Rubén Casas
Rubén joined The Urbanist's board in 2022. He is a scholar and teacher of rhetoric and writing at the University of Washington Tacoma. He is also the faculty lead of the Urban Environmental Justice Initiative at Urban@UW. In his work and advocacy, Rubén examines how cities and the institutions that comprise them imagine, plan, and build in ways that promote and/or discourage community and a sense of place.
Greening neighborhoods, boosting Pierce Transit funding by 50%, and embracing housing growth are the top three goals Rubén Casas has laid out for Pierce County under Ryan Mello's progressive leadership.
Addressing our national housing crisis will require a drastic shift in how we think about housing in our society: it needs to become a basic human right — something we are all entitled to and therefore something our government works to deliver.
In 1873, Tacomans considered laying out their fledgling city according to a unique Frederick Law Olmsted plan. The city ultimately discarded most of the plan, walking away from a greener, more park-oriented Tacoma.
Melanie LaPlant Dressel Park opened on April 11 as a beautiful park far away from the rest of the city. An elevated, wide ribbon of concrete — the roaring I-705 freeway — separates the park from its users. Tacoma should remove this barrier.
Zoning has created urban forms that are expensive, exclusionary, and unsafe — Tacoma’s attempt to reform zoning stands to create more livable and complete neighborhoods by tackling the many secondary effects of zoning.
The stalling out of major downtown redevelopment offers a chance to finetune goals.
The Tacoma Town Center, a $300-million project that is to be developed on a 6.4-acre parcel of land near the University of Washington Tacoma campus, is stalled once again. The reasons are typical: Developers have not been...
How a proposed (and now permitted) large industrial development intersects with plans to engage South Tacoma Way in community-led planning.
Residents of South Tacoma who oppose industrial development in their neighborhood received unwanted news in April of this year when the City of Tacoma announced its decision to approve plans...
Tacoma has the least tree canopy in the Puget Sound Region. Residents experience this reality in higher average temperatures and poor air quality.
On a recent walk through the Hilltop neighborhood, I came across a stretch of sidewalk decorated with polka dots, each about a foot in diameter and spaced...