Search Results
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Exclusionary Zoning Robs Our Cities of Their Best Qualities
Seattle’s zoning has roots in racial and class exclusion and remains among the largest obstacles to realizing the city’s goals for equity and affordability. In a city experiencing rapid growth and intense pressures on access to affordable housing, the historic level of single-family zoning is no longer either realistic or sustainable. Strong words from the 2015 Seattle Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda (HALA) report in support of its headline-grabbing recommendation...Read more » -
A Good Way to Make Housing Scarcer and More Expensive
A cautionary tale of what Seattle learned from five years of “Streamlined Design Review” (a.k.a. how to make housing more expensive).Read more » -
Why Vancouver Trounces the Rest of Cascadia in Building ADUs
Editor’s note: This article is Sightline’s very first from our new senior researcher, Dan Bertolet. We’re thrilled to have him on board to help both continue and expand our work pursuing smart solutions to our region’s big questions on housing and urban growth. Read his full bio here, and follow him on Twitter at @danbertolet. Cascadia’s three largest cities have all sworn themselves devotees of the accessory dwelling unit (ADU)—also known...Read more » -
Weekend Reading 12/24/15
Serena The excellent local blog Seattlish called out a KIRO Radio host for poking fun at folks who use public transit in their dating endeavors (as part of an argument against the city’s smart new restricted parking zones). Seattlish then proceeded to crowdsource a bunch of sweet stories about people who used public transit and car2go and other rad car-free urban modes to find romance. Awesome. And I’m happy to...Read more » -
Weekend Reading 12/18/15
Tarika In Portland on Saturday, a tanker truck of gasoline crashed into a parked train. In photos, such as the one below, the resulting fire can be seen blazing a few hundred feet from a liquid natural gas storage tank. The images are a strong statement on the safeguards we should consider as we experience growth of the oil and gas industry in Cascadia. The nearly 50-year old storage tank,...Read more » -
8 Takeaways from Oregon’s Global Warming Commission’s Report
In its 2015 report, the Oregon Global Warming Commission offers the Oregon legislature a path towards transforming the state’s economy and meeting its statutory global warming pollution limits. Its scenario for meeting the state’s emissions limits looks like Thanksgiving dinner with all the fixin’s: a price on pollution, plus a package of complementary clean energy, energy efficiency, and transportation policies. The Commission, which includes representatives from the environmental community alongside the CEOs of Portland...Read more » -
Sightline’s Getting a New Look
Readers! Early next week, Sightline Institute will launch a fresh new version of our website. I can’t wait, and here’s why… A single streamlined site Many of you don’t even realize it, but Sightline Institute has two sides to its website (for reasons not worth explaining). Both contain important research and information about Sightline, but studying our web traffic showed us that it wasn’t clear to you how to move between the...Read more » -
Weekend Reading 9/11/15
Kristin Lessig raised $1 million and is running as a referendum presidential candidate to Fix Democracy First. His “Citizen Equality Act” mirrors Sightline’s democracy work! It aims to embody the idea that, in a democracy, every citizen is equal, using a three-pronged strategy: (1) every citizen has equal freedom to vote, (2) every citizen should get equal representation in Congress, achieved through multi-member districts and ranked choice voting (sound familiar?),...Read more » -
Alan Durning
Alan Durning: Biography Alan Durning founded Sightline Institute in 1993. He contributed significantly to Sightline’s effort to create a new regional index of progress, the Cascadia Scorecard, and has led many of the organization’s other successes. Alan has authored or coauthored more than ten Sightline books, including This Place on Earth 2002: Measuring What Matters; This Place on Earth 2001: Guide to a Sustainable Northwest; This Place on Earth: Home and the Practice of Permanence (winner...Read more » -
Weekend Reading 8/7/15
Alan Rent control, like parking quotas, is as politically enticing as it is economically unattractive. Anna You hear a lot of talk about how to fix our education system, in particular, how to provide the same basic standards of quality and learning opportunities to African American kids that most white kids get in today’s public schools. And you mostly hear about failed attempts. But as Nikole Hannah-Jones explains in the...Read more »