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Community Development

Explainer: What’s an Environmental Impact Statement?

An Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) sounds like a highly technical and complex mechanism of governance. They take years, spiral into hundreds of pages with...
A photo of a white apartment building in an urban area.

Call to Action: Speak Up For Housing Benefit Districts

On a day-to-day basis, we are confronted with a million different challenges: maybe you dropped your coffee on the carpet, maybe you just cannot...
A photo of an empty freeway edged by trees

South Park Joins Growing Movement to Dismantle Freeways

From a bird’s eye view, Seattle’s South Park neighborhood is cut in half by SR-99, divided diagonally from one end to another. The highway,...
A photo a woman with grey hair wearing a black blazer.

A Conversation on Manufacturing in Cities with “Recast Your City” Author Ilana Preuss

Recast Your City is subtitled “How to save your downtown with small-scale manufacturing,” which gives the impression that it’s a one trick book. But...

Snohomish County Sets New 20-Year Community Growth Targets

Snotrac Coalition worries the plan won't put enough growth equitably near high-capacity transit. Snohomish County planning authorities have all but signed off on new growth...
A photo of a street with a crosswalk and curb bulbs near apartment buildings.

Seattle’s Crown Hill Action Plan Centers Walkability and Community

In November, Seattle's Office of Planning and Community Development (OPCD) released their draft Crown Hill Urban Action Plan. The scope of this plan is...
A rendering of residential and commercial buildings surrounding a town square.

Lynnwood’s City Center: Transforming Strip Malls into a Dense Urban Neighborhood

Like many suburban American cities that saw major growth in the second half of the 20th century, Lynnwood lacks a defined central commercial area....
A rendering of towers surrounded by trees plus a helicopter.

Telosa: What We Can Learn from Utopian Myths

As a child, I watched a documentary at school about Arcosanti, a utopian city in the desert founded on the idea that environmental sustainability...