How will Seattle grow through 2044? City leaders are about to find out

Where should Seattle allow more housing to be built? The city’s official answer to that question will change when the city updates its comprehensive plan. That work starts now.

The comprehensive plan is like a guidebook for development. It lays out where the city will direct new growth, and where development will be restricted.

City leaders update Seattle's comprehensive plan every 10 years, and a draft of the next update is expected the week of March 4 (it's been "under construction" for at least two years). Each update considers growth over the upcoming 20 years.

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Past versions of this plan funneled 83% of the city’s new housing into dense neighborhoods called “urban villages.” Those strategies failed to build enough housing, and as a result, a large number of people were priced out of Seattle.

The new plan is expected to make a lot more room for new housing. Whether its approach is aggressive enough will be the subject of intense debate for the rest of 2024, at the end of when the final draft is due to the state.

Some of the heavy lifting in this document has already been done by state legislators, who last year allowed “middle housing” in single-family neighborhoods across much of Washington. Seattle’s document will have to conform to these new state rules.

If Seattle wants to meet the demand for housing though, it’ll have to go much further.

RELATED: Where should Seattle build homes for newcomers?

A lot has happened, since the last time Seattle made a growth plan like this back in 2016. Rents and home prices have risen dramatically. More people are linking homelessness to the housing shortage. And more people understand the destructive effect of redlining, particularly on Black families.

At the state level, housing reform became a bipartisan cause. In 2023, legislators went over the heads of reluctant mayors and opened up single-family neighborhoods across the state to more affordable kinds of housing.

This is the changed environment in which Seattle is hammering out its new comprehensive plan. It’ll have a big impact on where people can live and how much it will cost.

City comprehensive plans are required by the state of Washington every 10 years.