Background

How we will grow and invest in community.

Seattle’s Comprehensive Plan guides City decisions about where we locate housing and jobs, and where and how we invest in transportation, utilities, parks, and other public assets. The One Seattle Plan is a major update that advances a vision for the future that aligns with our city’s core values to make Seattle more equitable, livable, sustainable, and resilient for today's residents and generations to come.

The Plan also addresses important regional and statewide priorities and laws intended to facilitate construction of affordable and family housing, improve mobility, and allow for future population growth and climate resilience.

These four key moves respond to the issues and concerns emphasized by community members and stakeholders across the city.

• Housing and Affordability: Expand housing opportunities across the city.
• Equity and Opportunity: Promote a more equitable Seattle as we grow.
• Community and Neighborhoods: Focus growth and investment in complete, walkable communities.
• Climate and Sustainability: Meet the challenges of climate change for a resilient future.

Planning for Growth: Exploring New Approaches

Since 1994, the City's goal has been to focus most new homes, jobs, and community investments within designated urban centers and urban villages.

Updating the Plan involved evaluating our current strategy as well as exploring new ideas for how Seattle can grow to be more equitable, affordable, and climate resilient. The proposed new growth strategy is a hybrid of options studied in the One Seattle Plan DEIS and includes:

• Regional Centers and Urban Centers (formerly Urban Centers and Villages) expanded in several locations with new regional designation for Ballard.
• New Urban Center at NE 130th St. light rail station.
• Thirty new Neighborhood Centers in selected places with Bus Rapid Transit, light rail stations and existing neighborhood business districts.
• Urban Neighborhood as a new place type to include zoning for “middle housing” to implement HB 1110; apartments and mixed uses along frequent transit corridors; affordable housing incentives; and neighborhood corner stores.

A Collaborative and Community Engaged Approach

We are leading the effort to update the Plan with an approach that is designed to be broad, inclusive, collaborative, and equitable. Our project team draws upon the breadth of work and staff groups department wide, including the areas of policy development, data analysis, land use, community planning, and community development. We are collaborating with staff from numerous City departments on areas of policy development that intersect with their work now and in the future, such as housing, transportation, economic development, and the environment to implement the Plan. We are also engaging with key external agencies at the state, regional, and local levels.

Most important, the Plan was created in dialogue with people throughout Seattle about the future they want to see for themselves, their families, their communities, and the city they call home. The Plan was developed through extensive public engagement with a with a strong emphasis on elevating the voices and empowering communities, such as Black, Indigenous, and people of color, who have historically been underrepresented in policy processes like comprehensive planning. This dialogue will continue as we work to implement this Plan in the coming years.     

Related Work

King County's Vision 2050

• Seattle's Comprehensive Plan must be consistent with the plan for the four-county region, Vision 2050, and with King County's  Countywide Planning Policies.

Equitable Development Monitoring Program

• An ongoing source of data and analysis to inform work to reduce race-based disparities, advance equity, and combat displacement. 
• Community Indicators: To gauge progress on housing affordability, neighborhood livability, transportation, and education and economic opportunity. 
• Heightened Displacement Risk Indicators: To increase our understanding of displacement and detect heightened displacement risks.

Housing Choices

• We have done significant work to understand the housing market and what types of new housing people want to see more of. The Market-rate Housing Needs and Supply Analysis (by BERK Consulting, 2021) provides detailed information on market-rate housing needs and supply today and over the next 20 years. We also conducted significant outreach as part of the Housing Choices Initiative to understand the housing needs of people who live and work in Seattle and identify opportunities to shape market-rate housing development to serve these needs. Feedback received as part of this work is summarized in the Housing Choices Public Engagement Summary.

Previous Versions of Our Comprehensive Plan

• Seattle 2035 Comprehensive Plan (2016)
• Final Growth and Equity Analysis (May 2016)