YIMBY News for 3/4

[Eric Budd]

Seattle Planning Director Says Upzones Within Two Blocks of Transit Inbound… Eventually

The Urbanist

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KEYWORD SCORE: 38.86. apartment, comp plan, comprehensive plan, density, development, growth, housing, planning commission, transit-oriented, transportation, urban, zone, zoning

Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson’s administration is queuing up housing density increases within two blocks of all frequent transit corridors. Seattle Office of Planning and Community Development (OPCD) Director Rico Quirondongo revealed the plan at the February 26 meeting of the Seattle Planning Commission. The announcement comes on the heels of the roll out of the Comprehensive Plan’s second phase, which includes targeted upzones only directly along streets where frequent buses run — on top of 30 new neighborhood centers clustered around existing business districts — and completely steps away from

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After controversial school closures last year, Denver Public Schools wants to turn one of its shuttered elementary schools into a child care center and another into a community center.

Colorado Public Radio

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KEYWORD SCORE: 24.50. affordable, affordable housing, apartment, house, housing, housing cost, project, real estate, rent

By Meanie Asmar, Chalkbeat That’s according to two requests for proposals issued by the district last month. DPS would like Columbian Elementary, in northwest Denver, to become a child care center for babies and toddlers, as well as a training site for early childhood workers. And it wants to turn the International Academy of Denver at Harrington into a community center for underserved neighborhoods in northeast Denver, offering food and housing help, after-school enrichment, adult education classes, and more. The bids for both requests for proposals are due next week. Meanwhile, DPS is workin

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Exactly How Much It Cost to Build the Average Parking Space In Your City

Streetsblog Net

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KEYWORD SCORE: 21.33. affordable, apartment, construction, development, housing, parking, project, rent, supply

What’s more expensive: a new car or a new parking space? As of 2025 a new car costs, on average, about $50,000. A new UCLA study finds that a new parking space, on average, costs even more. Not counting the cost of the land, an aboveground parking space costs on average $52,000 to build. Underground parking is even more expensive at $73,000 per space. UCLA research found that, across 17 cities, the 2025 construction cost for new parking was on average $73,000 per space underground, and $52,000 per space aboveground. Chart via UCLA report In No Such Thing as Free Parking: Construction Costs in

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The Bobafication of Manhattan’s Chinatown

Next City

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KEYWORD SCORE: 19.00. gentrification, house, real estate, rent, rent control, walk

In August, as Grace Young walked down Doyers Street in Manhattan’s Chinatown, she was “stunned” to see that Ting’s Gift Shop, a charming gift shop that operated there for nearly 70 years, had disappeared. “In its place, yet another bubble tea chain — probably the tenth to open in Chinatown this year,” Young, a Chinese American food anthropologist and celebrated cookbook author, wrote on Instagram afterward. “At this rate, will Chinatown become Bubble Tea Town?” Boba, the sugary tapioca tea beverage originally from Taiwan, has been popular in American Chinatowns for well over a decade. But in t

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How States and Localities Are Using AI

Governing

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KEYWORD SCORE: 18.84. affordable, development, growth, housing, project, public space

Editor's Note: This article appears in Governing's Q1 2026 Magazine. You can subscribe here. Chad Catalino, chief public defender in Allegan County, Mich., had managed to snag a recent graduate from a prestigious law school for his office. She’d found her first private-sector job exhausting and unrewarding. She wanted to make a difference, and his office provided a chance to do that. But after she’d had time to take on her new responsibilities in full, he found her crying at her desk. She told him there was no way she could review the thousands of hours of body cam footage necessary for her ca

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