When the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) wrapped up installation in mid-2022 on what had been intended to become Seattle's largest raised street crossing, at Melrose Avenue and East Pike Street in Capitol Hill, reactions to how it turned out were far from positive. Installed as part

The Grand Paris Express is well underway, but will not open in time for the 2024 Summer Olympics.

Our garbage heaps are rich in metals and other materials, but landfill mining is rare.

While Mount Mazama blew its top almost 8,000 years ago, it’s still remembered today by the descendants of its witnesses.

Coastal Salish tribes also embrace the project.

The tech costs more than conventional options upfront, but federal tax credits, new 120V models and strong savings have made them more appealing than ever.

So my lovelies, here it is: Version 5.0 of the Hydrogen Ladder! This is the first major update since Version 4.

If You Do, We'll Need to Have A Long Talk

As everyone must know by now, I'm not a fan of art that begins and ends with quirkiness.