Staff Biography

Stephen Fesler

Senior Reporter

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.

Recent Articles

Sunday Video: How Elevated Rail Makes Cities Better

In North America, modern rail transit usually avoids conventional elevated lines in dense cities and even suburbs. Reece Martin of RMTransit discusses what makes elevated rail so good.

Sunday Video: Should Cities Ban Drive-Thrus?

Dave Amos of City Beautiful discusses drive-thru businesses and how they are evolving to create more vehicle throughput. As part of this, Amos discusses the merits of banning them in cities, offering San Luis...

Sunday Video: What About P3s for Transit?

Public private partnerships have become trendy in infrastructure projects, particularly for transportation. Reece Martin of RMTransit dives into the pros and cons of this strategy as it relates to transit.

Sunday Video: Can North America Do Train Station Right?

Ray Delahanty of CityNerd ranks principal train stations across the United States and Canada for population catchment in proximity to them. Seattle makes the list as one the better-situated stations with King Street Station.

Sunday Video: What’s Good And Bad About Amtrak and Via Rail?

Riding the rails from New York City to Toronto and then eventually onward to London, Ontario, Jason Slaughter of Not Just Bikes details his journey, highlighting the good and bad of Amtrak and Via...