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I’m a little late picking this up, but both the New York Times and the Seattle Timeshave now run stories on what’s supposedly a hot new trend in Seattle:  adding luxury condo units to downtown hotels.  Condo-owners get the benefits of hotel amenities, such as room service, room cleaners, valet parking, and a concierge. Plus, at least one of the proposed hotel/condo plans would be bundled with a mix of...

According to the Census Bureau, the typical American worker spends about 100 hours—just over 4 full days–commuting to work each year. And that’s just the morning commute; it doesn’t even count the trip back home. Now, 100 hours may not seem like that much spread out over a full year. But consider this: most workplaces offer just 80 hours of paid vacation per year. Washington’s commutes (pdf link) are tenth-longest...

I intend to celebrate this piece of news with a pint of strawberries and a bunch of arugula: the number of farmers markets in the United States doubled from 1994 to 2004. Of the Northwest states, Washington may have the greatest total number of markets (more than 90, according to this Seattle Times article (the USDA lists 87) with a record number, at least two dozen, expected to open in...

Interesting.  According to this report (pdf download) from the Urban Land Institute, the number of familes with kids in the US is on the decline.  Childless households, however, are growing at a steady clip. Take a look: In the same vein,  less than half of all married couples in the US actually have kids under 18.  And single-person households outnumber married couples who have kids under 18 living with them....

The City of Seattle is proposing another positive step: lowering requirements for off-street parking that drive up the cost of housing in close-in neighborhoods. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has the story. Unfortunately, reporter Vanessa Ho seems intent on fomenting controversy. She writes: As bad as it is now, parking on Capitol Hill—Seattle’s densest neighborhood—may get even worse under a proposal by Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels. The mayor wants to reduce the...

In honor of the thirtieth anniversary of the novel Ecotopia, this week’s Seattle Weekly includes a piece by Oregonian writer Randy Gragg that provides some instructive historical background on Oregon’s own Ecotopian experiment. Gragg writes elegiacally of the two legislative landmarks from the 1970’s that steered Oregon’s unique development over the next 30 years: a state land-use planning law and a plan for downtown Portland that, together, managed to both...

Microsoft is planning to expand its Redmond, Washington headquarters, adding between 10,000 and 20,000 new employees—plus the parking garages that will be needed to accomodate their cars. And the company is offering to pay $30 million for transportation and infrastructure improvements, including $15 million for a bridge construction project, to help compensate for the increased traffic the expansion will generate. The $30 million offer may seem like a generous gesture,...

Which states use the least gasoline?  Which ones have the best gas-conservation trends? Probably not who you’d think, at least for the latter question. Based on Federal Highway Administration data covering 2001 through 2003, residents of New York State use the least gasoline, person for person, of any U.S. state:  about 0.8 gallons per person per day, vs. the national average of 1.2 gallons per person.  That’s to be expected:...

Credit: Mithun We’re a little late on this one, but it’s still worth noting: Last month, a team of designers from Seattle architecture/design firm Mithun won first place in an international sustainable housing competition in Roanoke, Virginia, with their design for a house powered by—of all things—spinach. The house (the design is pictured at left) will be built this summer in Roanoke, along with other contest winners. The C2C Home...

I missed this Oregonian article when it first ran, but it gives a good rundown on the chaos that the passage of Measure 37—the voter-approved initiative in Oregon that forces the government either to pay landowners or issue waivers when land-use rules reduce property values—is creating, not just for state and county officials, but even for the landowners who were the measure’s intended beneficiaries. What’s particularly interesting, at least to...