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.
KOMO 4’s Seattle is Dying documentary hit Seattle like a giant stink-bombshell. Homelessness has been a big issue in Seattle for a while, but the documentary focused attention on particular elements of the crisis--spoiler alert: both the analysis and the proposed solutions were bad. Nonetheless, it got a lot...
Reports from Olympia are that House Bill 1793 is in danger. The bill would authorize local jurisdictions to do use camera enforcement to keep motorists from illegally blocking intersections, crosswalks, and transit lanes. Authored by Rep. Joe Fitzgibbon, the bill made it out of committee and onto the floor...
Last year most local Democratic politicians lined up behind the carbon fee initiative (I-1631). That measure didn't pass. Nonetheless the coalition behind the initiative vowed to keep building momentum toward dramatic climate action. Climate advocates hoped expanding Democratic majorities in both chambers would speed the way.
In some ways, the...
Today, the City will hold the final public meeting on "citywide" Mandatory Housing Affordability (MHA) before the Seattle City Council is expected to vote in March and pass the rezone program.
We urge you to attend the MHA hearing at City Hall. It starts at 5:30pm but people hoping to...
The Urbanist published 594 articles in 2018. On average, 34,600 users visited our blog each month in 2018. Both were new records. So thanks to our readers for giving us your time and engaging in this citymaking conversation with us!
Stronger output was built in part on new contributors. We...
We are facing the twin crises of housing affordability and climate change, but solutions at the state level appear too timid while the federal government is coated in Orange Cheeto fingerprints right now and is trying to go backwards. King County decisively backed the I-1631 Climate Pollution Fee in...
On Tuesday, the Move All Seattle Sustainably (MASS) coalition released a post-mortem report on the three-week viaduct closure and proclaimed the success of non-car commutes.
"The closure of the Alaskan Way Viaduct was hyped as a potential traffic disaster that Seattle would have to endure for three weeks," MASS stated...
2018 was a big year. We're excited with what we accomplished at The Urbanist, but we're also aware of the need to make our organization more durable. Volunteers come and go, as do donors, but somebody still has to write stories, organize events, and keep the lights on. That's...