Welcome to the Seattle Urbanism Guide#

If you’ve ever been to a community meeting about a new bike lane, housing development, or transit project and felt like everyone else in the room had context you didn’t – this guide is for you.

The gap we’re trying to fill#

Seattle has great urbanist media. The Urbanist does excellent journalism. Seattle Transit Blog covers transit in depth. Seattle Neighborhood Greenways does important advocacy work.

But these resources share a common assumption: you already have a baseline understanding of how the city works, what the acronyms mean, and what the history is. If you’re new to Seattle or new to caring about urban issues, there’s a steep learning curve before you can even follow the conversation.

This guide is that missing baseline. It’s a reference, not a news source. The goal is to give you enough context that when you read an Urbanist article or attend a Sound Transit open house, you can engage meaningfully.

What you’ll find here#

  • Quick Start – A plain-language overview of Seattle’s urban landscape
  • Glossary – Definitions of terms you’ll encounter in urbanist discussions
  • Timeline – Key events that shaped Seattle’s built environment
  • Get Involved – Advocacy organizations you can join to make a difference
  • Recommended Reading – Publications and writers covering Seattle urbanism
  • Data – Dashboards and reports for evidence-based arguments
  • Blog – You’re reading it. Longer-form pieces on specific topics.

How you can help#

This is an open-source project. The content lives in markdown files on GitHub. If you see something wrong, incomplete, or confusing:

  1. Open an issue to suggest changes
  2. Submit a pull request with corrections or new content
  3. Share it with someone who might find it useful

The best contributions come from people who recently learned something – you know exactly what was confusing and what explanation finally made it click.

Thanks for reading. Let’s make Seattle’s urbanist community more accessible.

Backward Blog