good example of relatively recent traffic calming work on N Saint Louis/N Smith that did not address stormwater (bottom) or add green infra. to the new median safety island, which is all concrete (middle) PCEF funds should not be used for future work like this -we need to codify climate resilience

a few blocks away, this beautiful municipal rain garden absorbs street rain on the N Central green way.

Join La Resistencia and Tanggol Migrante Movement today for the vigil at 1 pm outside the Northwest Detention Center (NWDC). #AbolishICE #AbolishGEOGROUP #ChingaLaMigra #ShutdownNWDC #FreeThemALL

TBH, I am frustrated that the biggest vision we have is taxing ultra high income earners. The sub-500k tech workers (vast majority of us!) are having our lifestyles subsidized by people making 100k or less who pay a much higher share of their income than I do (nowhere near 500k). Tax me too!

4 different hangouts were canceled this week bc ppl were sick :( stay safe and mask up out there, friends, if only so we can hang out :)

Wow, this captured just about everything I think we’re missing in Seattle city planning. Stuff I’ve been trying to scream at everyone but feel like no one is listening

“To treat biodiversity as infrastructure is to design the city as habitat. This shifts attention from isolated green spaces to networks of continuity, where parks, street trees, waterways, gardens, and overlooked fragments operate as connected corridors rather than disconnected islands.”

I love this idea so much. But National Park, Museum, and Sustainable Farm.

Me: hmm this piece of equipment has a local retailer in Seattle, I should get it locally instead of online. It’s sold at this place called Ballard Industrial *not even 24 hours later* Spotted by redditor (www.reddit.com/r/Seattle/co...) at Ballard Industrial:

I haven’t seen any reporting on this but I just found out today that Lam’s seafood is opening where Vietwah and island pacific used to be! Next to joy palace and q bakery. Reminded me of this old hit tweet from when we used to live in south seattle and it was island pacific at the time

so many respirators on olympians faces; just because you’re not a professional athlete doesn’t mean that you n those around you don’t have something worth protecting too.

Encouraging to see some members of the US Olympic team wearing masks to protect their health ahead of competition.

Minneapolis cops assist ICE and arrests protestors.

Sign on PRO for WA's millionaire tax app.leg.wa.gov/csi/Testifie...

I'm in a scooter nightmare trying to navigate from the pioneer square art walk to the light rail. How is this OK? Street parking corrals have to be a solution. It's time that we hold Seattle.

Seattle City Hall right now, where students from around the city have gathered after a mass walk-out to protest ICE:

Bid limits—prohibiting local governments from performing their own work over a certain dollar value—are a form of privatization that increases the cost of government.

Every new housing project is a unicorn, willed into existence thru hacks, blood and magic in spite of every external factor dragging it down This is no way to fix a housing shortage

Hoboken has: 1) No freeway interchanges 2) Few multi-lane streets 3) Small blocks 4) 60k population in 1.25 sq mi (a little smaller than Emeryville So it seems like the recipe for Vision Zero is to smash the freeways, road diet everything, & build dense housing.

Yep. As I keep saying, it's not that we shouldn't appease transphobes (though we obviously shouldn't), it's that we literally *can't*.

Yesss omg, a municipal Seattle social and affordable housing construction crew! In house, public employees. Becoming experts in their craft and getting better and better over time

in-house construction crews are my favorite kind of construction crew

Uh, Scientific American has an Epstein problem

Tonight’s #UrbanismBookClub entry is one I’ve wanted to share for a while — “Building For People: Designing Livable, Affordable, Low-Carbon Communities” by @holz-bau.bsky.social, foreword by @alexsteffen.bsky.social. Excellent guidebook for global eco-districts with great visuals & case studies. 10/

Friendly reminder that MLK Way’s dangerous design is a local hazard and regional liability. Maintaining the current design is a choice that city leaders make everyday. Sound Transit will be implementing minor changes (pedestrian gates) later this year, but a full redesign by SDOT is long overdue.

6 Storey, Single Stair, Accessible 12 Plex 1.75 FSR (1.6 FSR + 10% passive house bonus) 30% Lot Coverage = more green space than adjacent houses

This is a tragedy and an environmental catastrophe :( giant spaghetti highway interchange bulldozing affordable apartments in the middle of Seattle so that super yachts can trample our waterways

One of the funniest Onion headlines of the last decade

As @typewriteralley.bsky.social has reported recently, various faux-conservation NIMBY groups are trying to re-re-reappeal the Seattle housing growth plan right now under "environmental" guises. What are those pretenses, and why are they horrifically wrong? @shirleyswirley.bsky.social explains:

as someone who instinctively hears "we're protecting tree cover" and thinks, well surely that's a worthy goal, I really appreciated this breakdown of how Old Tree politics are actually employed by NIMBYs, in defiance of sound ecological science. #urbanism

The story is much worse. To make room for SUPER YACHTS, Coast Guard ordered the bridge raised. This means a much longer on-ramp is now needed for trucking. So making room for SUPER YACHTS is slated to bulldoze apartment homes and trees. See www.theurbanist.org/2022/04/22/s...

it's legit amazing how he continues to be 100% the wrong guy for this moment

The state is pushing Mercer Island, Duvall, and Bainbridge Island to legalize apartment buildings and Seattle won't even legalize them within walking distance of the region's biggest transit investments.

I really think part of the issue is that these ppl need to simply get a life. Join some pickleball clubs, pick up trash, watch your grandkids, volunteer at food bank. Then u will have friends/community and no more time or desire to nimby. IMO some of this is just bc nimbying is like church to them

Reminds me of the time I asked why they only have corridors 1/2 block wide and they were like well there are light concerns for the SF homeowners off arterials. And I was like do u think that’s equivalent to having to suffer the noise, pollution, dangerous streets on arterials? They went quiet🤪

“There are people who own their home for a very long time. It’s been a great investment. There are other people who think they will need to leave Seattle because they can’t afford a place to live.” The final legislation...is an attempt to “recognize that both those types of opinions are valid.” 🫤

Every time OPCD staff open their mouths, it becomes apparent that the department is in no way invested in fully addressing our housing crisis. People act like @pushtheneedle.bsky.social is making wild accusations, but their own words are enough to draw this conclusion.

Someone who's owned a house for decades and demands their block be preserved in amber for all time vs. someone staring down displacement for lack of workable housing options...these are not equally valid viewpoints. They are not! It's greed and selfishness vs. meeting a basic human need.

In the coming days you might well hear arguments that surveillance is the answer to the tragedy of gun violence, and therefore Seattle shouldn't turn off SPD's cameras. I urge you to interrogate this framing.

We have a good idea of what prevents gun violence, and it is not cameras. It is well-resourced gun violence prevention programs, youth programs, meeting basic needs, lockbox and gun buyback events, etc. Seattle could be doing much more to resource evidence-based solutions to prevent gun violence.

We are in the middle of a constitutional crisis in this country. People are being snatched off the streets. Due process is no longer an expectation. Journalists are being raided and arrested, protesters are being killed and terrorized, people are being materially targeted for political reasons.

Surveillance was NEVER the answer to gun violence. However, in such dire times, the stakes are even higher. The consequences and harm caused by surveillance have never been easier for Americans to see. Let's try to see past these false choices and find solutions that keep everyone safe.

I don’t think I can say this forcefully enough: hundreds of thousands of Haitians will lose status tomorrow with racist ending of their TPS & are spending today refreshing their feeds for a court order that could literally save thier lives. This is nothing short of psychosocial torture.

Here is the 2nd one: www.youtube.com/watch?v=GB7n... You will be soooo bioswale and natural drainage system pilled by the end and you will be like trees who?

Just to close the loop here. A cozy club of just the very worst people.

I hope everyone who is sharing this, aghast, will wear respirators (and properly). Measles is airborne and respirators block transmission of airborne pathogens between ppl—including those going into/out of detention centres. Don’t wait for the fascist government to tell you to b/c they won’t!

CBS censored Billie Eilish saying “Fuck ICE” at the Grammys. Here’s the uncensored version:

And not to put too fine a point on it, but a president who ran on eliminating “illegal” immigrants created a ton more “illegal” immigrants by canceling a bunch of actual real legal statuses. He took people off the path that everyone says they want people on.

the news cycle right now is unbearable. between the abduction & imprisonment of these children and the new wave of revelations about the child fucking elite, i just do not understand. how can you look at a child and feel any of those things. it seems incompatible with what i know about being human.

death by preventable disease is an inevitable and even desired outcome of concentration camps. in every era of concentration camps people have died of typhus, which is a disease of privation and enforced crowding. this illness is intentionally inflicted