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Next week, the Seattle city council will take up a package of modest but important regulatory reforms. These are precisely the sort of fixes Sightline has been advocating: targeted updates that move us toward a more sustainable city—one that’s not only cleaner but that also offers richer economic opportunities to its residents. Interestingly, many of them are actually “back to the future” type proposals. For example: Coffee shop-size neighborhood commerce—the...

Eric dP: For Northwest history geeks, I recommend reading the introduction to this assessment of Latinos in Washington. It traces the history of Latinos in the region from the earliest Spanish explorers in the region, through settlement, the mid-century Bracero program, and up to the present day. I learned more than a couple of things. Plus, all kinds of fun stuff related to coal trains. Over at Climate Solutions, Ross MacFarlane...

Clark: WSU researchers find that exposure to toxic chemicals can affect the next three generations of offspring.  From the press release: “While toxicologists generally focus on animals exposed to a compound, [this] work…demonstrates that diseases can also stem from older, ancestral exposures that are then mediated through epigenetic changes in sperm.”  Ick! A short, readable guide to Tactical Urbanism: how to create mini-parks, greener streetscapes, safe places for kids to play...

Editor’s note: Eric posted Seattle and Vancouver follow ups to this piece. Whatever you’re craving, you can probably find it on sale at a parking lot in Portland. Barbecue jackfruit fried pie? Try Whiffies on Hawthorne. Foie gras over potato chips? Eurotrash on Belmont. Kimchi quesadilla? Koi Fusion on Mississippi. It’s no wonder Portland has been heralded as a world-class purveyor of street food. But North American attention to the Rose City’s...

Water is the enemy of pavement. It gets into cracks, freezes, expands, and makes bigger cracks. It makes the ground beneath roads soggy and soft. Drive some heavy trucks over those roads and they can give way, forming potholes and ruts. Even when it’s not destroying the road, water pools on the surface, turning cars into dangerous hydroplanes and splashing buckets of filthy water onto windshields and pedestrians. Water is...

Portland, OR has a national reputation as a transit powerhouse. Despite some recent funding woes—which are depressingly common for US transit systems—the City of Roses’ combination of bus, light rail, street car, and most recently aerial tram transit has earned national kudos. US News and World Report, for example, recently ranked Portland’s transit system as the the fifth-best in the country, trailing cities like New York and Boston. Yet as we’ve...

Starting today, people across the globe will give up something for Lent. (For example, Newt Gingrich won’t have any dessert. A colleague of mine is giving up meat.) My family is fasting from consumerism. Not just for Lent, but all year long. And what better time than the day after Mardi Gras to write about how we’re faring. Maybe we’ll inspire someone to join us—if not for a whole year,...

Municipal engineers don’t exactly have reputations for being devil-may-care, live-on-the-edge risk takers. Speaking generally, they work hard, take their jobs seriously, and really really want their projects to work. Collapsed bridges and over-flowing sewers don’t look so hot on the resume. But stormwater engineers in Gresham, a neighbor to Portland, and Issaquah, located in the foothills of the Cascades outside Seattle, have built some interesting — even a touch experimental...

Editor’s note: We’re curious what readers think of this series. Is it useful? What do you like most? How can we make it better? Leave a note in comments. Eric dP: My top recommendation this week goes to James Wells’ righteous rant at Daily Kos, “Pretty Much the Dumbest Idea Ever.” Wells unleashes a real fire-breather on the Northwest coal export plans: The plan is to dig up two trillion...

In the Seattle suburb where I grew up, the main transportation choice most residents face is what kind of car to buy. I moved to Seattle after college and, inspired by the “car-lite” lifestyles of several friends, decided to give cycling a try. I fell in love with it. Urban cycling freed me from slow buses, parking meters, and mind-numbing elliptical machines. I arrived at work with more energy. I...