The Urbanist

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 you that tiki shirts are being worn.  As always, we love to hear from you. Tell us anything you've heard from the podcast that you'd like an update...

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 level of seriousness. This tax holiday idea is not all that different. The Jump Start tax was passed by Seattle's City Council in 2020 after years of...

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 complex and lightly understood, even by elected officials tasked with deciding their locations. On Thursday, the Sound Transit executive board heard testimo...

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 whether a school outside the neighborhood is a better fit. We looked at a few. Host Natalie Argerious questions co-host Ray Dubicki about whether the choices...

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! The good news: it's fun to get into birding and Seattle's a great place to do it. Unfortunately, there is some bad news too. The region's birds face a number of threats, includi...

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 missing middle housing statewide and adding a climate element for cities planning under the Growth Management Act, are still in play.  Gov. Inslee was...

Nathan Vass has been sharing his observations as a bus driver with The Urbanist for nine years. From the first conversation chronicles and desaturated photos, he has been building an honest and nuanced portrait of a living Seattle. There’s no Instagram filters here, and that’s fine. Not because the city’s bumps and bruises are beautiful, but because they’re evidence of human lives and interactions...

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 affordable homes and use the money raised from rent to build even more. The Urbanist Elections Committee has supported the initiative. In this episode, co-hos...

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 follow these days. Is it because us writers and podcasters finally have technology coming for our jobs? While most research studies place writer as low on t...

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, hosts Natalie Argerious and Ray Dubicki talk about the which trends will probably continue and where the year will awaken, shaking and confused, to the h...

We are wrapping up the year, and our second podcast season, with an episode devoted to hygge and the holidays. Yes, we did have to look up the pronunciation of hygge -- and practice it -- to get it right on the air.  For those of you who are not Danish speakers, the Internet told us the correct pronunciation is "hyoo-guh" and we hope that we didn't butcher it too much in this episod...

In this week's episode, Ray Dubicki tracks the last few weeks of Seattle City Council meetings to listen in as a fairly small amendment is made to the city's comprehensive plan. It takes a lot of talking and hearings to get a preference for highway lids written into the document. Given the enormous potential of covering a highway, hopefully it's worth it. We do talk quite a bit abou...

This week, let's talk about the future of Seattle with neighborhood activist and The Urbanist guest contributor Ron Davis, who joins Ray Dubicki to talk about Seattle's Comprehensive Plan. It can be a big, confusing mess of technocrat speak and boring stats.  Is it too geeky? Yes, but we break it down for you.  Comprehensive Plans are the way Washington cities look into the future and ma...

"Well, the rails are washed out north of town/ We got to head for higher ground/ We can't come back till the water goes down/ Five feet high and risin'." Johnny Cash isn't wrong. But he's short sighted. The water won't go down. Weston Wright sees water rising and asks how to live on it. Wright is not bailing. He has put together a new book called More Water, Less...

Given this podcast is dropping on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, there is a solid chance that you or a loved one will spend some time at a mall in the next week. Shopping at climate controlled temples of consumer capitalism is, after all, the point of the holiday. As you elbow your fellow shopper in the face for the last Shiba Inu Squishmellow, it’s probably good to consider how we got here. I...

This week, we enjoy some election round-ups as The Urbanist Elections Committee member Jazmine Smith joins Ray Dubicki to talk about the surprises and squeakers of Election Night 2022. From the local initiatives to the state legislature races, we discuss the purpose of advisory notes (none), the problem of having two good candidates in a race (not really a problem), and whether tough-on-crime sudd...

This week, Port of Seattle Commissioner Ryan Calkins joins Ray Dubicki to talk about the awesomeness of planes, ships, and freight.  There's also a bit about the future of how stuff moves around the world through Western Washington. Of course, cargo and people do not move in a vacuum, no matter the vaporware promises of oligarchs. Commissioner Calkins breaks down the real money the Port is bu...

In this week's episode, reporter Ray Dubicki is joined by The Urbanist's executive director Doug Trumm to discuss allocations and adjustments as Seattle's budget season moves into high gear. The City has about $1.7 billion to spend, and there's no end of things folks are asking for. That list includes a lot of requests for street renovations and pedestrian improvements that we&...

In this episode, reporter Ray Dubicki talks with two members of the Urbanist Elections Committee. Hannah Sabio-Howell and Rian Watt join the podcast to walk us through the process of developing the candidate questionnaire and surviving some long zoom calls. As we hear from Hannah and Rian, the Elections Committee puts some serious effort into their work. That can be seen in the thoughtful list of...

In this episode, managing editor Natalie Argerious and reporter Ray Dubicki discuss the lingering haze over the city of Seattle. After a soaking wet spring, the region has seen less rain than the desert southwest. This is not the grey north we signed up for. The real toll comes on individuals that cannot go inside, and there are services being extended to shelter and comfort them. For many, includ...

In this podcast, managing editor Natalie Argerious and reporter Ray Dubicki talk about the names we put on places and events. It's the second week in October, long considered to kick off with Columbus Day. However, that name has been changed, recognizing the Indigenous People that were harmed by the colonizer's actions. More broadly, there are names in our communities and monuments that...

In this podcast, managing editor Natalie Argerious and writer Ray Dubicki discuss movies made in the Emerald City. There's lots of good ones and more very bad ones. But few are made here any more. A new Seattle Film Commission has been established to change that, but is it enough? As always, we welcome your thoughts, opinions, and favorite Seattle movie stories. Reach out to us at podcast [at...

In this episode, we discuss homelessness, health, and Seattle's own significant history related to these topics with University of Washington Professor Josephine Ensign, author of Skid Road: On the Frontier of Health and Homelessness in an American City . Professor Ensign's book will be the topic of discussion at our first ever book club meeting on Tuesday, October, 18th, at 6pm . We wer...

It's officially the second season of The Urbanist podcast and we are excited to be back. Joining us on this episode is Kelli Refer, Executive Director of Move Redmond and Urbanist board member. Most importantly for this episode, Kelli is a car-free parent whose experience with her young daughter has equipped her with lots of insights into the topic.  Living car-free in most North American cit...

In this podcast, managing editor Natalie Argerious and I talk summer vacation and the best ways to carry urbanism with you in your travels. We talk summer reading and favorite short trips from Seattle. Natalie also interrogates my younger child Gillian to find out how many of my vacation stories are actually true. But the name of the game in urbanist style travel is awareness. Is the way we'r...