Seattle shares plan for more housing density in every neighborhood
The City of Seattle’s new comprehensive plan for the next 20 years of growth calls for expanding the boundaries of dense neighborhoods and designating new areas of the city for population growth to prepare for reaching 1 million residents by 2050.
Released Tuesday, the proposal dictates what kind of housing can be built, how much can be built and where it could go. It also would create a new neighborhood designation that allows more corner stores and restaurants to be built near housing, and implements the state’s new “missing middle” housing law to allow four to six homes on single-family home lots.
For the past 30 years, residential growth has been shaped by the city’s “urban village strategy.” It channeled the vast majority of new housing construction into urban centers such as Downtown and South Lake Union and along arterial streets in the core of urban villages like Wallingford and Fremont while limiting most of the rest of the city’s residential zones to single-family homes.
Seattle’s residential zoning has not been completely frozen in amber since the urban village strategy was adopted in 1994. The 2019 adoption of the Mandatory Housing Affordability program expanded the boundaries of urban villages and increased allowed density. That same year, the City Council passed a law allowing homeowners to build two accessory dwelling units on any single-family lot. In 2021, single-family zoning was rebranded as neighborhood residential zoning
.https://crosscut.com/politics/2024/03/seattle-shares-plan-more-housing-density-every-neighborhood