And Seattle. Build more housing in Seattle.

If Dreher has the "same urbanist-y crunch" as @ronpdavis.bsky.social , why does everyone in the housing and transportation advocacy spaces know Ron from a long track record of fighting for safe streets and affordable housing and had never heard of the other guy?

Anyway...another great reason to support The Urbanist by becoming a member: www.theurbanist.org/membership/

What people think SEPA is: Erin Brockovich codified into state law What SEPA actually is: is this new hospital spoiling the view from a different neighborhood

CM Rivera just sent out an email urging people to call in to comment on the City's SEPA reform legislation. 🙄

Americans and Europeans need to do a building technology knowledge swap: we help them retrofit their old buildings with air conditioning and they help us retrofit ours with elevators.

Been thinking about both cyclists killed in Seattle were crushed by commercial trucks. Think it time to insist that every designed freight route in the city have a protected bike lane.

Sure, we've lost a court battle, but the orcas are the bigger losers since we'll be doing nothing more about sprawl, climate adaption or road pollution this year.

For the first time since before the pandemic Parks is staffing Green Lake East Beach this year!!! Finally there will be lifeguards at the busiest beach in the City's busiest park. Feeling like I'm living in a real city today.

💯🎯🤘🌆🔥

Men driving loud motorcycles is such a desperate cry for attention.

If the King County roads sales tax annoys you, let me tell you how education funding works in this state. Because it's "not fair" to the school districts whose residents keep rejecting levies, we are capped in Seattle by how much revenue we can collect from our school levies.

Can we get to 3,000 letters sent by noon today? Send the action alert link to your friends actionnetwork.org/letters/8415...

Seattle is about to get screwed. King County Council is proposing to increase our sales tax and send it to wealthy suburbs that don’t want to pay for their own road building. It will soak Seattle for $3 million a year, in perpetuity, to maintain roads in Medina and Bellevue. Ask for a fair deal 👇🏻

Seattle taxpayers should not be subsidizing roads in wealthy suburbs like Yarrow Point and Medina!

Replacing a gravel parking lot in a park with a playfield requires completing an environmental impact statement (EIS). 🤡 What are we doing?

As an arborist I wholeheartedly endorse this sentiment. Seattle's rules require developers to work around way too many small, low quality trees w/ short lifespans at the cost of affordable housing. We should be cutting more trees! Cutting trees here saves salmon (tire pollution) and forests.

Just saw some drone footage of a nearly 150-acre new development project up in Snohomish where my dad used to live. Clearcut god knows how many trees for more suburban sprawl. Makes me sick, and also angry at the urban "tree advocates" who think getting rid of one tree for infill is somehow worse.

Happy Pride Month. If you're a gay man, please remember your power. People often think that gay men are innately fashionable, which means if you wear some stupid shit for long enough, straight people, including homophobes, will copy you and then you can laugh at them.

Some good news: the number of crashes on MLK Way between Rainier Ave and the I-90 lid was cut in half between 2023 and 2025 (20 vs 10). What happened in 2024? SDOT built protected bike lanes along this segment.

Today Lin's committee considered legislation that would remove the ability to file an appeal with the city's Hearing Examiner when it comes to Comprehensive Plan updates. Last year, a group of appeals from the city's wealthiest corners held things up for months. www.theurbanist.org/residents-in...

No money for pediatric cancer research but there's $1.7 billion for people who beat cops and smeared feces on the walls of the US Capitol.

🧵This has always been the absurdity of refusing universal school meals. Students rich or poor in public schools get the same free bathrooms and toilet paper, roofs and floors, heat and hot water, desks and chairs, teachers and counselors, gyms and equipment, etc,etc...but food is a bridge too far.

I’m a fan of Chris Roberts and will be voting for him. I also hope he has an answer to this One assessment is $180/sf for the house and $118/sf for the land, the other is $53/sf for house and $48/sf for land Is it the 7k sf mansion on 5 acres or the neighbor 2k sf house on 5k sf of land?

Diverters are one of the few ways to deal with people who are willing to run a stop sign, ignore 5 street closed signs, ignore 1 do not enter sign, drive the wrong way a down the street, drive the wrong way around a traffic circle, and ignore a lane marking and sign prohibiting going straight.

unfortunately, kim il sung's clothes hang a lot better

We also offer $1,500 Mini Grants for parents, PTAs, and other organizations to help encourage safe walking and biking to school. bsky.app/profile/seat...

I still think it would be incredible to show up to the Pioneer Square preservation board wearing authentic 1890s outfits complaining about how many cars are there now, in character.

This chart tells a pretty incredible success story MHA funds are the smallest slice of this graph and yet MHA is the only funding source that directly hurts renters by blocking new homes from being built @mayorofseattle.bsky.social let's use this success to undo the damage from MHA!

Emphatically this.

Throwing my urban arrow in the trash.

As a kid I was always like, why do adults make all these jokes about lawyers? What’s wrong with lawyers? Now as an adult I’m like, why did adults make all these jokes about lawyers? These people are a real problem and it isn’t a laughing matter!

Surprised JD Vance wasn't able to close a deal with the Iranians. His only skill is saying whatever people want to hear.

The DNC Resolutions Committee has passed my resolution to hold Trump Administration officials legally accountable for their crimes. Assuming the whole packet passes on Friday, it will become the official position of the national Democratic Party.

The subtext here is that Design Review hasn’t been ‘efficient, equitable, predictable and consistent.’, despite our earnest best efforts to design a program that was. In fact it was so bad, it inspired a state law to reduce it.

Re-posting tree canopy loss stats due to development. You’d think our tree canopy was in danger based on the intensity of opposition to planning efforts.

My guess is that Bondi was not fired for something like fumbling the Epstein files, but rather not prosecuting Trump's political enemies enough. Whoever follows her — and the subsequent person, after they're fired — will just be more sycophantic and bending to Trump's base desires.

reading a book about iran. apparently the gov there is run by a Supreme Leader who has conducted mass deportations, sent forces into cities, uses state licenses to control media, labeled protestors "enemies," slapped tariffs on industries, and is supported by religious extremists. didn't know this.

Seattle's revised development code went into effect in January, but it's still not published online. Is the plan just to skip it this time? I pity the developer who submits based on the published code only to discover they should have emailed the City to ask for the secret code PDF.

How do you fix a situation where a corrupt president can have his allies make bogus lawsuits against our own government, and then direct his corrupted "Justice Department" to settle and shell out taxpayer money to his corrupt friends? We need to start thinking about writing laws around this *now*.

Imagine looking at this image and thinking the problem is the robot and not the shit pedestrian infrastructure.

At today's Seattle Council transportation committee meeting, Rob Saka announced that his office has been "monitoring" traffic safety data and that there have been no "fatal traffic incidents" in the city since their last meeting. In fact, there was a fatal crash on Elliott Ave W yesterday morning.

Public engagement questions that are ACTUALLY helpful in designing streets: “Where do you see near misses happen?” (There is no good data for this) “Is there anywhere that feels uncomfortable to walk at night, and why?” “What kinds of loading/unloading needs does your business have?” Etc

No one loves to ask a question that he gets to answer himself more than Dan Strauss.

SHAPE TRANSPORTATION IN SEATTLE: we're recruiting for the Seattle Freight Advisory Board, Pedestrian Advisory Board, and School Traffic Safety Committee. Join us at online open houses on Monday, March 16 (noon-1 PM) or Thursday, March 19 (5-6 PM). Details: sdotblog.seattle.gov/2026/03/03/s....

the biggest coverup of the biggest scandal in Presidential history

Our fashion past and (hopefully) future. @dieworkwear.bsky.social your thoughts?

NEW STORY // Former Seattle Council Candidate Ron Davis Challenges Longtime Legislator Gerry Pollet Check out Ryan Packer's interview with @ronpdavis.bsky.social, via @theurbanist.org // 🔗 www.theurbanist.org/2026/03/05/s...