Push The Needle

we shouldn’t divide our cities like TV dinners with zoning. we should plan cities like salads and mix everything up

You often hear NIMBYs say we can’t grow housing unless we “have the infrastructure like schools” in place. Seattle’s current enrollment is under 50k and it was 94k in the 1960s We have plenty of capacity to be a much bigger city komonews.com/news/local/s...

The senior planners are not pro housing

The Mayor of Seattle @mayor.seattle.gov can replace 5 of these members in August 2027 and replace the other 6, including this board member, in August of 2028. They are all entirely mayoral selections. She should use the power we gave her and get these people out of here

what a combo

Achieved by smart cost cutting metrics like having shallower stations, shorter trains (thus, smaller stations) that run more frequently and can because they are automated.

Wonder when Seattle’s Office of Sustainability and Environment is going to get the hint

A landmarks board member opposing this because it “maximizes housing” should be grounds for immediate removal. @mayor.seattle.gov should step in. These seats are all mayoral selections. Remove this guy

One fascinating thing about London is The Tube basically moves some 200,000 fans across various soccer matches every weekend

And that’s how it works in the rest of the world!

“Of course, not everyone is able-bodied enough to walk, ride a bike, or travel by public transit citywide, so there would be a litany of accessibility issues to solve” 33% of disabled people cannot drive a car because of their disability www.seattlemet.com/news-and-cit...

My housing hot take is we shouldn’t offer fixed rate mortgages. Everything should be adjustable rate. You should be impacted by politics and inflation the way renters are. It would reform politics for the better.

Real cities kick out the cars

Throw all the cars out of here for good

This is how we conduct building approval meetings in Seattle

Airport security

There is a neat section perspective in the west seattle station RFP

Architects serve on these boards to scream their own insecure frustration with the industry like it’s a closed door therapy session. Stop hiring these people and their firms that shit on everyone else’s work

Vehicles pollute and are the single largest source of CO2 emissions. But no environmental review. Meanwhile, the effort to bring the light rail to this area requires a delicate environmental review that can delay it and cost billions Environmental review is a complete farce

The group that fights condos for people & bike lanes in industrial zones claim it’ll gentrify blue collar jobs away but they are fine with a bunch of luxury cars being parked there. You can’t make this up. The picture includes the Monopoly characters car www.seattletimes.com/business/loc...

A biking and walking trail on city land would supposedly destroy the delicate industrial character of this area, but this is fine?

The biggest factor to building good multifamily housing is allowing multiple single stair buildings to be connected and form the blocks we see in Barcelona and Paris. It is the single biggest factor to success

We need to abolish the entire current “historic preservation” infrastructure and start over. It has become nothing more than a vehicle for self-important busybodies to block any progress on the city’s most pressing problems.

I am always amazed architects publicly alienate future clients by being so repulsive

Architects are monsters when it’s not their project

“Help me, we lost elections but there’s surely a way I can still win them by having a room of 7 people circumvented democracy” — all historic preservationists

A cyclist hit on this road died this week but the SDOT Director would like you to know that they widened crosswalk paint, added “no turn on red” signs for drivers and now put the walk sign up a few seconds before the light turns green

"City departments should be doing cartwheels of joy to have community members who are so organically engaged at a time when SDOT routinely spends thousands trying to produce even a fraction of this engagement." 🔥Rep. Reed🔥

This site on Aurora was zoned to be hundreds of homes, had a proposal to become 242 homes on a driving range, & now will just be some utility water treatment plant instead. When planners shove housing on corridors to satisfy “growth potential” do they subtract the homes lost with stuff like this?

Thanks to - allowing single stair buildings - transit-oriented development one can build a 6-storey apt building that fits on 1 single-family lot. *26* units, 6 of them are 3-bed, 18 are 2-bed. https://www.shapeyourcity.ca/2150-w-16-ave #CanadaHousingCrisis

Timely article, a cyclist hit on this stretch of this road died yesterday. I’m sure that 1200 day “study” SDOT has been working on will fix that problem

The departments simply are not with us. Staff have orchestrated mutiny to undermine state lawmakers plans to make roads safer www.theurbanist.org/state-lawmak...

I am amazed how little people outside the profession understand about building codes and professional liability and risk. Permit agencies in Seattle are often focused on cage aesthetic things and small interpretations that effect barely anything

It took the Empire State Building 600 days to design, permit and build in the 1930s Today, just to get a permit in Seattle for a mid rise apartment building takes you 900 days

This person is now dead The city and state’s lack of action on this 7 lane road that slams right through the heart of the city just bigs me “Nobody would be crazy enough to ride their bike on Aurora” is what they always say I see plenty who do

Because of the National Parks Service’s required setbacks between a landmark and new addition, this project had to have a whole floor level of concrete because wood cannot accommodate required aesthetic breaks. How much embodied CO2 is the national landmarks program mandating?

The design of this building is exempt from building modulations, building setbacks, and tower separation rules because it’s made out of mass timber. Questions I have are, doesn’t it look good? If so, why do those rules exist? Do those rules actually make our buildings uglier?

whoa. supply and demand works? crazy stuff.

I saw a bunch of these in Boston a few weeks ago. They do an incredible job of preserving what makes a building historic while allowing smart alterations and additions. Encasing a city in amber is economic seppuku.

I found one of my favorite artists this way. A guy was blasting his music, I liked it, I googled the lyrics, found the artist and now they’ve been added to my playlist

I bet this guy ironically despises the Defund the Police movement (considering 40% of property taxes go to municipal general funds that directly fund police departments)

A stretch Lime scooter is all it takes to tackle the male loneliness epidemic.

$750,000 per home for a non profit social housing developer. Maybe all that unaffordable new housing is priced so “greedy” after all? New things are expensive www.theurbanist.org/seattle-soci...