Doug Trumm
Doug Trumm is publisher of The Urbanist. An Urbanist writer since 2015, he dreams of pedestrian streets, bus lanes, and a mass-timber building spree to end our housing crisis. He graduated from the Evans School of Public Policy and Governance at the University of Washington in 2019. He lives in Seattle's Fremont neighborhood and loves to explore the city by foot and by bike.
When Sound Transit proposed a dogleg light rail alignment to Everett in order to pick up Paine Field on the way, many--present company included--expressed doubts. Would dreams of a second major airport in the region materialize and would it be at Everett's Paine Field? Were we building a rail...
What makes a street dangerous? Do you need a "cutting-edge" algorithm to answer that question? The City of Bellevue has said yes as it embarks on a huge crowd-sourcing effort to teach Microsoft's traffic data analytics algorithm how to identify humans walking and biking so that traffic-camera-recorded near misses can be cataloged.
The...
The results of the annual One Night Count, which was conduced on January 27th, have finally been released and they show homelessness at an all-time high. The King County unsheltered population has climbed to 5,485. Meanwhile, volunteers counted 6,158 people in shelters or transitional housing. That shows a 21.8%...
Rigged! - State Senator Bob Hasegawa thinks everything is rigged, most of all things pertaining to Sound Transit, and he's running for Mayor of Seattle. Heidi Groover tried to understand this conspiratorial mindset and why he compared light rail to dog poop.
Inequality - Income inequality is on the rise, but...
Seattle is back on top. Among big cities, Seattle is growing faster than any other (on a percentage basis) as it added 20,847 people between July 1, 2015 and July 1, 2016, according to new US Census Bureau estimates. That 3.1% year-to-year growth puts Seattle at an estimated 704,352...
The fate of much disputed MidTown Center may finally be decided. Lake Union Partners closed the deal yesterday on the coveted property with a $23.25 million bid. Moreover, the developer agreed to sell 20% of the parcel to the conservation non-profit Forterra who has partnered with Africatown with the shared goal of creating...
Over the weekend The Seattle Times ran a story about the technology that will allow East Link to operate on a floating bridge and several other outlets picked up the story, including yours truly. Another outlet to pick up the story, CityLab, had a strange take for an urbanist publication:
Whether the project...
Light rail arriving to new neighborhoods brings with it ample opportunity for transit-oriented development (TOD). Anticipation is particularly high ahead of Northgate Station, where King County has set aside two large lots comprising 5.7 acres for affordable housing. Seattle has designated Northgate an Urban Center and zoned the area for...