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Last summer, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) prepared a report to the Vancouver City Council on the city’s EcoDensity Initiative pointing out the initiative’s weakness on affordability. The backers of EcoDensity, a City initiative to make environmental sustainability a primary goal in all city planning decisions, argue that increasing supply by adding density will result in a decrease in housing costs. That follows basic economic principles, but we...

McKinstry Company is perhaps the most dynamic and interesting company in the Northwest right now. They’re earning high-profile shout-outs from President Obama. And even in this economy, they’re adding jobs and expanding. Check it out: SEATTLE—Mayor Greg Nickels today presented McKinstry Company with a permit and approved plans for an expansion of its Georgetown facility in south Seattle.  The company expects to hire an additional 500 people, a combination of...

Fifteen years ago this Autumn, a 28-year-old researcher names Alan Durning lugged a refurbished library table into the cramped bedroom closet of his Seattle home, drilled a phone line through the wall, and filed the legal papers to create a nonprofit research institute. We’ve come a long way since 1993, but our overarching goal remains the same: to arm change-makers with the independent research, ideas, and tools they need to...

Earlier this year, the RAND Corporation, a non-profit think tank, put out a report on how to get traffic moving faster.  They considered lots of the standard solutions—improving signal timing, clearing accidents quickly, encouraging telecommuting, and so forth—and found that many of them could, in fact, provide some temporary congestion relief. But here’s the rub:  RAND found that over the long haul, these kinds of solutions simply don’t have much...

Sightline’s greatest achievements over 15 years.

Editor’s Note: As part of our “Escape to Vancouver” campaign, Sightline talked to Gordon Price—urban design expert and former Vancouver city councillor—to get his take on the changing landscape of Cascadia’s most urban city. Gordon, who has offered a Vancouver walking/biking tour to the winner of the trip, blogs and posts his popular urban design newsletter on his Price Tags website. (Full disclosure: Sightline is also lucky enough to claim...

Editor’s note: In honor of our “Escape to Vancouver” Sweepstakes, we’re “recycling” one of our most popular posts. Sign up for Sightline Daily emails between now and October 29 and you, too, could experience a car-less vacation to Vancouver, BC!   Our car-less family vacation in Vancouver, BC, was a big success. Here’s a full report, for those of you who shared your own car-lessvacation stories and are interested in...

Unsurprisingly, the US Congress tucked a few goodies into the financial bailout bill that passed today.  Surprisingly, one of those goodies is actually good for bike commuters. Yes, the Bicycle Commuter Act, which gives incentives for employers whose employees bike to work, just became law! There’s a great rundown of what it all means over here.  But in a nutshell: The Bicycle Commuter Act gives employers $20 a month tax...

The House has just passed the $700 billion economic bailout package, clearing the way for the crisis-induced legislation to be signed by President Bush. But what happens next? I’m no economist, but certainly this is a big, huge wake up call that the “same-old, same-old” is not working for American families. My point is that now, more than ever, we should be talking about how we’re going to stabilize our...

I just can’t help wondering what else we could do with $700 billion. According to the United Nations, the entire debt for the entire continent of Africa was about $320 billion in 2003. Adjusting for inflation and further accumulated debt, let’s call it an even $350 billion. You could install solar panels on 20 million American homes for $300 billion. (I’m ballparking a rather conservative $15k for full installation of enough...