Failing their charter: Seattle’s first charter school, First Place Scholars, is failing and is on the road to expulsion.
Crying Lowrise: The Stranger describes how the Lowrise zoning debate and votes went down this week.
Fair housing: The Supreme Court of the United States is slated to deliver a landmark decision on Fair Housing rules next week.
Greening Roosevelt Island: New York City’s Roosevelt Island is getting a bold, new development to accommodate Cornell University’s expansion–it’ll be built to Passivhaus standards. The architectural and site design however are less impressive than the green bones.
Block-by-block: CHS gives a block-by-block breakdown on the improvements that the Seattle Department of Transportation will make to complete the Broadway Bikeway.
Dead space: Some clever ideas about how to use the dead space under elevated structures.
Past is future: Crosscut talks about how Seattle transportation past shapes its future.
Fixing Jackson: Seattle Bike Blog says that Jackson Street is just unsafe for bikes, but there’s a fix for it if the City pursues it.
Not so popular: Sprawl has been declining since 1994.
Bike lane sweepin’: People For Bikes gets wonky and highlights a variety of street sweepers made just for clearing bike lanes of debris.
Bigger government: Albania is making government bigger by reducing the number of municipalities in an effort to make cities better run. Will it work?
Uber benefits: A California case could deliver expansive benefits to Uber drivers, but that could also be a problem for Uber’s financial structure.
Capitol Hill 2020: The Chamber of Commerce for Capitol Hill has put together their vision for community actions to enhance and preserve the character of Capitol Hill over the next five years.
Getting vintage: Modern Census data stylized in a wonderfully vintaged 19th-century atlas.
Oversold on housing: The housing crisis is a deeply complicated topic, but Daniel Kay Hertz argues that it’s a crisis when home prices rise and when they don’t.
Manhattan cottages: Whoa there, cottages on Manhattan mid-rise buildings?
Pronto station change: The 2nd and Pine Pronto station has moved to Pike and 2nd.
Reenvisioning alleyways: Seattle is taking some dark, dank alleys and making them into illuminated and purposeful places for people.
Navigable subways: Ideas for how designers could make navigation out of subway stations better.
Cycle-conscious traffic lights: London is trying out traffic lights that stay green just for cyclists in order to protect them.
Rental discrimination: After recent investigations, the City of Seattle says that there has been widespread rental discrimination by landlords.
Expanded aquarium: The Seattle Aquarium is looking to nearly double the size of its facilities ($) on the Seattle waterfont.
$15 per hour: Zillow says that in many US markets, $15 per hour would still be too little to afford the average rental unit. Bloomberg goes further and talks about how Millenials are often priced out in certain markets.
DC’s Olympics bid: Greater Greater Washington highlights some of the great and not-so-great ideas that were in DC’s bid for the Olympics.
Car-free: Dublin is doubling down and going car-free in its city centre in 2017.
Stephen is a professional urban planner in Puget Sound with a passion for sustainable, livable, and diverse cities. He is especially interested in how policies, regulations, and programs can promote positive outcomes for communities. With stints in great cities like Bellingham and Cork, Stephen currently lives in Seattle. He primarily covers land use and transportation issues and has been with The Urbanist since 2014.