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Kona Farry is an undergraduate student at UW studying Community, Environment, and Planning. Last year Farry created a website (https://www.pantographapp.com) showing the real-time locations of buses, ferries, and trains in the greater Seattle area that received a lot of interest. (Also, since the coronavirus outbreak he has created an app to help remind people to…

At a nonprofit providing health care and housing to the homeless population in the city, employees have begun a sprint to sanitize their facilities. Because the organization, the Downtown Emergency Service Center (DESC), is located in one of the U.S.’s first hotbeds of novel coronavirus infection, workers are bracing themselves for a wave of medical…

Public officials for decades have promised to deal with the old brick buildings in Seattle that could crumble with deadly consequences when a major earthquake hits — and have produced nothing but paper plans. Now some advocates hope a new attempt could at last lead to action. A state bill that could help building owners finance…

Here at ground zero of the first and largest outbreak of the coronavirus in the United States, hardy residents in fleece and flannel are going about their daily lives as normally as possible.Children attend schools that have been deep-cleaned. Shoppers stock up on canned foods and paper towels, emptying pallets of toilet paper at their local Costco. Fishmonger…

Premera Blue Cross, a leading health plan in the Pacific Northwest, today announced a $4.7 million grant to the University of Washington to establish the Rural Nursing Health Initiative to place current students in rural practices in Washington state. Premera Blue Cross announces a multimillion dollar grant for rural nursing to the UW School of…

Aaron, who lives with his wife Silje and their two children in a parking lot outside of Seattle, begins his day in darkness, making a two-hour commute by scooter and bus to his job at the post office.  “You do what you need to get through a given day. You get rest when you can,”…

The U District has changed a lot in the last couple of decades. But it is about to change even more dramatically. In 2021, a Sound Transit light rail station will open in the heart of the U District at N.E. 43rd Street and Brooklyn Avenue N.E. Light rail will transform the U District into…

As metropolises balloon with growth and sprawl widens the footprint of cities around the world, access to nature for people living in urban areas is becoming harder to find.If you’re lucky, a pocket park might be installed next to a new condominium complex on your block, or perhaps a green roof tops the building where…

Seattle, along with the rest of the U.S. West Coast, has seen a decrease in rainfall between 1981-2018. UW scientists think a phenomenon called the Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO) might be to blame. A stormy disturbance that occurs several times a year in the tropics, the MJO is similar to the El Nino Southern Oscillation, which…

Nearly a century into the story of single-family zoning, feelings and ideas around it are starting to shift. The City of Minneapolis and the State of Oregon both recently passed laws that loosen single-family regulations. California has proposed similar measures: some have failed (such as one encouraging denser development near transit), others have succeeded (such…