Extreme Seattle

New demographic figures make clear what a statistical outlier Seattle is, with few families, few kids, high education, and rapid gentrification. Only San Francisco can compare.

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Vision 2040 for Pugetopolis

An urban geographer uses un-rose-tinted glasses in peering into the crystal ball. He finds that we will not be able to do much about growing income segregation, congestion, gentrification in Seattle, and leapfrog development. Nor will rail transit help make things better.

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New figures confirm Seattle's housing affordability woes

The pattern is very strong: In Seattle you have affluent, largely single people chasing a small supply of urban housing. The result is small household size, an exodus of families to the suburbs, and very high housing prices in the city.

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Transportation: Can't we all just get along?

An opponent of Proposition 1 opens the bidding, in hopes of finding a middle ground in the transportation wars. The peace treaty: a little more rail, no new highways, some highway fixes, unclogging arterials, tolls, and no more cute trolleys.

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You can't grow branch campuses by starving them

Let's review some of the bidding in the controversy over building a new University of Washington branch campus at Everett. I and a colleague in the UW Geography Department, William Beyers, performed original analyses for possible branch campuses for the University of Washington.

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Sizing up the Proposition 1 vote, precinct by precinct

Voters were resisting a plan that was Seattle-centric and premised on the expectation that most people would become affluent professionals working in dense urban settings. This skeptic of rail transit also suggests how to recraft the proposal.

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So what would be better than the roads-and-transit ballot proposal?

A leading critic of Proposition 1 takes up the challenge and proposes his notion of a better way to address the transportation problems of the Puget Sound region. Some of the solutions are surprisingly modest, like allowing less parking on Seattle arterials.

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Growth in Seattle: Do we just throw up our hands?

The growth guru looks at the relatively few things government could do to stop putting coal on the engines of local growth. But they won't be easy politically. For instance, are you okay with expanding the Urban Growth Boundary?

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What drives the runaway growth in the Seattle area?

Much of the growth comes from external factors we cannot control. But not all of it is beyond local political control. An urban geographer sorts out the unusual concentration of growth hormones that hit the area and looks at the dilemmas of rapid growth.

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The new population figures show slow growth in Seattle and big growth in outer counties

The region is growing smartly, particularly as you get farther away from Seattle, and in amenities-rich hotspots like Whatcom and the Columbia River valley. The new figures show what high costs will do in cities with lots of economic growth, pushing families and other residents farther and farther out.

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Growth and density: Let's do the numbers

An expert on urban demographics argues that there's not a lot Seattle can do to change growth patterns and prevent sprawl. But some modest accommodations can be made.

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