It Takes All Kinds: Housing Supply, Choice, and Variety
Housing, like people, comes in all shapes, sizes, and colors. New housing in single-family neighborhoods doesn’t all look the same. Diversity and variety are good things. Some opponents of new single-family housing argue that new housing is too big. But the facts tell a different story. Here’s an image that shows a typical block face [...]
Smart Growth on the Seattle Channel
Last week I had the opportunity to represent Smart Growth Seattle on a panel discussing development on small-lots in Seattle. The panel is part of a broader discussion on density and you can watch it by clicking on the embedded video above. The panel covered a lot of ground, but what was especially important is [...]
More Jobs Means We Need More Housing
This Thursday the Seattle City Council’s Planning Land Use and Sustainability (PLUS) Committee will meet to hear recommendations about how to finalize last year’s emergency small-lot legislation. The Department of Planning and Development will present several months worth of work on moving ahead on legislation. One important point that needs to be made in these [...]
Other Blogs: Two Posts on Housing and Development
Over the last week or so I have written two posts at other blogs, Publicola and Seattle Transit Blog. At Publicola I wrote, “New Single Family Housing is Not the Enemy” to take on the notion that single-family infill development is somehow a threat to neighborhood character. At Seattle Transit Blog I took on the [...]
Is New Housing Conniving, Rude and Rapacious?
Yesterday in Crosscut Mark HInshaw posted what could only be called an emotional outburst about new development in Seattle. His point seemed to be that new development is hurting Seattle’s sense of community. New housing, especially in single-family neighborhoods is too big and ugly and we shouldn’t build any more of it unless it’s tiny [...]
Richard Conlin: “More opportunities for people who want to live in the city.”
There is a lot to think about and respond to in Lynn Thompson’s recent story about neighborhood density in the Seattle Times. The story seems to confound growth targets with growth in single-family neighborhoods (more on this later). Growth targets mostly apply to Urban Villages, those knots of more intense activity and use like the [...]
Fact Check: Proposed West Seattle Homes Are Neighborly
There is something about land use and housing that provokes a lot of interest and emotion. That’s especially true about new housing in single-family neighborhoods. New housing in any neighborhood means change, and change isn’t always easy to accept. A project in West Seattle that will add two new homes where there is only one [...]
Smart Growth Seattle to Promote Neighborhood Density at Downtown Events
Smart Growth Seattle, a new group advocating for more housing choice in Seattle, kicks off the New Year with two back-to-back panels to talk about the importance of smart growth in Seattle’s single-family neighborhoods. First, Dan Duffus will be a panelist at an event on Wednesday, January 23rd sponsored by the Urban Land Institutes Northwest [...]
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