Channeling the original Wilsonian 14 Points, we offer 14 policy suggestions for incoming mayor Wilson.
By Erica C. Barnett and Josh Feit
Seattle Mayor-Elect Katie Wilson doesn’t fit the old-school Seattle leftist stereotype personified by avenger socialists and NIMBYs who have historically aligned in a reactionary nativist coalition to oppose new housing. Wilson is too 21st century for such hokey self-righteousness. She’s more AOC than Bernie Bro—a nerd who examines the numbers, facts, and human consequences of city policies. We are confident her measured MO will guide her inspirational affordability agenda.
Channeling the original version of Wilsonianism, we hope the mayor-elect will consider the aspirational PubliCola agenda we’re laying out below with our 14-Point manifesto.
1. Reopen the Comprehensive Plan
The city’s comprehensive plan—the document that governs future growth in Seattle—was supposed to be finished in 2024, but got delayed again and again by the torpid Harrell administration, which revised the plan repeatedly to lower (then slightly increase from that nadir) density limits. The city council still hasn’t passed the entire plan, pushing the zoning details off until 2026, along with the fate of urbanist amendments that died this year,.
A “docketing resolution” for next year will take up proposals to restore nine neighborhood centers—central nodes in neighborhoods where apartments will be allowed. (Harrell had city planners remove these higher-density areas from his proposal, so the city never fully studied them). Other proposals the council punted this year include the elimination of minimum parking requirements and a proposal to allow apartment buildings taller than six stories in neighborhood centers near frequent transit stops.
We think these changes are necessary and that the council should pass them as soon as possible next year. But since the comp plan is already delayed, why not take some more time with it and get the right plan for this urbanist moment?
Our modest—if aspirational—proposal: Wilson should send down legislation to allow allow six-story apartment buildings everywhere—and use her organizing chops to drum up support for the idea among renters, who’ve been the loudest voices opposing Harrell’s plan to preserve Seattle’s exclusionary status quo.
Maritza Rivera is going to fume that there hasn’t been enough “outreach and engagement” to single-family homeowners no matter what you do, so you might as well go big.
Oh, and while you’re at it? Allow bars and restaurants, not just small convenience and grocery stores, in every neighborhood—and let them stay open past 10pm!!—ECB
2. Funded Inclusionary Zoning (FIZ)
The problem with the noble policy of forcing developers to include affordable housing in any new multifamily development is that the projects often don’t pencil out. In turn, nothing gets built at all. Seattle’s mandatory housing affordability program (MHA), an inclusionary zoning mandate that requires developers to either include affordable units in new buildings or pay into a fund to support affordable housing construction, has actually contributed to a drop-off in new housing development.
Taking a cue from Portland, where a successful inclusionary zoning program recently saw projects worth hundreds of new units opt in during its first six months, Wilson should do the unthinkable: Give developers a property tax break to make the mandate pencil out. In other words, we shouldn’t tax things we want (affordable housing) by raising the cost of building it. We should encourage it by making affordable housing profitable to build.
Before you gasp at the idea of giving developers a tax break for building affordable housing, consider: We have a longstanding program, the state’s multifamily tax exemption (MFTE) program, that does just that. The problem is: That program isn’t a mandate. Developers don’t have to build affordable housing if they don’t want to.
FIZ, Funded Inclusionary Zoning, would combine the two affordable housing housing programs the city already relies on, MHA and MFTE—coupling the mandate to include affordable housing and the tax break to build it. —JF
3. The Night Mayor
The City’s Office of Economic Development has a Nightlife Business Services Advocate. Their job is to help after-dark venues like nightclubs and bars navigate licensing and compliance. Under Mayor Wilson, the role should be expanded beyond entertainment to support a full-blown evening ecosystem. Let’s have a well-staffed Office of the Night Mayor to promote, coordinate, and support a city that not only has vibrant nighttime businesses (tax breaks to help daytime businesses stay open later, please), but also weaves social services, night owl buses and shuttles, and vital commerce like drugstores into a thrumming evening environment that serves and supports everyone from night shift workers to 9-to-5ers who need to get shit done in the evening.
First initiative the Office of the Night Mayor: Identify murky streets and make them safer and more navigable with new lighting. Light it up, Mayor Wilson. —JF
4. Let CARE do their jobs
The city council is preparing to rubber-stamp the latest contract with the Seattle Police Officers Guild, which has already been effectively approved by the five-member council majority who sit on the city’s contract negotiating team. We’d be happy—and impressed—to see the council reject and reopen the contract to add some real accountability measures in exchange for paying new officers $126,000 a year, but we’re not holding our breath.
One thing that can be reopened without a huge political lift, however, is the memorandum of understanding SPD signed with CARE—the Community Assisted Response and Engagement Team. While Harrell touted the fact that the new agreement will allow CARE to respond to low-risk 911 calls without a police escort, the MOU imposes new rules on the team that will make it hard to respond to most crisis calls.
Under the new rules, CARE responders can only respond to people who are physically outdoors, not inside a vehicle or any indoor space, and must abort the response effort if they see any indication a person has been using drugs or has committed any type of crime. They’re also banned from responding to encampments or if a person appears to be having a serious mental health crisis, among many other new restrictions.
These rules, which prohibit CARE from responding in most of the situations where they would be most useful, are untenable and will harm CARE’s ability to provide an alternative to sending armed officers to deal with people in crisis.
Given that the city just added $7 million to the budget to expand the CARE Team to 48 responders, it’s critical that the city allows them to do their jobs, even if the police union opposes it. —ECB
5. The Urban Pass
Inspired by NYC’s successful congestion pricing program (which has dramatically reduced car traffic, increased travel speeds, decreased greenhouse gas emissions, and is on track to raise $500 million its first year), Wilson should institute an Urban Pass for Seattle.
The Urban Pass would riff on the basic congestion pricing concept: Drivers could buy the pass for a monthly fee, which would give them discounted parking in the city’s 32 paid parking zones—districts that correspond to the highest-demand destinations in the city, such as Capitol Hill, Ballard, and South Lake Union.
Unlike NYC’s congestion pricing revenue, however, the money wouldn’t go to the transportation budget. Instead, it would fund multi-family housing in the low-density neighborhoods where many of the visitors to these high-demand areas live—including outside the city of Seattle. Clearly, the people who drive in to visit popular neighborhoods are fond of density too. So let’s give them some.
Adding more housing in low-density neighborhoods would also make frequent transit more sustainable in these parts of our city and the region. (As for the loss to the city on parking fees, SDOT should raise those base prices in concert with the Urban Pass discounts.) During her campaign, Wilson praised NYC’s congestion pricing model. Now that she’s in office, we hope she was in earnest. —JF
6. Make City Government Transparent Again
In recent years, we’ve seen the city moving to limit access to public information on every front, a trend that only accelerated during and after the pandemic. While the mayor can’t take direct action against individual public information officers who use their city positions to dissemble and mislead, she can set a tone of transparency with a few simple, immediate actions.
Start with the department that has the greatest aversion to transparency, SPD, by revising the 2017 city rule that the police department has been using to justify sitting on public disclosure requests for years. Under this rule, public disclosure officers are allowed to “group” multiple requests into a single request and to consider records requests from the same person or outlet consecutively rather than simultaneously. SPD has interpreted this rule to mean they are allowed to add any new requests from the same person into one giant mega-request, considering one sub-request at a time and putting any new requests at the back of the line. Instead of waiting for the Seattle Times to prevail in litigation (the Times is suing SPD over its anti-disclosure practices), just get rid of grouping altogether and make SPD’s public disclosure unit live up to its name.
Second: Hold open press briefings. Mike McGinn had his issues (and we reported on them), but one of his best moves was to periodically hold open meetings for the press with nothing specific on the agenda. Sitting at the table, rather than standing behind a rostrum, McGinn would take questions on just about any topic—a practice that not only made it possible for non-mainstream outlets to talk to the mayor directly on a regular basis, but that gave McGinn credibility as a mayor who valued transparency and was capable of answering detailed policy questions without a press staffer hovering nervously nearby to redirect and cut off questions. (The visually boring format also cut down on TV reporters with gotcha questions). The non-mainstream press will love you for having real conversations with us after four years of scripted responses, and the public will appreciate your commitment to open and transparent dialogue.
Third: Bring back the city directory! Former mayor Jenny Durkan removed the directory of city employees’ phone numbers and email addresses from the city’s website in July 2021, saying the underlying database was out of date. A promised “replacement solution” for this resource, which was the only place the public could access contact information for most people who work at the city, never materialized, and PubliCola has been periodically updating our own public database of city employees ever since. (It’s currently out of date because the city has been dragging its feet on my latest records request for the information, which I filed in June.). Restoring the directory—and bringing Seattle in line with state agencies and King County, whose employee directories are public—would signal transparency and bring back a resource many Seattle residents seeking to reach the right person at the city directly once found indispensable. —ECB
7. You’ve Heard of Transit Oriented Development (TOD). It’s Time for Parks and Schools Oriented Development—POD and SOD.
Since Erica is calling on Wilson to re-open the Comprehensive Plan (and rightfully so, given Mayor Harrell’s years of disinterest at best and outright sabotage at worst), let me propose two comp plan amendments: Upzones around parks and upzones around schools. The city’s highest-performing schools and most salubrious parks seem to serve more affluent and lower-density neighborhoods, meaning a privileged economic class has better access to them. Let’s make it so more people, including renters, can live near parks and schools by building more apartments nearby. —JF
8. Shady Zones
NIMBYs have successfully weaponized tree canopy as a tool for stopping new development.
For the record: Urbanists are pro-tree canopy. Instead of building single homes on single lots (which required sprawl and deforestation in the first place) urbanists are for building more densely, which by definition houses more people—leaving more room for greenery.
But as the Anthropocene accelerates into potential catastrophe, cities will need more sources of shade than tree canopy alone. YIMBYs should flip the script and weaponize development as shorthand for shade. To counter the shadows-are-bad mantra that has dominated building permit debates for decades, pro-development voices need to point out that the built environment can be a source of protection and cooling.
Ever find yourself choosing the shady side of the street on downtown sidewalks, seeking refuge in the cover of buildings? To fashion a truly resilient city, we need to start thinking in terms of awnings, walls, gazebos, park shelters, and yes, buildings themselves as vital cover from the extreme impacts of climate change.
We’re looking to Mayor Shady Wilson to add cooling infrastructure to the city’s resiliency agenda. —JF
9. Close the Sweeps Loophole
Another rule that’s ripe for revisiting is a city policy that has empowered Harrell’s Unified Care Team, a 116-member group of city employees that removes encampments, to sweep people and tents from public spaces with little or no notice and no referrals to shelter or other services.
The rule was designed to guarantee 72 hours’ notice and a referral to shelter before the city sweeps an encampment. But it contains a loophole previous mayors have exploited to sweep people from place to place for years. The rule allows sweeps with no notice or offer of shelter or services if an encampment constitutes a hazard or “obstruction”—a term Durkan and Harrell both interpreted broadly to include anyone located on public property. Editing this legislation to define “hazards” and “obstructions” narrowly will reduce the number of pointless sweeps, like the ones that have been going on for months Ballard, and make it less common for encampment residents to lose everything, including contact with their case managers, when they have to move. Pitching a tent in the middle of a heavily used playfield is an obvious obstruction, while sleeping in a secluded area of a public park obstructs nothing.
Homelessness will be a defining issue of Wilson’s tenure, so this is just one of many necessary steps. We think it’s a prerequisite for ending the kind of indiscriminate sweeps Wilson campaigned against.—ECB
10. Transit Validation
Just as big employers subsidize ORCA cards, so should big destinations: Lumen Field. T-Mobile Park. Climate Pledge Arena. Benaroya Hall. McCaw Hall. All these spots—particularly Benaroya, which is literally a stop on the Link light rail line—should zap a discount back into your ORCA card when they scan your ticket. (Three cheers to Pacific Science Center, one institution that already does a version of this. And I know Climate Pledge has its own Kraken app that includes free transit, but it’s the opposite of user-friendly and should just be rolled in with the ORCA pass).
As her first agenda item as a Sound Transit board member, Mayor Wilson, the former Transit Riders Union leader, should champion a program to subsidize rides to our city’s cultural destinations. —JF
11. Free the street vendors!
The city and county have made a very big deal recently about their efforts to crack down on street food vendors who lack the proper permits, but haven’t exactly made our city a hospitable place for licensed food vendors to operate legally in the first place. The city currently requires food trucks and street vendors to navigate a byzantine maze of rules and restrictions. For example, if you want to sell food near a residential area or public park, that requires a whole secondary approval process. This approach treats vendors like industrial polluters that should be kept away from people and each other rather than amenities that improve neighborhoods and commercial districts.
Launch a full assessment of the city’s street vending rules and get rid of unnecessary red tape that keeps people in most parts of Seattle from enjoying tacos, soft serve, kebabs, and all other kinds of portable food. The people want to eat! —ECB
12. The Bench Agenda
You know how the former Bloomberg administration in NYC is famous for building more than 300 miles of bike lanes? The Wilson administration should seek a similar legacy by flooding Seattle with benches. Start with a bench at every bus stop, complete with shelter to dovetail with the shade zones. But we also need benches dotting parks, in commercial hubs, in residential areas. And no—correlation fallacy!—benches don’t increase the homeless population. Homelessness already exists. Benches can simply make it more visible. Giving homeless people a place to rest isn’t such a bad thing. —JF
13. Defund (parts of) the Police
Wilson’s detractors, including the $1.8 million pro-Harrell PAC, tried to claim she plans to defund the police (and is responsible for the entire police defunding movement), an absurd but inflammatory claim that probably alarmed some people into supporting the incumbent. In a recent interview with Seattle Nice, Wilson reiterated that she supports hiring more officers and has no interest in defunding the police themselves, but is open to looking closely at spending on nonessential functions.
Our proposal, to paraphrase centrist city council members elected in 2023: Audit the fucking police budget (that is, examine discretionary spending and recent adds), and pare back spending on stuff we don’t need and that is actively harming communities.
One easy target: SPD’s Real Time Crime Center and surveillance cameras, which, under Harrell, have begun to proliferate in neighborhoods across the city. Harrell and SPD tried to ease civil liberties concerns by claiming it’s essentially impossible for the federal government to get hold of footage from the 24/7 cameras. But all the Trump Administration really needs is a subpoena—or a cop with access to the footage and an axe to grind against immigrants or people seeking abortions or gender-affirming care.
Police surveillance cameras have been around for decades, and there’s little evidence that they make a meaningful impact on crime. The cops dispute this, as do Harrell and other pro-surveillance officials around the country. But even if the cameras do occasionally provide evidence that SPD couldn’t get another way (such as the vast network of private cameras they’ve always used in investigations), that isn’t a worthwhile tradeoff for expanding surveillance in the age of Trump. We don’t have to build the panopticon! —ECB
14. Hang Out with State Sen. Jessica Bateman
Mayor Wilson: As you fill up your calendar with important get-to-know-you meetings, please set aside some time to meet with Olympia’s pro-housing, pro-density, pro-city rock star state Sen. Jessica Bateman (D-22). Bateman, of course, is the mastermind behind HB 1110, which forced foot-dragging cities like Seattle to allow four-unit multi-family housing (up to six-units if two of the units are affordable) anywhere single-family housing is allowed.
Mayor Harrell spent his time in quibbling obstructionism with 1110. Our suggestion to make Bateman your besty is our way of telling you to support rather than subvert the state’s progressive housing agenda, which has lapped Seattle’s progress toward density over the last decade.
Word is the upcoming session will come with pro-housing ideas like a land value tax, which would target low and underused properties like parking lots, prompting land owners to do more useful things like build housing. Seattle should be at the forefront supporting these efforts. —JF
That’s it for our Wilsonian 14 Points. Now, here are some low-hanging quick hits:
- Tax new pickleball facilities to expand public access to youth sports.
- Instead of pouring millions into “graffiti rangers” and other nonsense, create a fund that provides small grants to business owners for removing graffiti on their property.
- Figure out this scooter and e-bike stuff—you can start by banning Class 2 e-bikes with throttles, which are just small electric motorcycles, from shared trails used by cyclists and pedestrians. (Washington Bikes is working at the state level to regulate higher-powered “e-motos,” which can go faster than the speediest e-bikes.)
- Seize the opportunity (instead of “grabbing the ball”): Don’t speak in sports metaphors.
A class 2 ebike is not an electric motorcycle (e-moto). All a throttle (class 2 bike) does it get you moving forward from standing on a heavier bike so you don’t fall over. Men in tights on fancy bikes pass me when I ride the 520 bridge to work on my class 2.
In contrast e-motos have pegs instead of pedals, can travel up to 60mph and are much more powerful > 750 watts. E-motos need to be regulated by going after sellers who market them as street legal. They are not. I see them on the 520 trail all the time
“One easy target: SPD’s Real Time Crime Center and surveillance cameras, which, under Harrell, have begun to proliferate in neighborhoods across the city.”
Uh… okay:
Repeat offender charged in random attack on 75-year-old woman in downtown Seattle
Wed, December 10, 2025
SEATTLE — A Seattle man with a violent criminal history is accused of using a board with a spike nailed through it to attack a 75-year-old woman on a street corner near the King County Courthouse last week.
Witnesses told police they saw Fale Vaigalepa Pea, 42, approach the victim at the intersection of 3rd Avenue and James Street and strike her in the face with the board at random as she was waiting for a crosswalk, according to charges filed Tuesday in King County Superior Court.
Prosecutors say the woman suffered extensive injuries, and doctors said there is only a 10% chance she will recover vision in her eye. King County Sheriff’s Deputies who were in the area when the attack happened quickly arrested Pea at 3rd Avenue and Cherry Street. Prosecutors note the entire incident was recorded by ‘high-quality surveillance cameras’.
According to Seattle police, analysts at the city’s Real Time Crime Center tracked the suspect’s movements in real time, leading to his arrest.
https://komonews.com/news/local/repeat-offender-charged-random-attack-75-year-old-downtown-seattle-police-department-spd-prosecutors-king-county-superior-court-attorney-ryan-turner-crosswalk
“One easy target: SPD’s Real Time Crime Center and surveillance cameras, which, under Harrell, have begun to proliferate in neighborhoods across the city.”
Meanwhile…
Repeat offender charged in random attack on 75-year-old woman in downtown Seattle
Wed, December 10, 2025
SEATTLE — A Seattle man with a violent criminal history is accused of using a board with a spike nailed through it to attack a 75-year-old woman on a street corner near the King County Courthouse last week.
Witnesses told police they saw Fale Vaigalepa Pea, 42, approach the victim at the intersection of 3rd Avenue and James Street and strike her in the face with the board at random as she was waiting for a crosswalk, according to charges filed Tuesday in King County Superior Court.
Prosecutors say the woman suffered extensive injuries, and doctors said there is only a 10% chance she will recover vision in her eye. King County Sheriff’s Deputies who were in the area when the attack happened quickly arrested Pea at 3rd Avenue and Cherry Street. Prosecutors note the entire incident was recorded by ‘high-quality surveillance cameras’.
According to Seattle police, analysts at the city’s Real Time Crime Center tracked the suspect’s movements in real time, leading to his arrest.
https://komonews.com/news/local/repeat-offender-charged-random-attack-75-year-old-downtown-seattle-police-department-spd-prosecutors-king-county-superior-court-attorney-ryan-turner-crosswalk
I love this list, but I want a 15th item: generally reducing beaurocracy in construction. Anything to speed up the light rail construction or housing construction would be huge. The one I’ve got experience with would be the permitting system. This is kinda like #11: Seattle’s permitting system for small time homeowners is just totally broken compared to other cities (particularly comparing it to, say, Spokane).
It’s much more bureaucratic, with much more overhead and longer timelines. Homeowners doing small amounts of work – such as moving an interior wall or enlarging a window – to their house can easily trigger multiple permitting reviews and paths, each of which is far more expensive than in other cities, with much longer waits, compared to other cities that often have express permits for these things (or none required). Low cost contractors will either refuse or charge much higher prices to do the same work in Seattle vs, say, Burien, because it creates a large risk profile for contractors- they’ll have to waste a lot of time scheduling inspections and meeting with inspectors who often increase the scope of the job by requiring other changes (“while I’m here, this also needs fixing”).
A permit that would take a day or a few days to issue in most other cities often takes weeks or months.
If this is what individual homeowners are seeing, I see why construction or rehabbing of houses is so prohibitively expensive here.
The red tape is a not-insignificant component of our housing struggles here.
RE #5: “Drivers could buy the pass for a monthly fee, which … would fund multi-family housing”. That would be illegal. By state law, “fees” on something can only be used for something similar — transportation fees MUST be used on transportation. Taxes, OTOH, collected on one thing can be used for anything.
The lack of knowledge on fees v. taxes is a common one, and often, local government staffers think they can “rob” a fund that was flush with fee revenue to fund something unrelated. Former Mayor Jenny Durkan’s staff tried this numerous times, and lost each time.
For a deeper read on this, https://blogs.gonzaga.edu/gulawreview/files/2011/02/Spitzer.pdf, specifically page 343.
We just gave developers open opportunity to build more than twice the housing needed in the next 20 years. It will increase home prices due to land value increase from the Upzone. We also allow developers to build up to 6 homes per lot. All this with almost no requirements including for parking. No electric vehicle parking required even. No impact fees to use for updates to roads or transit or parks or schools. Why should we give developers more with absolutely no controls? We let them make millions while raising housing price and taxes for everyone else!
Developers are free to create/provide parking if they’d like. You’re wrong about more housing = higher prices. Increased supply brings down the price of a product. This is basic Economics 101 and free market realities.
Basic Economics 101 (Seattle housing market addition)
Seattle population growth > New housing built = higher demand for housing (higher prices)
If you think any of builders, investors or property management companies have any interest in seeing Seattle one bedroom apartments rent for less that $2000 a month, think again. These people aren’t stupid. The minute the rents drop, building slows way down.
@Tacomee — take a look at housing data for Seattle and SF. Seattle has added tens of thousands of more housing units than SF over the years (more flexible zoning laws), and median rent is significantly lower here. Austin is also seeing rents go down as developers ramped up housing production. Developers will build so long as there is profit to be made, although yes it will eventually cool down when building elsewhere yields more return.
“We just gave developers open opportunity to build more than twice the housing needed in the next 20 years.”
Sure, sure. Developers will be so eager to build twice and much housing as we need, driving down rental prices, driving down investor interest, driving down property prices, and driving down their own profit margins. And also bucking their trend of building way less than what’s needed.
Yes, I bet that’s their unsaid agenda.
To number 7, something needs to be done about street parking in neighborhoods — you own a house and yard, put your damn car there or get rid of it — and surface parking. Many streets are turned into one lane roads with cards parked on both sides in what used to be streetcar-accessible neighborhoods (built with garages).
The covered land plays that Seattle is littered with, from surface parking to storage warehouses (on Capitol Hill and the waterfront? Please) need to be dealt with, turned into productive use as well but let’s start with street parking, pedestrianization, and surface parking lots. The covered land plays can be taxed for their real value later, assuming the city budget office knows how to do that.
You’re 100% correct that more dense development will allow more/better public spaces, and a road diet/sensible policy around car storage might drive that. If I can’t keep my furniture or livestock in the street, why are people allowed to store their cars there?
“Many streets are turned into one lane roads with cards parked on both sides in what used to be streetcar-accessible neighborhoods (built without garages).”
so only people rich enough to have a house with a driveway or garage or who can pay for off street parking should be allowed to have a car? What about parking around businesses? Should every corner shop be required to knock down the neighboring building to provide off street parking?
Street parking is a reasonable use of ROAD space in dense areas. Sure, it shouldn’t be the ONLY use and shouldn’t impede other uses, but get over it – most adults have a car. They are far more convenient than transit of any sort for most travel. (That said they could trend considerably smaller, and the transition to electric needs to keep making progress) Bikes and Scooters are great when the weather is nice and you don’t have 4 bags of groceries, several small kids in tow, or a load of drywall compound.
Sorry friend, got to disagree with you there. I living in such a neighborhood which predates housing built with car parking in mind. If the city told me, and all my neighbors, we had to build parking into our yards, are you going to pay for it? Because I’m afraid I don’t have $150K for such a job. Of the city mandated it, such a cost makes any tax they could impose look like a joke. Maybe a few very rich Seattlites could afford such a huge investment, but nobody else could.
Besides, all of us in my neighborhood quite like the streets the way they are. It forces drivers to go slow and watch out for pedestrians, bikes, etc. Frankly I didn’t see many down sides, except if you’re looking for convenience to quickly pass through.
Sorry, maybe your should stick to the arterials.
Singling out pickleball for taxation is outrageous, particularly while elitist sports like golf and the Seahawks continue to receive generous tax subsidies.
Also, 3 tennis courts typically serve 6 active players, but could easily be converted to 8 pickleball courts that serve 32 active players. Surely the pro-density movement should be in favor of such efficiency.
taxing pickleball to increase access to sports – Tell me its a left leaning proposal without telling me its a left leaning proposal. You tax something you get less of it. That reality is even acknowledged by the proposed change to FIZ in this same proposal. And what did pickleball do to get singled out? Too many rich kids playing it?
Putting six story buildings around every elementary school and neighborhood park will make those areas more dense than urban villages. And will log jam all public transportation because light rail will not be going to these spots and you can’t move the amount of people with busses. Traffic will also be impossible because these areas have small skinny streets that can’t accommodate thousands more cars. And people will have cars – contrary to the cities narrative.
Allowing six-story apartments is not the same as mandating six-story apartments. People adapt and travel fewer miles by car (https://www.psrc.org/about-us/media-hub/vehicle-miles-traveled-person-continues-decline-region). The country and state are filled with suburban sprawl if you are into that sort of thing.
Sure, Jan.
To state the obvious, allowing up to six stories everywhere will not result in six story buildings suddenly being everywhere; there’s neither the demand for that much housing nor the labor to build it quickly. It will just let people decide where to live (and developers to respond to those preferences) rather than bureaucrats and NIMBYs with political juice picking a handful of locations to grudgingly tolerate the presence of apartment dwellers. Our bus system is constantly re-calibrating to where demand for ridership is, no reason to think it won’t or can’t keep doing that.
And to state the blindingly obvious, there is nothing wrong with apartment buildings near elementary schools; they co-exist in cities all over the world.
Density around neighborhood schools/parks is a win-win. More residents to utilize playgrounds and playfields, more families to enroll in public schools, walkability to amenities (reduction in cars), and other opportunities to cross-share resources. I don’t understand the inclination to cling to old suburban models when our city is now 800k+ residents strong!
Six story buildings wouldn’t be mandated. They’d probably only go up where there’s demand, which will usually be around transit lines.
Agree. Anti-car policies often end up harming low-income people because they ignore the real conditions that shape work, caregiving, and mobility in historically disinvested communities. Many low-wage workers have early, late, or unpredictable shifts that transit does not serve, and caregivers such as single mothers, elders, disabled residents, and frontline workers rely on cars to move between multiple responsibilities across the city. In many Black, immigrant, and low-income neighborhoods, transit access is inadequate by design because of decades of underinvestment and redlined geography. For these communities, driving is not a luxury; it is survival.
Because of this, car-reduction rhetoric can become elitist and functionally racist. It assumes that everyone can simply “choose transit” when those choices are only available to the privileged: people with flexible jobs, safe bike routes, dense transit options, and the resources to absorb parking fees or congestion charges. Policies that eliminate parking, add new fees, or restrict driving become regressive, punishing those with the least mobility and the fewest alternatives. Anti-car ideology often reflects the preferences of wealthier, whiter residents while overlooking the lived experience of the communities most dependent on reliable access. The issue is not cars; it is transportation planning that ignores structural inequities and then blames the people harmed by them.
>> you can’t move the amount of people with busses
Yes you can. Quite easily actually. The more density you have the easier and cheaper all forms of transit become (including buses).
I’m likely to side with the first comment on this. I do agree with most of these points, but the choice of opening this article with, “a reactionary nativist coalition [of socialists and NIMBYs] to oppose new housing,” is telling. One gets the sense Josh Feit (and Barnett, seemingly trailing right behind) is a member of the Bourbon dynasty, who “have learned nothing and forgotten nothing.”
The one word that is missing from this article, and also the one word that could considered to tie socialists and NIMBYs into a “nativist coalition,” is regulation. One gets the idea that some people never grew beyond Ayn Rand. Affordable housing is possible, but only in “Galt’s Gulch.”
No thanks.
Class 1 will go up to 20mph, you just have to spin the pedals. At highest levels of assist this takes basically zero effort. SO having a throttle (class 2) or not (class 1) has no bearing on top speed. And Class 3 is actually closer to class 1 – it just allows a higher assisted top speed (up to 28mph) but you have to pedal to achieve it the throttle if present won’t assist past 20mph.
And +1 to points that plenty of people on regular bikes meet or exceed that 20mph speed. And plenty of people on bikes or scooters, or just walking can cause problems to if they for example cross a trail or suddenly change direction without looking. I’ve crashed (a regular bike) several times avoiding hitting somebody doing that on various bike trails. Most of those times I was going well below 20mph.
If we have areas of user contention on trails or sidewalks, regulate behavior, not type of bike. If too many people are going fast on a trail, enforce a reasonable speed limit instead of saying bikes where you twist a handgrip are bad while ones where you spin pedals are okay.
I say this as a many-years conventional cyclist who in my middle age has finally given in to the siren song of an E-cargo bike which has gotten me riding again after COVID work-from-home policies killed my bike commuting and severely affected my waistline.
Erica I’m a big fan of your reporting. I just disagree about your take on Ebikes and shared use trails.
There’s a big difference between a class 2 and class 3 Ebikes and unregulated emotorcycles.
I ride my Lectric XP Lite 2.0 (class 2) on the burke (and other nearby trails) with my wife who rides a normal bike. Just because it has a throttle and can go 20mph doesn’t mean I do. I keep pace with her which is usually 15mph. The amount of wanna be professional cyclists that fly by us going over 20 without so much as an “on your left” or bell ring would (or wouldn’t) surprise you.
The point being class 2 and 3 Ebikes aren’t just little emotos, and the problem is really people are dicks.
Agreed. People are dicks. But 10,000 years of human history would indicate that we cannot change that. But we can try to limit the tools that dicks use to injure others (either on purpose or not). So Class 3 bikes for sure need to be banned for sure. Class 2 maybe.
“Reactionary nativist coalition;
“Hokey self-righteousness;”
” … Mirror, mirror on the wall …”
The people have spoken. It is what it is and we, the voters are quite aware.
Yup.
I started laughing when I read “reactionary nativist coalition”.