Top Urbanist Action: Show Us A Hero And Support Affordable Housing At Fort Lawton

We hope you got some rest and relaxation over the holidays. You’re going to need it this year to push our city towards a better urban future. Our top action for this week is an obvious one:

• Show up and support affordable housing at Fort Lawton: On Tuesday (January 9th), there will be a public meeting to about affordable housing at Fort Lawton. We covered this issue today and earlier last spring. There will likely be opposition at the public meeting. Heidi Groover at The Stranger painted a picture of the wealthy NIMBYs and the endless excuses to rationalize opposition to affordable housing. You can also reference the book and mini-series Show Me A Hero to see the same attitudes and language. Showing up is important and if you’re comfortable speaking, you can. There will be a sign-up sheet available to provide public testimony. The event is 6pm at 3555 W McGraw St, Seattle.

Beyond that, you can get involved in urbanism in a variety of other ways:

• Share your comments on Roosevelt RapidRide with SDOT: We already mentioned this once but the comment period ends January 12th. So make sure you get your comment in this week. This line is one of seven RapidRide corridors that the city is adding. It will be a critical connection to light rail for Eastlake and South Lake Union. We covered some of the initial design choices, such as scaling back bus lanes and bike lanes (also covered by Seattle Bike Blog). It’s still worth pushing Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) for a better design, forgoing parking, providing safe bicycle facilities, and giving buses full priority throughout the corridor.
• Tell King County Metro what you think of the future RapidRide H Line: As we already mentioned, Seattle is getting a bunch of new RapidRides. We’ve covered this line previously as well, including some of the trade-offs.
• Attend our Monthly Meetup: On Tuesday, we’ll have Kelsey Mesher from Cascade Bicycle Club as our guest speaker.
• Apply too be on the Seattle Pedestrian Advisory Board: This board is taking new applicants and the deadline is January 25th. Members will get a lot of opportunities to interact with city staff and provide feedback on how to improve the pedestrian environment.
• Attend a design review meeting: Four design review meetings will be held in Seattle this week. They’re great opportunities to provide feedback and shape Seattle’s future built environment.
• Apply to be on The Daniel Bagley Elementary School Advisory Committee: This committee will provide advice on proposed renovation and expansion of the school that could require special zoning departures for added building height and less on-site parking. The application deadline is January 30th.
• Apply to be on the West Seattle and Ballard Link Extension Stakeholder Advisory Group: This committee will meet on a regular basis to provide feedback to Sound Transit as alternatives for the light rail lines are developed. Applications are due on January 25th.