Stephen Fesler
Stephen is a professional urban planner in Puget Sound with a passion for sustainable, livable, and diverse cities. He is especially interested in how policies, regulations, and programs can promote positive outcomes for communities. With stints in great cities like Bellingham and Cork, Stephen currently lives in Seattle. He primarily covers land use and transportation issues and has been with The Urbanist since 2014.
Paine Field Airport in Everett could see some notable expansions in the coming years to support increasing demand. Snohomish County, which owns the airport grounds but not the passenger terminal itself, has developed a draft master plan that is pending final approval from the feds and county council. A successful expansion would require far better transit options.
Reece Martin at RM Transit digs into what's so great about junction stations. These are stations where multiple rail lines converge and they can happen in multiple situations. Martin demonstrates how junctions are most powerful where, on a shared corridor, the first opportunity to create a transfer opportunity that...
Yakima, Boise, Missoula, and Pocatello could see Amtrak service again under a new federal plan that adds a daily route from Seattle to Denver and another running to Chicago on a modified alignment from Amtrak's Empire Builder.
If implemented, the new framework would make many of the types of buildings that already exist in abundance in Tacoma neighborhoods like Stadium and Proctor legal again to build across the city, with costly parking requirements in place reduced around current and planned transit.
Shoreline and North Seattle's evening and weekend transit will see a big boost as Metro restructures its bus network to pair with the soon-to-open Lynnwood Link light rail extension. However, Route 20 and Route 73 with get cut with no replacement service in some sections.
Uytae Lee of About Here highlights Kensington Market, a very diverse district in Toronto steeped in history. It’s increasingly become a popular area of the city for redevelopment interest. Lee highlights how the community is trying to move forward while having a stronger stake in decisions around how the...
Through a mix of highrise, midrise, and missing middle housing, Bellevue's new comprehensive plan would provide capacity for an extra 152,000 homes and 185,000 jobs, potentially allowing the city's population to more than double over the next 20 years.
The state responded to feedback from urbanists and homebuilders by finetuning its draft model code for missing middle housing to be more generous around lot coverage, floor area ratio, setbacks, and design standards.