At some point, Olympia stopped building low-density multi-family housing. In older neighborhoods, you can find duplexes courtyard and mansion apartments dotted along blocks. Even in blocks built in the 1960s and 1970s, you can see duplexes interspersed between single-family homes. But as you get into newer neighborhoods, it is harder and harder to find examples…
Month: February 2018
How the history of our neighborhoods points to our Missing Middle past
At one time in Olympia, and most other cities, neighborhoods grew one house at a time and they grew with different needs in mind. Mixed-density housing was prevalent prior to World War II and was exactly the kind of development that originally encouraged walkable neighborhoods. The Carylon neighborhood is a great example of this. A…
It’s time to acknowledge how messed up the Thurston Conservation District is and you should vote to change that
This is not the blog post you were looking for if you’re looking for the entire story behind what’s going on at the Thurston Conservation District. I’ve been hearing about this on-going train wreck of a story through second-hand accounts and snippets I could find in the official record for months. And there is totally…
What would it mean for the nature of our city that the Missing Middle would have the biggest impact on Southeast Olympia?
Southeast Olympia is already wealthy and conservative. Would allowing more housing types down there change that? The above map is a mashup of two different maps. The first is a parcel density map of where the Missing Middle recommendations would have the greatest impact. It shows where the buildable parcels left to be developed match…