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.
Mayor Jenny Durkan delivered her first budget address today at Fire Station 10. While the mayor had broadcast her desire to trim department budgets by 2% to 5%, ultimately her budget proposal increased the City's budget to $5.9 billion, with police and transportation spending leading the way.
The budget includes...
While housing advocates have been calling for social housing on the City-owned Mercer Mega Block site and other publicly-held land, the Durkan administration is planning to auction the choice parcel off to highest bidder. In fact, the City's Request for Proposals (RFP) brags about just how juicy this South...
2015 was a different time. People were optimistic and filled with ambition, especially the transit advocates. We were not at a "value engineering" scaling back phase. On the contrary, activists were charging ahead and among other things campaigned to add a NE 130th Street Link station to Sound Transit...
Stone Way and the surrounding Fremont and Wallingford blocks continue to be a focal point of new construction. In 2015, I predicted this neighborhood, which some have dubbed "Frelingford", was developing a retail district to rival Fremont's 36th Street and Wallingford's 45th Street corridor. That trend has continued, as...
The Urbanist has been banging the drum for following through on long-laid plans to build the Center City Connector to connect Seattle's two orphan streetcar lines. The wheels were well in motion--$75 million in federal grants are secured to fund it--yet politicians vacillate and Very Serious People pundits poo...
Modern American streetcars have a bad rap. Partially this is self-inflicted. Several American transit agencies have planned streetcars doomed with routes that are too short, illogical, mixed with traffic, and infrequent. Immediately expected to succeed, first-time streetcar agencies often run into design and construction snafus and instead open lines...
It seemed like a done deal. The King County Council was going to fork over about $190M to pay for Safeco Field maintenance intended to keep its tenant, the Seattle Mariners, happy and ready to sign a lease extension.
Then something extraordinary happened. Hundreds of people pushing for more affordable...
Tuesday, August 7th is the last day to vote in the Washington state Primary Election. The Urbanist Election Board opted not to endorse for the primary this year, but we will be weighing in for the General Election. So stay tuned!
This year, no stamps are necessary to return your...