The EcoDistrict hosted a seed swap and plant sale Sunday in Cal Anderson Park

Seattle is starting the process of taking a good, hard look at itself, and the Capitol Hill EcoDistrict is going to help.

Capitol Hill EcoDistrict, along with five other groups, will assist with outreach and connecting with residents as the city looks to review its comprehensive plan.

The groups, which might typically focus their work on geographic or interest areas, are not necessarily bound by that focus in this effort. Capitol Hill EcoDistrict, which already looks for way to help people engage with their community, decided last year that this sort of outreach work would be a natural fit, said Donna Moodie, executive director.

“It felt kind of like a culmination of what we do,” she said.

This outreach marks the start of a two-year process, mandated by state law, to update the city’s comprehensive plan. The comprehensive plan is what underlies how the city manages growth and change. It is the backbone of the city’s land use decisions, which are then implemented by the zoning ordinance. It also touches transportation networks, parks, and the deployment of dozens of city resources – almost everything the city does is shaped by the comprehensive plan. It’s designed to look about 20 years into the future, predict what the city will look like then, and make sure the necessary services are in place.

The plan was first adopted in 1994, and has been reviewed and changed every few years since then. The current version, a 600-page document called Seattle 2035, was adopted in 2016, though it has been amended several times since then, most recently last year. The new plan in development has been christened the “One Seattle Plan.” It will be developed by the Office of Planning and Community Development.

Since its first adoption, the city has used what’s called an “urban village” strategy. New development was concentrated in a handful of areas scattered around town (Capitol Hill is one of those areas), with the idea being to focus the growth in areas that already had infrastructure (things like arterial roads, transit services, and business districts). This has left the bulk of the city’s land as low-density, single-family neighborhoods.

However, as housing prices have gone up and up, some people are questioning if Seattle can continue on with big swaths of low-density housing-focused neighborhoods. Indeed, a housing analysis conducted last year found that Seattle would have needed to produce 9,000 more housing units than it did between 2005 and 2019 just to keep pace with the number of people moving here. Just think for a minute about how much construction went on in that span and realize that it was not enough.

To address that shortfall, in this version of the plan, the city is considering a couple strategies to add more density. First is the idea to add some new urban villages, particularly at areas around light rail stops.

Besides adding more villages, the city plans to look at permitting more varieties of housing types in more neighborhoods. The reality of that isn’t likely to be high-rises in Denny Blaine, so much as some duplexes, triplexes and maybe townhouses.

There is also an idea to “foster more complete neighborhoods” meaning they may add more areas for shopping and recreation in places where it doesn’t currently exist, to better allow people to walk places instead of driving.

Additionally, the city is bowing to the reality of climate change. While some plan elements do look for ways to reduce carbon emissions, the plan is also going to consider mitigation strategies to help protect future Seattleites from the impending effects of climate change.

And there is a large racial equity component to the discussion, when the city’s highest value neighborhoods (including Capitol Hill) were often covered by housing covenants which restricted people of color from owning property there, a practice called redlining. This racial discrimination resulted in cutting off many people of color from building generational wealth through homeownership, and its effects still linger today.

As a result of redlining, and countless other forms of discrimination, the city is placing racial equity as a priority in the comprehensive plan. One part of the new plan is to be focused on helping communities at risk of displacement, and just generally trying to make Seattle more racially and economically inclusive.

“The city is committed to repairing past harms and working toward an equitable future for all. To that end, we will center the voices of Black, Indigenous, People of Color and others who are often marginalized in planning processes,” says the website about the new plan.

That is where the EcoDistrict comes in. Last month, the Office of Planning and Community Development announced it had partnered with six organizations across Seattle to help with early outreach for the One Seattle Plan. Each group will be paid $30,000 for their efforts.

Moodie said that while there will likely be some surveys, they are looking at finding other sorts of engagement opportunities, as well.

“We also have been thinking about how to make sure you are talking to everyone you need to be talking to,” she said. “We don’t want to exclude today the people who were excluded when the neighborhoods came together.”

In some cases, it may just be a simple conversation, asking people what they want more of. But it will go well beyond that. Moodie said that people involved are conscious of wanting to try and maintain the sense of neighborhood that exists in various places across the city. No one will be trying to homogenize Seattle. While on Capitol Hill that could mean respecting the arts and LGBT communities, it will mean different things in other neighborhoods.

“We can’t take away what makes the neighborhood vibrant and interesting,” Moodie said.

Moodie said that the various groups have begun collaborating on how they might best reach the most people. Methodologies, however, are a bit of a question mark. While Seattle, and the rest of the world, emerges from the Covid-19 pandemic, there is the possible return of large, in-person community meetings, assuming there’s not some new variant. Moodie noted they are considering a charrette in the fall.

For now, the city has a 15-question survey posted on its website as it seeks to identify issues that are of concern to Seattle residents. After that, they plan to begin working on the scope of the environmental impact statement, likely this summer. A draft plan and statement are set to be released next summer. The timeline calls for then spending another year to refine and review the draft plan, with final approval expected by the City Council in the fall of 2024.

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