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.
Great cities have active pedestrian-oriented retail areas, and Seattle has many. Could we use more? I think so, and Seattle Department of Planning and Development (DPD) does, too. DPD is evaluating a major expansion of the city’s Pedestrian Retail Area zones, the biggest such expansion in the city’s history.
The Pedestrian...
Seattle is in the midst of its update to the city’s comprehensive plan, dubbed “Seattle 2035“. Washington State’s Growth Management Act requires that cities and counties across the state update their comprehensive plans every 10 years to adequately plan for a 20-year horizon. The current update cycle has many...
This week, the City of Seattle's Council Transportation Committee had a briefing on a new staircase at Yesler Terrace called the 10th Avenue S Hill Climb. Tom Fucoloro over at the Seattle Bike Blog gave a great run down on the project benefits and design.
The 10th Ave S Hill Climb...
Sure, that's a pretty picture, but let's face it: Pike/Pine as a corridor sucks. Yeah, there's a lot of lovely buildings and kitschy businesses dotting the length of it, but the streetscape is desperately unbalanced as a multi-modal corridor. Travel along this stretch of the Pike/Pine corridor any Friday...
We all know Seattle is in the midst of a development renaissance. But just how much development are we experiencing and where? What will that growth look like? And will we still have room for further growth in the future? I set out in search of answers to these...