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.
No more raids: Greyhound has made an agreement with Washington's attorney general to stop warrantless and no-cause ICE sweeps on buses.
Planning ahead: Pittsburg's transit agency has charted a 25-year growth plan.
Rising ridership: New York City's subway continues to see ridership recovery.
Permanent program: Arlington County, Virginia is studying a permanent...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vI5pbDFDZyI
In the 1960s, Amsterdam briefly was sold on a highway urban renewal project designed by an American planner David Jokinen. It would have destroyed the Amsterdam known today and it parts of it did get implemented as the country became more car-oriented, but it was halted and things have...
Pierce County representatives argued that transit riders in their districts are being left behind by the Puget Sound Regional Council and the state.
In what was supposed to be a meeting about allocations of federal funding for transit, turned into a fiery, tense meeting about the future of the Puget...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41VJudBdYXY
Bloomberg Quicktake/CityLab explores how Vienna is tackling affordable housing for all in the city. Mike Eliason, syndicated columnist of The Urbanist, offers his perspective in the video, too.
Burien is banking on bus rapid transit (BRT) and code changes to deliver a transit-oriented future on a primary city corridor. With the expected arrival of BRT via the RapidRide H Line in the fall of 2022, Burien has adopted an interim transit-oriented development overlay along the corridor. City...
Sound Transit's Chief Executive Officer Peter Rogoff will be departing from the agency by the end of May 2022. In a surprising turn, the agency's board of directors chose not to renew Rogoff's contract. Instead, the board opted to immediately open the CEO role to a nationwide search process...
Washington is still hunting for a new major commercial airport location as part of a state-mandated study. The state department of transportation has winnowed the list down to six possible sites in Puget Sound -- none of which are in King County. A somewhat similar study was conducted by...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Go5cfISkD3U
The story of how Chicago got its famed waterfront lakeshore parks is a true saga with a series of battles and efforts. Wealthy elites, railroads, legal cases, swindlers, World's Fair, and others all were part of the efforts. And today, there are new efforts to rethink how portions of...