When we mention Seattle, things pop up into our mind will be its unpredictable weather, Space Needle, Amazon, Boeing or University of Washington. Seattle is a romantic city: pink cherry-blossom blooms in spring; maple leaves fall in autumn; continuous rains are like diamonds and crystals, decorating all the vivid colors. Seattle is also an innovative city: Amazon brings so many technological evolution; Link Station shortens the time to our next destination; thousands of elites are attracted to this city. People can clearly witness the fast population-growth, economic-growth and how technology changes people’s way of life. Having evolved over a long period of time, it is quite captivating to look back at the city’s history and growth pattern.
The already urbanized city of Seattle had a total population of 557,087 in 1960, but within the past 54 years it has tremendously ballooned to a total of 704,352 people; accommodated by a physical growth of the geographical area from a mere 348 square miles to 1,092 square miles within the 50-year period. Over this period, Seattle has also changed in many other aspects – quick growth; at times slowing down; the categories of people changed; and the types of housing and settlement patterns also transformed. Therefore, Seattle is no doubt an interesting and meaningful city to study and explore. This report will explore the driving forces that were responsible for the city’s growth patterns over the last 50 years; human development and its benefits to the people; the impact of the recent growth and spatial development; examples of institutions and groups responsible for the growth; and the influence of growth on the physical environment of the city.
The two world wars and national defense helped to stimulate Boeing “take off “and accelerated the formation of military industry in Seattle. Meanwhile, with a new economic form, the development of military industry created a strong foundation for Seattle’s successful transformation and the accumulation of wealth. Seattle was transforming from the high-tech industry road to a green development path. After the two world wars, the U.S. embarked on an unprecedented economic expansion, with new companies such as Boeing starting to make profits and employing many people. As a result, the city of Seattle experienced rural-to-urban migration, leading to growth in population as well as the economy. Today, Seattle has strong international influence and worldwide urban competitiveness.
Seattle got through a successful transition from a small fishing port town to a strong military city. The early economy of Seattle was mainly based on its unique natural conditions, excellent geographical location, rich forest mineral resources, and pleasant temperate marine climate. Fisheries, Coal Mining, Wood Processing and Shipbuilding had once become local pivotal industries and played a huge role in the economic development of Seattle. However, at that time, Seattle was still a secluded remote town, relying solely on the original extensive production methods to develop the local economy. That way of living could not meet the needs of local people, then Seattle economic development stagnated. In 1879, the rise of Alaska Gold Rush, prompted more and more people to go to Seattle, as well as creating an accumulated wealth basis for the Seattle infrastructure construction and the introduction of foreign capital. In 1916, Boeing was established in Seattle, which played a significant part in the rapid emergence and development of military industry. There is no doubt that the outbreak of the two world wars made the Boeing company come into being, and therefore achieved the success of the Seattle economic prosperity and the successful transformation of the city.
Seattle subsequently got through a perfect transformation from a military-based city to a high-tech city. The role of Boeing in the development of Seattle city is indelible, whose role was not only self-evidently reflected in the economic aspect, but also political, cultural, social, public welfare and other aspects of the impact. But the economic development was also simultaneously companied with inevitable negative effects. For the military industry, the most significant feature is that the simplicity of economic structure can easily lead to a direct “Win-win, or a loss-loss” situation. There will be a very popular local saying that “if Boeing gets cold, Seattle will also sneeze.” At the beginning of the development, Boeing’s cumbersome system made itself almost bankrupt, in order to save Boeing, the employer had to lay off a large number of employees. High unemployment rate led the original workers to a desperation, and the community was a chaos.
Fortunately, the arrival of the new technological revolution in the 1960s made Seattle splendid and prosperous again in the world stage. Boeing introduced new commercial airliners, and its business boomed once again, leading to growth in the economy. However, it experienced a slump in 1970s, causing economic depression in the city because the economy was still highly dependent on the airline company. The world’s most famous software company, Microsoft, moved to Seattle in the summer of 1978, causing a new economic frontier through technology. Microsoft’s leading high-tech trend prompted Seattle into the ranks of the World Science and Technology Metro, which also made Seattle finish the achievement of changing from the single-structured military city to a high-tech innovative town. With the growth of new companies, the city became more diversified, and the economy grew steadily, accompanied with migration into the city that led to population growth.
Political factors also contributed to the growth of the city economically and demographically. The political prowess of Washington Senators in the 1960s and beyond including Warren G. Magnuson and Harry Jackson promoted growth (Seatle.gov, 2017). They had great influence in research institutions such as the University of Washington, prompting new developments in high-technology sector, and providing a good environment for investments. Furthermore, the strategic location of the city at the west coast has enabled an expanded sea and air trade with Alaska, North Pacific and Asia.
Currently, the city’s economy has been promoted by growing number of multinational companies that have chosen to station their headquarters and manufacturing plants in Seattle. Five of the Fortune 500 largest companies in 2013 were headquartered in Seattle: Amazon, Starbucks, Nordstrom, Expeditors International, and Weyerhaeuser. These companies offer great opportunities for employment and income, leading to economic growth of the city.
The city of Seattle has also been shaped by immigration since 1960s. The decennial figures of 2010 indicated that the people of color increased from 26% to 34% of the total population of Seattle between 1990 and 2010, most of whom were foreign immigrants looking for employment in the industrious city. Furthermore, the percentage of foreign-born residents of Seattle increased from 13 percent to 19 percent within the same period, according to the American Community Survey. Based on this data, it is clear that the population increase in Seattle was partly contributed by immigration. As Seattle accommodates many technology and manufacturing companies, it has attracted several people from the U.S. and outside the U.S. who are looking for employment opportunities. In the process, the immigrants have contributed to the economic growth of the city by providing labor to large companies in the city.
The population of Seattle has been growing significantly since 1960, increasing from 557,087 people in 1960 to 704,352 in 2016. However, this growth was accompanied with low population density, declining from 3,385 people per square meter to about 2,906 people per square meter. According to Seattle Times, the US Census Bureau recently released demographic data analysis, showing that Seattle, once again, became the nation’s fastest growing population city, which is the second time in a decade. From July 1st, 2015 to July 1st, 2016, Seattle’s population increased about 21,000 of population, which means there would be 57 new people come to or be born in this city per day. Seattle’s population growth rate reached 3.1%, same as that in 2003, became the No.1 fastest population-growing city among 50 most populous cities in U.S. In 2015, Seattle was ranked the fourth. Back to 2003 when Seattle first became No.1 in the ranking, with 18,000 population growth and 2.8% growth rate. At that time, it is incredible. Nowadays, this number sounds negligible, because Seattle becomes a stronger metropolis. Last year, Seattle realized a rapid population growth; the number of population exceeded 700,000, which only took Seattle 10 years. With this year’s population growth, Seattle’s average annual growth is 15658 people for the recent decade, which was the first time that it exceeds the post gold rush period’s average annual growth. Someone may think that expensive house value may undermine population growth, but it is not the truth because job positions with high income in Seattle make that not a problem.
People who benefits most from economic development and population growths may be those who bought their houses many years ago and have higher education degree. First, they do not need to suffer from the increasing price of houses, and people with higher education degree tend to have higher income, so they are still able to lead a great life facing the increasing price of market products or services. Those who benefitted least must be the workers living in a rent house with minimum wage. They have to experience the increasing rent with little increase in minimum wage. Those families who are in deep poverty may suffer most. The poverty welfare is based on state level, so let us see the statistics from Washington State. In Washington State, 26 percent of poor families were in deep poverty in 1996; but 40 percent were in deep poverty in 2014 with less cash assistance from welfare available (Browning, 2016) With the continuous growth of commodity price but less welfare, poor families seem too hard to make a living in Seattle. Therefore, urban planners in Seattle are supposed to design and operate efficient and affordable public transportation system and education opportunities for all income levels. What’s more, urban planners should also provide a reasonable level of qualified and affordable housing choice by subsidy for the poor.
The basic model of Why & How Cities Grow tells us that a city starts to grow with rural to urban migration in demand of economic opportunity. However, this theory actually contradicts the development of Seattle, because the Seattle starts to grow because of military demand. But it is true that people experienced rural-to-urban migration that people used to live in a small fishing port town then Seattle becomes a strong military city. The model also illustrates that there will be an increased market size and business opportunities, increased labor specialization and increased productivity. This model conforms to Seattle’s development trend that when Boeing started its industrial growth, it created thousands of working opportunities for the workers; and the labor specialization was increased as well, from a simple fishing-based labor form to a more comprehensive and efficient labor concentration. Also, this model tells us that a city grows with increased income recirculation and public revenue as well as additional business opportunities and public services, which attracts more population to this city. It is true that Seattle got through a large population growth while Microsoft led Seattle achieve the transformation from a military-based city to a high-tech based city. More and more working, business opportunities and public services were improved, then people are driven to this city for better life.
While Seattle is experiencing economic growth, the growth of the city slows down because of problems such as congestion, income inequality, rising prices due to land or capital bottlenecks and supply inelasticity, environmental and over-consumption externalities, extreme complexity & bureaucratization resulting in a loss of flexibility and resilience and so on.
The biggest problem of Seattle’s urbanization nowadays might be traffic congestion. “Seattle took its place as the fifth most traffic-congested U.S. city, in a national ranking released Tuesday by the Tom Tom navigation company” (Lindblom, 2017). I travelled to Seattle this Autumn break specially for this research paper. I experienced the high congestion during the commuting time around 6p.m on Thursday night. A distance usually takes 15 minutes to drive will need almost an hour, and sometimes my car would just stop on the highway. There is only a main single expressway i-5 in Seattle, which makes every driver have to choose this congested way to drive from work to home. What is even worse, in downtown Seattle, it took us 40 minutes to drive through a short distance into the highway, which may only take 5 minutes to walk. We can imagine that it would be even worse if there is a special event happening in Seattle, then the expressway will become a “paralysis”. Based on this obvious congestion, Seattle has tried to mitigate this problem. The Link light rail can be considered as a trying to alleviate the traffic congestion. It is a rapid transit rail system operated by Sound Transit. However, it seems not to be an effective way to reduce traffic congestion. With Link light rail, Seattle’s traffic is still full of traffic jams. Is the traffic congestion really inevitable in Seattle? In the Tacoma City Club panel event, in response to audience’s question, Shefali Ranganathan of the pro-Sound Transit advocacy group Transportation Choices Coalition said that building light rail will not ease traffic congestion, but traffic jams will double if they do nothing. (Frost, 2016) It is true that in a high urban developing process, it is so difficult to eliminate “friction of space”, when Seattle is experiencing a rapid growth in population and economy. Additionally, Seattle’s growth in future housing and employment opportunities would happen in locations where light rail stations are already existed or planned to be built. This would have the potential to cause compatibility issues since lower density areas may transit to higher-density development forms. In other words, those areas closest to existing and planned light rail station would experience the most fast and greatest levels of infill redevelopment. Sometimes it is hard to tell whether congestion brings light rail, or the light rail results in congestion. What urban planners can do is to invest in regional-scale multi-modal transportation and communications infrastructure to ease the congestion issue and make it easier and faster for people to get to their destinations.
Another tough urban planning issue in Seattle nowadays can be income inequality. Seattle, in this day and age, is a high-tech based city. Everything develops so fast and people with high technology background or advanced skills tend to have high income, while people with less skills may have to make a living with minimum wage. On July 10, 2017, Seattle City Council issued a law that Individual incomes more than $250,000 and married couple with more than $500,000 income are supposed to pay a 2.25% tax (Jackson, 2017). Most of the revenue will be distributed to affordability of housing, education, transportation and other infrastructure buildings. This process will help low-income earners to afford housing and transport, leading to improved living standards of the poor. Moreover, Seattle government is trying to increase the minimum wage to $15. The passing of the laws, however, may ease the burden of low income earners and cause the gap between the poor and the rich to become narrower than before. It is hard to maintain affordability for Seattle’s middle-income and low-income classes. Also, many low skill-required jobs are disappearing, which is replaced by technological equipment, causing emerging unemployment in lower-income classes.
Gini Coefficient can be a fair non-spatial measure of inequality that varies from 0 to 1. The higher the value of Gini Coefficient, the more income is in the hands of a very small subset of the population, usually the wealthiest. The following diagram can be a good illustrator showing the Gini Index in Seattle city comparing that in Washington State and the US level. We can notice that inequality level in Seattle is above the Washington State level and the US level from 2008 to 2015, but the gap is getting smaller with time going by due to the laws that the local government has introduced to boost the living standards of low income earners. Increasing price of housing and employment opportunity losses for low skilled jobs, as we mentioned before, can be two major reasons for income inequality in Seattle. In addition, the tuition for attending a university can be considered really high for the poor. Rich people will choose to pursue educational degree with not doubt, while the application for financial aid can be complicated, then poor people choose not to pursue a degree. However, people with higher degree tend to earn more, causing the income inequality more severe in Seattle. It conforms to the theory of Causes of Poverty and Income inequality: No Shortage that differences in educational quality and opportunities and job losses in low skill-high pay occupancies can cause the incidence and persistence of poverty.
Besides growth & development patterns and forces, spatial development patterns and effects on the physical natural environment can also be an index to evaluate a city’s urban planning process. Seattle is surrounded by sea, lakes, rivers, fields and forests that were once suitable for hunting and gathering. The surrounding environment also allows for socioeconomic activities such as skiing, bicycling, camping and hiking. The conditions are favorable for these activities throughout the year. The city is also surrounded by uneven hills, including Capitol Hill, Beacon Hill, First Hill, Magnolia, Weast Seattle and Denny Hill. Water bodies such as Portage Bay, Union Bay, Lake Union and Salmon Bay also affect urban planning of the city. One of the man-made projects that have shaped the topography of the city is the ridge break between Beacon Hill and First Hill. The construction of an artificial harbor island and a seawall at the terminus of the Green Water also influenced the spatial development of the city.
According to Seattle DPD’s Existing Land Use Distribution, Downtown, First/Capitol Hill, South Lake Union and Uptown are the four urban centers that are considered as “center city”, which is with the highest concentrations of commercial and multi-use development. Other smaller urban centers, urban villages and smaller nodes around the central business district also have levels of commercial and mixed-use with various degree of development. Single-family residential neighborhoods fill the intervening areas, along with public parks, open space and major institutional usages. Industrial development concentrate in the Greater Duwamish Manufacturing/Industrial Center in south central Seattle and in the Ballard-Interbay-Northend MIC, which is located northwest of Downtown. (Seattle.gov, 2015) From the Land Use Categories’ picture above, we can notice that commercial/mixed-use sectors are the core of Seattle. Industrial/Manufacturing regions spread along the core and emanate outwards. And the single-family groups are located near the Urban Center and spread outwards. What’s more, there are four urban centers with their own land-use and activity formations. Each center/village type serves a particular purpose, and they are distinguished by differences in land use composition, spatial patterns and development types and character. Each center or urban village has similarities that Commercial/Mixed-Use and Single/Multi-family sectors together contain three quarters or more than three quarters. But they have their own unique land use composition and are distinguished by differences in land use composition, spatial patterns and development types, serving Seattle with particular purposes. For instance, both Downtown and First/Capitol Hill urban centers have similar density, development intensity and mixed-use characteristics. However, Downtown is much more largely commercial, of which almost 75 percent of the land use are utilized for commercial purposes. The University District, on the other hand, serves heaviest proportion of facility and institutional usages among all the Seattle’s urban centers. It is a mixture of commercial, residential and industrial usages, but they are mainly existed for serving the running of University of Washington campus. In nutshell, urban centers in Seattle may share some similar characters, but mostly serve different purposes.
In the recent decade, Seattle is experiencing the expansion of population from central urban areas to low-density, simple-functional suburban areas because of the highly increasing population. Low-income families have to move away from the central urban areas to seek for affordable homes while high-income households can still be able to live near the central commercial areas. But some of the high-income ones will move a little further away from the Seattle urban centers to avoid the noise and pollution. This process can be considered as gentrification, because smaller urban centers such as the University District, Northgate, South Lake Union and Uptown used to be poor neighborhoods. Only when higher social-economic status groups move into this neighborhood or the investors “circle” the neighborhoods and put the money into it for development, will a poor neighborhood become gentrified and developed. The investors’ purpose was to buy a region with low price. After these areas is gentrified, they can sell them with higher prices to get benefits. However, gentrification in Seattle caused some problems such as displacement for the low-income families as we mentioned before. In addition, besides income, people tend to live near a place where similar occupations are concentrated. More specifically, businessman may live near the Central Business District and students tend to live near the University Campus area. And the homes in a specific area have different varying prices for different income-level classes.
So, are there any historical models that accord with the land use of Seattle? It is almost impossible to find a hundred-percent matching model that conforms to Seattle’s land use and activity spread, because Seattle is a too specific city. However, it somehow partly conforms to both Homer Hoyt’s Sector Theory of 1929 and Harris-Ullman Multiple Nucleii Model 1945. In Homer Hoyt’s Sector Theory 1929, wedge-shaped sectors emanate from the Central Business District and center on major transportation routes. Factories/Industries and Residential from all the classes will develop in wedge-shaped patterns along the CBD; but because manufacturing/industrial sectors tend to have more traffic, noise and pollution, which made areas near it less desirable, higher classes live further from the industrial area while low-income have to live in a wedge surrounding the manufacturing/industrial patterns. It is true that the central commercial/mixed use area is surrounded by Industrial area and single-family. However, we cannot figure out obvious distance differences among classes with different levels of income; and what I notice is that usually the house value and the rent near the Central Business District are higher than those far from the urban center. It means that people with low income may not be able to live near central business district. For example, the rent of homes near the Downtown Seattle area are extremely high: average more than 2000 thousand dollar for 1bedreoom&1 bathroom. As for Harris-Ullman Multiple Nucleii Model 1945, it believes that a city started with a Central Business District, agglomeration economies lead similar industries with common land-use and financial requirements to locate near each other. And then these groups will influence their immediate neighborhood. There are lots of areas of concentrated development that maximize efficient use of infrastructure and services in Seattle. Urban centers and manufacturing/ industrial patterns are regionally-designated concentrated that serve as economic engines for Seattle and surrounding communities. Smaller and less dense areas such as Urban villages are City-designated areas, provide a mix of residential business and employment uses that serve nearby locations. As we can see, that similar industries concentrate together and directly serve the immediate neighborhood are both showed in Harris-Ullman Multiple Nucleii Model and Seattle’s current land-use conditions. However, again, in Harris-Ullman Model, the lower the class, the nearer it will be from the Central Business District, which does not match the reality in Seattle that low-income class cannot afford the price of homes near the urban center. Therefore, Seattle’s land use and activity, to some degree, conforms both Homer Hoyt’s model and Harris-Ullman model, but are not perfectly match them.
There is no perfect land use and activity model that fits Seattle’s current land use distribution, just like there is no perfect urban planning in any cities all over the world. Seattle has particular planning issues during the sprawling and gentrification procedure. Probably future growth is likely to create localized land use compatibility issues when development occurs. However, Seattle has comprehensive development regulation, zoning policies and design requirements, which is supposed to sufficiently mitigate these bad impacts. Therefore, few adverse impacts would happen during these growths.
To mitigate the problem of income inequality and housing prices, the Seattle local government has come up with a program called “Seattle 2035” which maps out a plan for growth and equity, and analyzes the impacts of displacement and opportunities of sustainable growth strategy for Seattle. This equity program includes a program for the inclusivity of small households, poor people and different racial groups in the urban planning process of the city. This equitable development program responds to the existing gap between high income and low income earners in Seattle, which has caused problems of sustainable growth and development of the city. The city observes that an equitable outcome is achieved through diversity of cultures, races and income levels; where everyone, regardless of their race, gender or cultural backgrounds have the opportunity to realize their full potential (City of Seattle 9). The program intends to develop diverse neighborhoods anchored on community programs, support, goods and services, and the social amenities needed to promote healthy living in the city.
We can do it today.
In a city like Seattle where population is growing rapidly and house prices are escalating, market forces are not able to produce the desired economic growth (City of Seattle 10). Indeed gentrification and displacement patterns in the city indicate that marginalized populations and low-income earners in the city are displaced. For this reason, the city has proposed to implement investments and programs that can create economic mobility and community stability, especially for neighborhoods that experience displacement. Another option is to leverage the private sector to provide various housing options and increase supply of housing in the city to lower housing prices and make them affordable to local populations; hence minimizing displacements and achieving equitable growth. The plan also aims at creating safe and healthy neighborhoods, equitable access to resources, civic infrastructure, transit, overlay education, amenities, and opportunity index.
After analyzing Seattle’s growth and development forces, spatial sorting and influences on the physical environments, we are also interested in its political economy of development. Seattle Department of Planning and Development implements policies in order to build a dynamic, sustainable, prosperous Seattle. What’s more, its goal is to collaborate closely with communities, stakeholders, City Council, and other City departments to make Seattle a place that is pleasant for people to live and visit and for businesses to thrive and develop. The Seattle Department of Planning and Development Director leads their policy work in comprehensive planning, community planning, implementing transit-oriented development and land use policy. They are trying to complete and update long-range policies to support future Seattle that is anticipated to have 70,000 more households and 115,000 job opportunities in the following 20 years. What’s more, they focus on developing specific areas in the sense of local residents, businesses, non-profits and property owners. Furthermore, they need to ensure the consistency between the development in light rail station and community plans. Also, they concentrate on creating more job opportunities, providing affordable housing for people with different ranges of income, maximizing transit ridership bring more educational opportunities and stimulating investments to local neighborhood areas. Last but not least, they are supposed to settle emerging issues for a more environmental-friendly city (Seattle.gov, 2015). More specifically, Seattle planners need to take care of every corner of Seattle to make sure an appropriate land use, such as sustainable buildings, pedestrian areas, land supplies, marijuana businesses, parking requirements, green neighborhood, homeless people, etc. One elucidated example can be the trash sorting policy issued in Seattle. After this policy was issued, more and more sorted trash-bins are located prevalently in every corner of Seattle. In Odegaard Library of University of Washington, we can see that trash-bin set with three categories Paper-Trash -Recycle is located on every floor and there are four sets on each floor. The special part of the trash bins is that each categorical trash bin has its own shape to supervise people to do the trash sorting. For instance, the paper trash-bin has thin rectangular mouth; the recycle trash-bin has a small round mouth; and the trash one is like normal trash-bin with no cover on the top. Most Seattle citizens participate in this trash sorting “activity”, they will have sorted the trash by recyclable and unrecyclable before they throw them into the public trash bins. Though this trash sorting policy is not penetrating into every citizen’s heart, but people take actions to make Seattle a better city to live and enjoy life. Seattle Department of Planning and Development’s way of guiding Seattle’s development and growth conforms to the theory of jobs for planners from urban growth to prosperity. It is because that Seattle planners do invest in transportation and communication infrastructure to make it more convenient for people to travel between workplace and home. They also devote themselves to offering qualified affordable housings and creating a less polluted, more efficient city.
From all the analysis above, we can conclude that planning played a pivotal part in the growth and development of Seattle. It is like a navigation light guiding and advising the main development direction from the aspect of demographic and economic growth, spatial sorting and development and political management. They have to consider and plan well for transportation, infrastructure, environment protection, housing affordability, employment opportunities and so on. Moreover, Seattle planners need to handle planning issues existed during the process of development, such as traffic congestion, expensive housing, income inequality, and land use compatibility. Seattle planning team are facing a big challenge for Seattle’s future rapid development. But challenge also means hope, so they need to set comprehensive goals for the following twenty years to make sure that Seattle will develop in an efficient sustainable way. Seattle’s comprehensive plan should consider transportation improvement, capital investment, friendly neighborhood, environment protection, citizen’s quality of life, economic development for now and for the future of 20-year vision. To begin with, planner should focus on developing communities that have strong connections for a diverse range of people with different races, believes. Also, they should help protect and improve the natural and local environment with a sustainable goal. What’s more, they need to provide citizen with more economic opportunities and security to lessen income inequality, unemployment and risks investment. Last but not least, they need to improve the affordability of public transportation, housing and think about solutions to urban issues like traffic congestion, displacement of the poor during the process of gentrification. The reason why I choose these four long-term goals for Seattle in the following 20 years is that it is experiencing an extremely rapid economic development and population growth. More and more international trades will happen here, which means more and more people with different race, belief and social backgrounds will come and live, work or do business here. Different communities need strong connections to serve diverse groups of people and then make Seattle a harmonious city. Additionally, during the process of development, more and more environmental resources may be largely and inappropriately used, planners need to have a sustainable-developing mind to make sure the environment will be in good quality and the resources in good quantity for the future generation. Furthermore, it is pivotal to think highly of problems income inequality and unemployment if a city wants to continuously develop and grow.
- Assefa, Samuel. Seattle’s Comprehensive Plan. Seattle.gov, 24 Oct. 2017, www.seattle.gov/opcd/ongoing-initiatives/seattles-comprehensive-plan.
- Browning, Paige. “20 years after welfare reform, ‘deep poverty’ worse in Washington” KUOW, 22 Aug. 2016, http://kuow.org/post/20-years-after-welfare-reform-deep-poverty-worse-washington/.
- City of Seattle. Seattle 2035: Your City, Your Future. Seattle: Public Review Draft, 2015.
- City Planning, Seattle.gov Mayor Time Burgess, 2015, http://www.seattle.gov/dpd/aboutus/whoweare/cityplanning/default.htm/.
- Frost Mariya. “Sound Transit booster admits building light rail will not improve traffic congestion” Wasington Policy Center, 17 Jun. 2016, https://www.washingtonpolicy.org/publications/detail/sound-transit-booster-admits-building-light-rail-will-not-improve-traffic-congestion/.
- Gini Index for Seattle, WA, Civic Dashboards, 2015, http://www.civicdashboards.com/city/seattle-wa-16000US5363000/gini_index/.
- Land Use: Patterns, Compatibility, Height, Bulk and Scale. Land Use: Patterns, Compatibility, Height, Bulk and Scale. Seattle: Seattle DPD, 4 May 2015. PDF. https://www.seattle.gov/Documents/Departments/OPCD/OngoingInitiatives/SeattlesComprehensivePlan/3-4LandUseDEIS.pdf
- Lindblom Mike. “Seattle traffic congestion: We’re No. 5.” The Seattle Times, 31 Mar. 2015, www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/seattle-congestion-were-no-5/.
- Seattle.gov (2017). Brief History of Seattle. 2017. https://www.seattle.gov/cityarchives/seattle-facts/brief-history-of-seattle.