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.
It sucks when Halloween falls early in the week. The spookiest night of the year and you have to wake up for work early the next day. Extracurriculars, obligations, and all the regular schedules of autumn life get in the way of releasing our purest macabre selves.
While we lament,...
You hear it all the time, Seattle drivers are 'Just The Worst.' They’re terrible at navigating around the ubiquitous traffic circles. They’re incompetent on the highway. They’re unable to control their giant land yachts. "I’m great at driving," people will say, "but all these other whack jobs can’t figure...
Since we last checked in on the megaproject/arcology beat, there has been some progress on the new NEOM linear city rising from the sands of Saudi Arabia. Contracts have been awarded, new towns have been developed for workers, and excavation continues apace. You can enjoy their most recent promotional...
It's time to vote for Seattle City Council, a housing levy, and elected positions all over King County. The Urbanist has published its general election endorsements. Get out your ballots, mark them, and make sure they're returned by November 7.
In this episode, co-hosts Natalie Argerious and Ray Dubicki break...
“You gaslight yourself by being crazy.” - Judy Gemstone
This week’s sequence of congressional slap fights scraped the edge of a devastating government shutdown and led to the ouster of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. The process has resulted in the single most predictable outcome: Democrats being blamed for Republican disarray.
Congressional...
Strangely, it is very difficult to answer the question: "How many zones does Seattle have?" That alone suggests an uncomfortable answer.
The Seattle Municipal Code lists 38 zones. These include 10 residential zones, 5 commercial zones, 4 downtown zones, and 5 (soon to be changed) industrial zones. There are also...
Like a giant overhead bin full of cookies and cash, Alaska sits for many as potential salvation. Quietly looming above, it waits as a refuge for the smart and mobile who can escape the inevitable collapse of climate and economy. Too many people think they’re going to see the...
At its core, the strategy is built on the idea that “the library makes a difference in people’s lives and in the greater community."
All branches of the Seattle Public Library closed this past Tuesday for a city-wide staff meeting. The organization was brought together to review the system’s new...