By Erica C. Barnett

The city’s Office of Planning and Community Development rolled out legislation this week that will implement “Phase 2” of the city’s 10-year update to its comprehensive plan, the document that guides density and zoning in Seattle. Former mayor Bruce Harrell officially dubbed the proposal the “One Seattle Plan,” in keeping with his campaign and mayoral catch phrase.

The legislation complements the comp plan updates City Council adopted last year by increasing the density of housing allowed in 30 new Neighborhood Centers—areas within about 800 feet of existing commercial “nodes” or major transit stops—and expanding Urban Centers, where significantly more apartments are allowed.

The new plan will simplify the requirements for developers to build apartments in midrise areas. OPCD staff said apartments rarely get built in the existing midrise zone, because the four-story height restriction is too low to justify building and because Midrise has the most complex requirements of any zone in the city.

“Today, every single project that is built in a midrise zone has to come in and get a departure [from the standards because these are so complicated,” OPCD strategic advisor Brennon Staley said during a briefing on the legislation last week.

The legislation was finalized under former mayor Bruce Harrell, so it doesn’t bear Mayor Katie Wilson’s stamp. Wilson ran an explicitly urbanist campaign, with a commitment to allowing more housing in more places—something she’ll have a chance to demonstrate in later phases of the comprehensive plan.

Under Harrell, the city delayed the comprehensive plan update repeatedly, which is one reason it’s now broken up into four separate phases; the first phase, which got Seattle into compliance with a state law passed in 2023 requiring more density in former single-family areas, passed in December.

The zoning update also increases the amount of housing that’s allowed along “corridors”—areas directly adjacent to streets with frequent transit routes. As Doug Trumm at The Urbanist reported last week, OPCD reduced the size of some corridors in response to incumbent residents’ complaints about allowing too many apartments near single-family houses.

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“Today in the city, there are really very, very different viewpoints about housing,” Staley said. “There are people who own their home for a very long time. It’s been a great investment. … There are other people who think they will need to leave Seattle because they can’t afford a place to live.” The final legislation, he said, is an attempt to “recognize that both those types of opinions are valid.”

Efforts to accommodate homeowner complaints about apartments—that is, renters—have long been a centerpiece of Seattle politics. The result has been decades of anti-growth policies. Some, like exclusive single-family zoning, have only been eroded by outside intervention—it’s unlikely that Seattle would have allowed up to six units on every residential lot if the state legislature hadn’t passed House Bill 1110, which forced the city’s hand. Others, like the longstanding practice of segregating apartment buildings from single-family areas by concentrating them on busy, polluted arterials, remain in effect and are baked into the comp plan update.

Within those constraints, the remaining phases of the comp plan leave plenty of room for the new mayor (and progressive urbanists on the council, like Alexis Mercedes Rinck, Dionne Foster, and Eddie Lin) to allow more housing in other parts of the city.

After Phase 2—the “centers and corridors” legislation—the city will rezone the existing regional and urban centers, which include downtown, Northgate, and Capitol Hill. That will happen later this year and early next year, as will consideration of of nine more neighborhood centers, which require additional review because Harrell removed them from his plan.In  Phase 4, in 2027, the city will upzone areas around frequent transit stops—another density gift from the state legislature, which forced cities to add more housing near transit through House Bill 1491 last year.

Editor’s note: The original version of this story incorrectly described the city’s midrise zones as allowing six-story apartment buildings. That describes one of the city’s lowrise zones; midrise zones allow taller buildings. The story also misstated when the city will consider adding new neighborhood centers to the plan; that will be later this year, not in the first quarter of this year.