Cities & Planning

This page is a summary of the different cost classes we look at in this blog; each class listed below is explored in detail in its own post. Using the 2013 AECOM high-speed rail study as a starting point, numerous additional sources have been used to either confirm or question the reliability of the

This article examines the capital costs of recent rail transit projects and describes some factors that help to explain the differences in costs.

Is our love of cars so overwhelming? Or do cars just make us dumb?

The “crazy worms” remaking forests aren’t your friendly neighborhood garden worms. Then again, those aren’t so great either.

Restarted by Governors Inslee and Brown in 2019, the IBR has been on a glidepath toward repeating the mistakes of the failed Columbia River Crossing project. When state lawmakers from both Oregon a…

"If my choices are to have wealth but no job, or to have a job but no wealth, I’d rather have the wealth. But we don’t have to choose: we can have both wealth and jobs, if we don’t go around breaking all the darned windows." ~ Michael C. Munger

Global heating will set the stage for extreme weather everywhere in 2023. The consequences are likely to be cataclysmic.

Although electric vehicles have advanced significantly, many other forms of mobility do not share their shortcomings.

Earlier this month, a mixture of snow and freezing rain set a stark backdrop as 30 residents, including families with children, couples, singles, and people with pets, moved into their new heated a…

Europe’s energy crisis is forcing companies to switch strategies or close down. The industry’s future hangs in the balance.

For decades, 1960s research for the American Petroleum Institute warning of the risks of burning fossil fuels had been forgotten. But two papers discovered in libraries are now playing a key role in lawsuits aimed at holding oil companies accountable for climate change.

From Seattle to Baltimore, cities are recycling felled urban trees into furniture, construction projects and guitars.

The Downtown Seattle Association and new SDOT head are seeking ways to jumpstart the shelved Center City Streetcar project, such as a Cultural Connector program. Seattle’s Center City streetc…

The tech giant’s development concept is rapidly growing Kirkland’s most ambitious proposal To close out The Urbanist’s series on Kirkland’s recent and ongoing developments, …

One of the world’s first upcycled towers shows how reusing the bones of a building can be an environmentally and economically viable solution for the world’s aging towers.

In this very entertaining and informative video essay, Adam Kovacs details why Elon Musk's futuristic transportation ideas like

Where and how you live shapes your household’s contribution to climate change. Explore differences across the nation.

And they are NOT benevolent

Cake, a company known for making electric bikes, just announced The Kibb is an all-electric ATV. “The modular body of the Kibb will have different attachment points to allow for compatibility…

Jesse Wig, Adam Colucci, and Dan Spanovich purchased an abandoned high school for $100,000 and spent over $2 million to turn it into an apartment building.

In the pandemic, Spencer Scott and Nick Schwanz started Solar Punk Farms, a queer-run agricultural community space designed to explore and celebrate regenerative models of living.

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