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.
Lessons from a one-time crown jewel of urban renewal.
Recently I got to be a tourist in my hometown. The hard part about going back after a long while away is seeing how badly the current stewards have screwed things up. My visit to Baltimore this summer was the first...
As of Thursday, Seattle Public Schools (SPS) had six days of school and six days of late school buses. It's a local impact of a national school bus driver shortage. Around town, the shortage is getting less short but it’s still pretty noxious. On the first day of school...
For over a year, committees of local business and labor representatives have been working to develop a strategy for Seattle’s industrial and maritime lands. Given a pandemic and some other stuff going on in the city, it wasn’t a particularly high-stature initiative. In many ways, dozens of meetings over...
How Federal Subsidy of Loan Interest Rates Block Missing Middle Housing
Earlier in the pandemic, I was searching around Zillow. Looking at houses was a fair alternative to doomscrolling Reddit. One evening, I came across a building for sale. Interesting place in our neighborhood with a couple apartment units and...
Of all the unexpected systems that the pandemic has laid bare, the crisis has shown childcare to be uniquely scattered and broken. By closing down the backbone of childcare for most people -- the public school systems -- families were left scrambling to make do. The news report euphemism...
The Urbanist spoke with business owners and leaders who have spent the last year trying to keep restaurants, shops, and the farmers market working along Ballard Avenue. The result, after a series of more makeshift shelters over the course of the pandemic, has been a row of sturdily built...
Councilmember Strauss looks towards long-term café streets.
Councilmember Dan Strauss is enjoying Seattle’s outdoor dining cafe streets, even outside of his own district. “I love them. I was out at Rione XIII having dinner. It was really nice to have some semblance of normalcy while I was feeling safe in...
A bill to set up a public ownership authority at the Interbay Armory site is in the last stages of the legislative process. On Tuesday, the Washington Senate Ways and Means committee will hear House Bill 1173 at its 1:30pm session. The bill has already passed the House. From...