Department of Urban Design and Planning Faculty Papers

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://digital.lib.washington.edu/handle/1773/15691

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Now showing 1 - 9 of 9

First Street Master Plan: City of Snohomish
(2024-06-03) Stevenson, Dylan; Arango, Jeffery; Brar, Chandan; Cassidy, Luke; Cohn, Sarah; Cooper, Lela; Corbin, Russell; Drennan, Zachary; Dewanti, Siska; Harris, Melaina; Jiang, Gareth; Magee, Katherine; Mulyani, Husna; Niu, Claire; Sisemore, Beau; Venkatesh, Riya; Zaragoza, Rebecca
The Snohomish First Street Master Plan addresses long-standing challenges in walkability, public space, parking management, and aging infrastructure within the city’s historic downtown. Through a comprehensive redesign that includes wider sidewalks, a central plaza, improved pedestrian and bicycle connectivity, enhanced riverfront amenities, and strategic parking management, the plan prioritizes people-centered design while supporting local businesses and preserving historic character. Using on-site data collection, policy review, and a parking study, the plan balances economic vitality, accessibility, environmental resilience, and community identity.
Public Life Study - A Study of Downtown Seattle
(2025-09) Berney, Rachel; Yue, Haoyu; Chaikasetsin, Sruangsaeng; Aldhowaien, Mohammed; Houlihan, Riley; Agni, Manu; Brook, Max; Butler, Caroline; Thiessen, Kyle; Vigesaa, Austin; Autrey, Hannah; Castillo, Mar Sanchez; Falinski, Elliot; Harris, Melaina; Harris, William; Belk, Justin; Finkle, Sam; Haghighat, Soroush; Nesri, Mehrdad; Baddeley, Laura; Charvoz, Tony; Jiang, Gareth; Whitney, Sarah
As Seattle prepares to host the 2026 FIFA Men’s World Cup, student teams from the University of Washington’s Spring 2025 URBAN 576/CET 586 class worked with the Seattle Department of Transportation to study how people move through and use downtown’s streets and public spaces. By observing activity and gathering data at key locations, we created a snapshot of today’s public life—information that will help the city plan safe, welcoming, and vibrant spaces for residents and visitors during the World Cup and beyond.
South Seattle in Focus: Baseline Data for Equitable Transportation and Public Space Planning
(2025-09) Berney, Rachel; Yue, Haoyu; Lecciones, Aaron; Leung, Keith; Sa, Hoseok; Unnikrishnan, Chithira; Chan, Jeremy; Melaragno, Jacob; Slawny, Danielle; Udelhofen, Sarah; Anderson, Zaref; Cook, Kaiden; Davis, Garett; Lorica, Jonah; Sullivan, Julia; Sherman, Emily; Topp, Sierra; Umana, Vanessa; Baldwin, Jo; Bonner, Jessica; Chinwalla, Neha; Lim, Pamela; García, Lizándro; Brar, Chandan; Janow, August; Wedderspoon, Brendan; Bridges, Carson; Luo, Eldon; Mehta, Aditya; Zheng, Tianjiu
This project documents non-motorized transportation (NMT) and public life patterns in South Seattle—an area historically underserved and understudied in local transportation planning— using SDOT’s Public Life Assessment framework. Our baseline findings for several sites, including the future Hillman City Light Rail Station and surrounding area will help guide equitable planning, investment, and improvements to support community mobility and vibrancy.
Seattle 2024 Commute Survey
(2025-04-28) Sa, Hoseok; Shen, Qing; Treece, Barton G., III; Abu Ashour,Lamis; Winner, Kurt; Peters, Tara
The 2024 Seattle Commute Survey provides insights into the behavior and motives of people traveling to work, school, and other key destinations. The findings provide a snapshot of current travel trends, collected in the fall of 2024, and a comparison of travel behavior over time. The Seattle Commute Survey leverages a program requirement of Washington State’s Commute Trip Reduction (CTR) law. Enacted in 1991, the statewide CTR law is intended to alleviate traffic congestion and improve air quality by encouraging drive-alone commuters to shift to alternative modes of transportation. Worksites with 100 or more full-time employees who begin their shift between 6 and 9 a.m. must meet CTR program requirements, including a biennial Commuter Survey to measure employees’ commute habits. Since 2010, Commute Seattle has conducted a celebrated expansion of the survey to include responses from employees at small businesses that are not required to comply with the CTR law. Previously known as the “Center City Mode Split Survey,” the results historically tracked trends and changes in travel behavior for commuters to downtown Seattle.
Economic Impact Analysis of Community Solar Programs for the State of Washington
(2025-01-07) Ning, Siman; Yue, Haoyu; Whittington, Jan
This report forecasts the economic potential of corporate-owned community solar installations in Washington state. This research and report was prepared by the Urban Infrastructure Lab at the University of Washington, under the direction of Prof. Jan Whittington. This research was requested and funded by the Coalition for Community Solar Access (CCSA). This report forecasts the economic potential of corporate-owned community solar installations in Washington State and reveals that expanding community solar access in Washington State could deliver substantial economic benefits, including nearly $2 billion in economic output and thousands of new jobs. Beyond the economic benefits, community solar projects would help Washington meet its ambitious climate goals, with the 500 MW scenario capable of powering approximately 100,000 homes with clean, renewable energy. This expansion would reduce carbon emissions by an estimated 500,000 metric tons annually, equivalent to removing 108,000 gas-powered vehicles from the road.
Electrified Mobility Hubs: A Blueprint for the Future of Transit Infrastructure
(2024-12-10) Whittington, Jan; Berney, Rachel; Lee, Hyun Woo "Chris"; Treece, Bart; Ning, Siman; Chen, Chin-Wei; Muiruri, Kevin; Yue, Haoyu; Tanner Machala
The publication provides guidance and tools for transit agencies to help with the redevelopment of transit facilities into electrified mobility hubs, offering a blueprint for the electrification of mobility hubs at existing facilities. This will also be useful for utility providers who are essential partners in these conversation efforts.
Keeping it on the Tracks: High-speed Rail Success and Lessons Learned
(2023-06-01) Whittington, Jan; Shen, Qing; Sun, Feiyang; Ning, Siman; Yue, Haoyu; Chen, Chin-Wei; McMichael, Richard
In an era of accelerated urban growth and the need for greater regional sustainability, transportation systems are seen as a key element to address challenges that our communities face, such as climate change, land use and housing affordability, and economic competitiveness. With the Washington State Legislature allocating $4 million to begin planning efforts on an ultra-high-speed connection to British Columbia and Oregon, and $150 million as a state match to apply for the significant federal funding, Cascadia has an opportunity to develop travel options that set this region apart from the rest of North America. Many parts of the world have successfully developed high-speed rail systems that serve millions of passengers each day, and connect metropolitan areas and local communities across international borders. The United States has a history of large-scale public works projects, but has not yet delivered the same achievements already witnessed in Europe and Asia. What knowledge can be gained from systems around the world for decision-makers in Cascadia today? This study sought to learn from existing high-speed rail systems around the world, as well as new projects in development within the U.S., to provide information useful to transportation agencies, potential partners, and decision makers who seek to develop an ultra-high-speed line to connect Cascadia. After more than fifty hours of interviews with industry experts from across the globe, and drawing from case studies and literature reviews, key trends emerged that are worth keeping at the forefront of project development efforts.
Lessons in Social Equity from Bogotá's "Public Space" Mayors
(2016-11-04) Berney, Rachel
Latin America is the most urbanized region on the planet, and it is experiencing rapid development as well as generating new strategies for more equitable built environments. While it is emerging in the Global South, this southern thinking about equity is not confined to that particular geography. Rather, it can be used to help stimulate strategic and visionary planning in cities globally. In particular, Bogotá, a capital city of eight million people, is known for its “pedagogical urbanism” movement of the 1990s and early 2000s, when the city transformed into a model of urban development based on the work of two mayors, Antanas Mockus and Enrique Peñalosa, who shifted the existing spatial logic of the city toward a more inclusive and supportive built environment by reshaping social relationships and civic identity, as well as altering the design of public space and public transportation with the intent of bringing the city’s residents together in public space to form a positive communal identity. This paper summarizes the city’s transformation and the challenges that arose during it and explores lessons in operating multiscalar metropolitan spaces that create more imageable, integrated, and socially equitable territories.
Using built environment characteristics to predict walking for exercise
(2008) Lovasi, Gina S.; Moudon, Anne V.; Pearson, Amber L.; Hurvitz, Philip M.; Larson, Eric B.; Siscovick, David S.; Berke, Ethan M.; Lumley, Thomas; Psaty, Bruce M.
Background: Environments conducive to walking may help people avoid sedentary lifestyles and associated diseases. Recent studies developed walkability models combining several built environment characteristics to optimally predict walking. Developing and testing such models with the same data could lead to overestimating one's ability to predict walking in an independent sample of the population. More accurate estimates of model fit can be obtained by splitting a single study population into training and validation sets (holdout approach) or through developing and evaluating models in different populations. We used these two approaches to test whether built environment characteristics near the home predict walking for exercise. Study participants lived in western Washington State and were adult members of a health maintenance organization. The physical activity data used in this study were collected by telephone interview and were selected for their relevance to cardiovascular disease. In order to limit confounding by prior health conditions, the sample was restricted to participants in good self-reported health and without a documented history of cardiovascular disease. Results: For 1,608 participants meeting the inclusion criteria, the mean age was 64 years, 90 percent were white, 37 percent had a college degree, and 62 percent of participants reported that they walked for exercise. Single built environment characteristics, such as residential density or connectivity, did not significantly predict walking for exercise. Regression models using multiple built environment characteristics to predict walking were not successful at predicting walking for exercise in an independent population sample. In the validation set, none of the logistic models had a C-statistic confidence interval excluding the null value of 0.5, and none of the linear models explained more than one percent of the variance in time spent walking for exercise. We did not detect significant differences in walking for exercise among census areas or postal codes, which were used as proxies for neighborhoods. Conclusion: None of the built environment characteristics significantly predicted walking for exercise, nor did combinations of these characteristics predict walking for exercise when tested using a holdout approach. These results reflect a lack of neighborhood-level variation in walking for exercise for the population studied.

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