Ray Dubicki
Ray Dubicki is a stay-at-home dad and parent-on-call for taking care of general school and neighborhood tasks around Ballard. This lets him see how urbanism works (or doesn’t) during the hours most people are locked in their office. He is an attorney and urbanist by training, with soup-to-nuts planning experience from code enforcement to university development to writing zoning ordinances. He enjoys using PowerPoint, but only because it’s no longer a weekly obligation.
In 1997, a caller to Art Bell's late night Coast to Coast AM shared the astounding story of a bottomless pit on his property near Ellensburg, Washington. After dropping trash into the hole without it filling, then a questionable amount of fishing line without hitting bottom, Mel Waters decided...
The Urbanist Book Club is pleased to welcome Nathan Vass to our April 4th Book Club Meeting, which will start at 6pm via Zoom. He is the author of The Lines that Make Us, a series of essays and observations about experiences driving a King County bus through some...
WALeg Wednesday faces another calendar cutoff and looks at lobbying efforts by agencies, organizations, and corporations.
The Washington Legislature is in the week between legislative calendar cutoffs, so there is some tumult in what bills are moving forward. As discussed last week, the calendar cutoffs are deadlines imposed by the...
Given the amount of construction around town, Seattle’s sidewalks get painted a rainbow of colors. Many know that these markings are important for something, but the specifics seem indecipherable.
In short, the markings are for construction and utilities. The markings are coded according to the American Public Works Association’s Uniform...
Welcome to your February long weekend. It’s not the best of weather in Seattle, so we look askance at all you escaping to beaches in Mexico. Even you should still take a second to appreciate that the long weekend is brought about by the President’s Day federal holiday.
What would...
Nathan Vass has been sharing his observations as a bus driver with The Urbanist for nine years. From the first conversation chronicles and desaturated photos, he has been building an honest and nuanced portrait of a living Seattle. There’s no Instagram filters here, and that’s fine. Not because the...
Seattle’s era of small thinking and smaller plans must come to an end. In order to face the combined climate and housing crises, the city and region must crawl out of its own navel and see the opportunities. This isn’t Burnham’s trope about making no small plans. This is...
In this WALeg report, we look at the progress that's been made by housing bills, brewing opposition, update other legislation, and listen to the ticking legislative clock.
Also in this digest:
Important Bills at a Glance
This Week’s Focus: What is the "Policy Cutoff"?
HB 1110 and HB 5190 are out of committee...