It's time to vote for Seattle City Council, a housing levy, and elected positions all over King County. The Urbanist has published its general election endorse...

Primary election ballots are arriving in the mail and due by August 1st. In the run up The Urbanist Elections Committee has been hard at work prepping endorsem...

Summer is (finally) here for families with kids in Seattle Public Schools! In this mini episode, hosts Ray Dubicki and Natalie Argerious reflect on how we got to this late start to summer and look forward to what's ahead. A great companion piec...

Summertime gets us thinking about whole bunch of stuff, including grass. In cities across North America, grass yards are often a symbol of wealth and success and in many areas have a cult status. But what are some of the pros and cons of coveri...

Cascadia is uniquely set up as a region that would support high-speed rail. Between the linear arrangement of Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver, BC, and the just-over-100 mile distance between each one, the super region could be tied together by...

The Urbanist recently reported on Seattle snagging the 8th slot in the Trust for Public Land's 2023 national ParkScore index. In this episod...

Last week, we published an oral history of Washington State's missing middle housing bill. Creating this episode involved interviewing several of the lawmakers and advocates, like Representative Jessica Bateman (D- Olympia) and Bryce Yadon, lob...

In this year’s legislative session, the Washington State Legislature passed extensive housing reform. House Bill 1110 compelled many cities in Washington to open up single-housing residential zones to long-banned duplexes, cottage courts, and s...

In this episode, civil engineer and Urbanist contributing writer Donna Breske discusses her experience with the frustrating hurdles posed by the permitting process in Seattle with podcast host Ray Dubicki.Breske works on the ki...

Sound Transit CEO Julie Timm was our guest for The Urbanist's monthly talk series. Timm took the reins in September after coming out on top in a national CEO search to replace Peter Rogoff. She left her post as CEO of Greater Richmond Transit C...

We get a lot of news-ish emails about ranking cities in lists. Whether it's the best cities for strange hats or the metros one can find the most left handed plumbers, there's a list for everything. The proliferation of lists begs t...

This week Ray Dubicki and I chat about the policy changes that have been proposed for Seattle's industrial zones. These policies have been in the works for a long time and are finally coming up for consideration by the Seattle City Council in M...

In this week's episode, podcast host Ray Dubicki discusses the Heroes and Zeroes of the recent state legislative session with Urbanist Executive Director Doug Trumm.Heroes and Zeroes is a standing tradition at The Urbanist, and this yea...

Sometimes we feel a modicum of shame that we're not reading enough books. As the pile on the nightstand gets taller, the guilt grows. There's absolutely no reason for that to be the case. Many of us spend all day, every day reading something. L...

Every one knows there are two things you can't escape in life, death and taxes. While I'd add a few more items to that list, it seems that with Washington State having such an, ahem, unique tax system, the time had come for us to tackle the top...

Thank you for contacting The Urbanist Podcast. It is Spring Break, so co-hosts Ray Dubicki and Natalie Argerious are out of the office this week. So please enjoy a couple of unaired clips and updates from earlier stores we covered. We assure yo...

In this episode, co-hosts Natalie Argerious and Ray Dubicki welcome Ron Davis to talk about a proposed Jump Start Tax Holiday in the city of Seattle. Ron last joined the pod to talk about how the city's comprehensive planning was lacking a leve...

It is simultaneously exciting and trying times for transit in Seattle. Over the next few years, dozens of new stops will open in Bellevue, Lynnwood, and Federal Way. At the same time, future extensions are facing dual headwinds of being overly ...

It is spring of 8th Grade in the Dubicki household, so we have been investigating options on where to attend high schools. Seattle Public Schools offers schools in a home attendance area as well as option schools, allowing families to choose wh...

In this week's episode, co-hosts Natalie Argerious and Ray Dubicki are joined by conservation educators Hanae Bettencourt, Josh Morris, and Kate Lanier from Seattle Audubon. We get to talk about birds! ...

This week we had the opportunity to host Governor Jay Inslee on The Urbanist podcast. It was good timing as we reached the midpoint of the state's 100-day legislative session. Several of the bills the governor has championed, such as legalizing...

Nathan Vass has been sharing his observations as a bus driver with The Urbanist for nine years. From the

In an effort to compete with the Super Bowl and Valentines Day, Seattle. has decided to have an election. On the ballot is social housing, specifically creating a new housing authority that will develop and own green, public, and perpetually af...

When Ray pitched the idea to me of doing an episode on automation, the first thing I thought was, of course. Automation, in no small part because of the meteoric rise of the chatbot Chat GPT by OpenAI, is being discussed in every news outlet I ...

With a new year comes expectations. Whether it's something shiny an unique or a continuation of the stuff that came before, those expectations really shape our anticipation (or antipathy) for the coming orbit around the sun. In this episode, ho...