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Zoning: Inclusionary v. Exclusionary
At last count, Seattle ranked as the fastest growing major city in America. The city’s growth has easily outpaced the projections of its decade-old Comprehensive Plan, which foresaw 47,000 new households (as well as 84,000 new jobs) between 2004 and 2024. Between 2005 and 2012 the city added 29,330 net new housing units—roughly 62 percent of its 2024 target in just 7 years. This rapid growth has stemmed in large part from...Read more » -
California, Here We Come
Editor’s note: Washington’s Carbon Emissions Reduction Taskforce is weighing alternative carbon-pricing proposals. Recently, Yoram Bauman presented the case for Washington to adopt a BC-style carbon tax swap. Now, Alan Durning and Kristin Eberhard share the argument for Washington to join California’s cap-and-trade club. The good news is that Washington State may be getting serious about a price on carbon. The other good news is that Washington does not have to start from...Read more » -
Why Washington State Should Adopt a BC-style Carbon Tax
Editor’s Note: Washington’s Carbon Emissions Reduction Taskforce is on the job, weighing alternative carbon-pricing proposals. Some members of the panel have asked what our ideal policy would be for Washington State. Yoram Bauman shares his thoughts today. Alan Durning will share his argument for a California-style cap-and-trade system, with key modifications, another day. If I had my druthers, Washington State would push for a BC-style revenue-neutral carbon tax. Full disclosure:...Read more » -
My Sixth Extinction Facepalm
Dear Ms. Kolbert: Your new book The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History is equal parts masterful and perplexing. It’s a tour de force through the byways of species biology, full of fascinating scientists studying charismatic creatures that are passing or have passed into extinction. But your narration is weirdly dissociative—detached to the point that it might be diagnosable under DSM 5. You document the unfathomable holocaust of species we are...Read more » -
Going Postal 2013
You see that picture? That’s one whole year of my junk mail. Almost 33 pounds of it. A 20 inch stack of expensive, forest-destroying, unwanted trash. And that’s nothing! I’m five years into a crusade to defend my little mailbox from paper spam. A typical Seattle household gets three times as much: 100 pounds a year. In 2009, when I last did a 365-day count, my stack was four inches...Read more » -
Weekend Reading 11/1/13
Serena The award-winning documentary “Elemental” is coming to Seattle November 14—that is, if they can sell 49 more tickets by next Thursday, November 7. The film tells the story of three individuals around the globe fighting three different climate and pollution battles. Check out the trailer, and buy your ticket: BONUS: Sightline’s own Alan Durning will be introducing the film and moderating a small panel discussion afterward with Bellingham Council Member Cathy...Read more » -
Sightline Hits the Streets(blog)
Over the past several days, Sightline’s Parking? Lots! series has gotten some especially capitol attention. That’s right—the other Washington! DC Streetsblog picked up some of Alan’s number-crunching and policy-parsing for its own re-posting (here and here thus far, with more to come). It also distributed the pieces across several of their sister blogs around the country. DC Streetsblog’s most recent article features a Streetsblog original Q&A with Alan. An excerpt...Read more » -
Nothing Can Go Wrong with Dirty Fuel Trains?
A week ago, I took my youngest son Peter, who is 19, on a cross-country trip. He was leaving the nest to start college in Ohio. We decided we would take the week, just the two of us, and go east across this magnificent continent together. We would mark his transition to the next phase of life with a physical journey of epic scale. It was a proud and bittersweet...Read more » -
When Your Parking Grows Up
On-street parking takes up a lot of space in North American cities: 5 to 8 percent of all urban land, according to UCLA urban planning professor Donald Shoup. If parking reforms like pricing curb spots end up reducing the need for curb parking in our cities, what will we do with all that extra space? As it turns out, Cascadian cities are already trying out some exciting new ideas. In...Read more » -
Bring Back the Boarding House
Tiny backyard cottages, micro-apartments, the revival of boarding houses and in-law dwellings—Cascadia is on the bleeding edge of these emerging trends, which reintroduce housing forms of a century ago. Today, Sightline is releasing a short book on the gigantic opportunities cities have to make urban living quarters greener, cheaper, and more abundant by eliminating a few municipal rules. Hidden in city regulations are a set of simple but powerful barriers...Read more »
