Planning for 1.8 Million New Residents Around Puget Sound

"If you think the Puget Sound region is crowded now, give it another 30 years," writes Josh Cohen.

"There are currently about 4.1 million people and 2.2 million jobs in the four counties that surround Puget Sound — King, Kitsap, Pierce and Snohomish. The Puget Sound Regional Council (PSRC) predicts that by 2050, those numbers will rise to 5.8 million residents and 3.4 million jobs." 

With that scale of growth expected, the Puget Sound Regional Council (PSRC) is working on the Vision 2050 plan, "which updates the metropolitan planning agency’s road map for the next 30 years of growth in the Puget Sound region." The PSRC is the only organization that gathers every city in the region, and it's faced with a tall task to balance jobs and housing needed to meet the demands of population growth across the region.

According to Cohen, a coalition of transportation, environmental and community groups, led by the Transportation Choices Coalition, is pushing the PSRC to center issues of race in the regional planning process, to ensure that balance reaches across demographic lines, not just geographic boundaries.

Earlier this month, the PSRC released Vision 2050's draft environmental impact statement, at about the halfway point in a four-year process.