How should our city handle its next 20 years of growth?
The 575-page proposed answer to that question is now public – the updated “comprehensive plan” proposed by Mayor Murray.
With the recommended plan’s release, it heads to the City Council’s Planning, Land Use, and Zoning Committee (whose members include our district’s Councilmember Lisa Herbold). This is the first major comprehensive-plan update since 2004. One of its key points is an echo of what happened a decade before that, in the city’s first such plan: “The urban village strategy is this Planās approach to managing growth. … The City intends for each of these areas to see more growth and change over time than other commercial locations or primarily residential areas, and together they will accommodate the majority of the cityās expansion during this Planās life span.”
The announcement from the mayor’s office – which you can see in its entirety here – includes:
Seattle 2035 includes goals and policies, including those that:
Ā· Guide more future growth to areas within a 10-minute walk of frequent transit
Ā· Continue the Planās vision for mixed-use Urban Villages and Urban Centers
Ā· Monitor future growth in greater detail, including data about racial disparities
Ā· Increase the supply and diversity of affordable housing consistent with the Mayorās Housing Affordable Livability Agenda (HALA)
Ā· Update how we measure the performance of the cityās transportation and parks systems
Ā· Integrate the Cityās planning for parks, preschool, transit, housing, transportation, City facilities and services
Our area has four urban villages – which are part of the list of neighborhoods in the section of the report that includes highlights from neighborhood plans. You can search that section for each of these:
Admiral
Delridge (not an urban village)
Morgan Junction
West Seattle Junction
Westwood/Highland Park
The plan spans many topics, from off-street parking to potential North Highline annexation. As the announcement observes, “Forecasts suggest that over the next twenty years, Seattle will need to accommodate 70,000 additional housing units, 120,000 more residents, and 115,000 additional jobs.” This would set a framework for doing that. The plan “and related legislation” will go to the PLUZ Committee later this month, the announcement says. The comments that went into it were gathered in a variety of ways, including meetings like this one in West Seattle last November.
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