• Pimp Your Ride III, Oregon Edition

    We’ve been talking for years about the concept of personal car sharing, which allows a car owner whose vehicle sits idle most of the time to rent it out to someone who needs to run errands on four wheels. (As we’ve described it before, think of it as plugging your car into the Zipcar network when you’re not using it.) It’s an entrepreneurial idea with lots of benefits—reducing pollution and...
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  • What's in the Cards for Stormwater

    On Thursday, the state Department of Ecology will tip its hand on its plan for new stormwater regulations for Washington’s cities and counties in a meeting at its headquarters. Folks concerned about saving Puget Sound say the stakes are high. Stormwater—and the millions of pounds of pollution that it carries, plus the damage it does when it blasts through salmon streams like a fire hose—is considered the prime threat to...
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  • Who’ll Stop the Rain?

    It’s so satisfying to be able to promote a pro-environment stance that’s also sweet for the money-crunching bottom line. Especially when the audience for that pitch is Washington’s business community. That’s what Sightline chieftain Alan Durning and I got to do in an editorial about stormwater for Seattle Business magazine that’s out now. The editorial makes the case that low-impact development is the cheapest, smartest, and most environmentally beneficial way...
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  • For Whom the Rooster Crows

    Editor’s note: The following post is by Sightline communications intern Michelle Venetucci Harvey. Keep an eye out for more posts from her in coming months.  An uprising against city roosters might be just what the urban agriculture movement needs. Confused? Stay with me. When Seattle Mayor McGinn declared 2010 the “Year of Urban Agriculture” back in April, some folks worried that the result would be little more than some brown...
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  • Using Crutches in a Walker’s Paradise

    I broke my ankle three weeks ago. And no, it wasn’t undertaking some spectacular athletic feat. It was a simple trip and fall at home. But now that I’m on crutches, I’ve had the opportunity to see what it’s like to be disabled. I am fortunate, obviously, because my bones will heal, and soon I’ll be up and about. But along with a new found gratitude for simply being able...
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  • Shrinky Dink

    Several weeks ago, Vancouver held its first open house for a “laneway” house (Laneway houses are comparable to Seattle’s back yard cottages) built as part of its EcoDensity initiative. I haven’t seen the Vancouver project, but I did take a trip to see some very small cottages in Portland built by Orange Splot Cohousing Development called Ruth’s Cottages. These two projects reflect a growing trend in trying to legalize neighborhood...
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  • Vancouver’s Transit Advantage: It’s the Neighborhoods

    A few weeks back, Vancouver, BC-based urban planner Zach Shaner posted a comparison of bus transit service in Seattle and Vancouver.  Shaner’s basic claim—that Vancouver’s bus service just works better than Seattle’s—is hard to dispute. A few years ago I reached the same conclusion, based on the fact that  TransLink, BC’s transit agency, provided far more bus rides per capita than did greater Seattle’s. But while I totally agree with...
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  • Zip Cart?

    When I was growing up in Seattle in the sixties, the neighborhood grocery where my mom shopped let her and other regular customers push purchases home in the store’s shopping carts. We lived two blocks away, and we returned the carts promptly to safeguard the privilege. It was sometimes my older siblings’ job to return the cart while the rest of us put away the provisions at home. Consequently, my...
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  • Updating the "Granny Cart"

    Editor’s note 4/19/16: We’re re-posting an old favorite today in honor of Earth Week. In a compact neighborhood, what’s one of the most helpful vehicles? A grocery cart! And even six years ago, styles were looking up. Have a new favorite of your own to add? Let us know in the comments section. Transport guru Todd Litman says the biggest vehicular breakthrough of recent decades is the rolling suitcase. That’s not...
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  • Inner Space

    In putting together some background materials for a recent meeting, I stumbled upon a 5-year-old report by the Housing Partnership called Filling in the Spaces: Ten Essentials for Successful Urban Infill Housing. Five years is like an eternity in this economy, especially when it comes to housing. But I found the report still really fresh on the principles for dealing with growth in Northwest. The basic idea is that infill...
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