The Urbanist had a very big year in 2024, and we don’t want to let up. We want to go into 2025 even stronger. So, we are throwing a mini drive asking readers to include us in their year-end giving plans.
Note that we have a newly minted “The Urbanist Fund” 501(c)(3) supporting arm that is able to accept tax-deductible gifts.
The Urbanist just celebrated its 10th anniversary. More than 100 supporters turned out at our celebration in First Hill, which meant the world to our team. Thanks to your support our team keeps growing.
In the first year we employed a full-time staff reporter, Ryan Packer certainly did not disappoint. Of our top 10 most read articles of 2024, five were by Packer. They dominated the transportation beat and also posted strong articles in a host of other issues, including housing, land use, parks, and the minutia of regional planning, spanning the entire metropolitan area in the process.
If you’re anything like me, they’re the first reporter I turn to when I want to fully digest what’s going on in the city around me and why. Packer’s work is complemented by freelancer and volunteer contributions. Amy Sundberg become a monthly staple, focused on the public safety beat in a time when rhetoric is flying around aplenty but evidence-based proven solutions seem to be in short supply.
We’re also excited to welcome to announce our third full-time employee next month to staff our new development and events director position. Expect an announcement introducing that hire soon. The new position will help us expand our events programming in 2025, as well as continuing to build capacity to expand our staff and our coverage.
We set a new readership record in 2024 as we published 585 articles and counting.
Already our stories covering cities outside Seattle is growing, which can create a virtuous cycle as we publicize the exploits of urbanist leaders in cities like Bothell, Shoreline, Kirkland, Tacoma, Bellevue, and Redmond. That coverage helps build momentum for yet more urbanist exploits. Rinse and repeat!
Perhaps nowhere is this trend more dramatic than in Bothell, where Mayor Mason Thompson has new allies on the Bothell City Council. Collectively, the group is poised to add safe streets and housing projects, increasingly turning this Eastside suburb into an oasis, centered around its pedestrianized main street and downtown linkage to the Sammamish River Trail and the growing regional trail network beyond.
Urbanists are also flexing their muscles at the state level, and our expanding coverage of the state legislature is helping advance the cause.
Our coverage of the state’s plan to drop a key trail tunnel from the SR 520 Portage Bay and Roanoke Lid project. We broke the story, highlighting that the move would only save about $10 million or 1% of the massive highway project’s budget, while compromising road safety. We proceeded to amplify an advocacy campaign that sprung up to oppose the cut. Within months, the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) had backed off the cut; the Harvard Avenue trail tunnel was saved.
Urbanists helped fight for statewide minimum standard for middle housing, which is pushing medium-sized and large cities to phase out single family zoning in favor of multiplexes via their Comprehensive Plan updates due by the end of this year. If effected cities fail to do so, the state’s model housing code will take over in July 2025. By the way, The Urbanist pushed the state to improve its model code to truly foster housing creation and housing diversity.
Some cities have shown more enthusiasm for embracing middle housing citywide than others. Unfortunately, Seattle has been one of the more tentative and will need until the summer to finalize its plan. But slow in coming together doesn’t necessarily mean it will be a bad plan. Thanks to pressure from housing advocates, the Harrell Administration has improved the plan with more housing options and capacity. That didn’t happen by accident.
The Urbanist was also first to reveal that Seattle planning staff had proposed in 2023 a “One Seattle” 20-year growth plan with much more housing capacity and diversity before Mayor Bruce Harrell’s team intervened to water down and delay that proposal. We ran a series of articles that laid out the drawbacks of going small and covered the ways the pro-housing movement was pushing back and urging the City to pursue the original “housing abundance map,” which had been buried from public view until we published it.
Readers can continue to track the One Seattle housing growth plan saga here.
We want to cover even more stories in 2025.
Growing our staff and supporting a larger paid freelance writer program would allow us to broaden our work and ensure our masthead is built to last. Currently, our budget allows us to accept about ten articles per month from freelancers, but greater resources would allow us to expand that program. Donate today!
The Urbanist has switched to a new donor platform that has more features for subscribers, like being able to adjust your credit card yourself. If you have any questions, please email finances@theurbanist.org. The Urbanist is a 501(c)(4) advocacy journalism nonprofit so gifts through our normal channels are NOT tax deductible.
That said, we recently launched a 501(c)(3) supporting org for the first time ever, which is able to accept tax deductible gifts. Visit The Urbanist Fund website for details and email us with questions at info@theurbanistfund.org. We are only able to support one-time gifts through at The Urbanist Fund at this time. The Urbanist Fund should qualify for more company match programs given its 501(c)(3) status.
Doug Trumm is publisher of The Urbanist. An Urbanist writer since 2015, he dreams of pedestrianizing streets, blanketing the city in bus lanes, and unleashing a mass timber building spree to end the affordable housing shortage and avert our coming climate catastrophe. He graduated from the Evans School of Public Policy and Governance at the University of Washington in 2019. He lives in East Fremont and loves to explore the city on his bike.
