(The Center Square) – The Seattle City Council unanimously adopted its Comprehensive Plan on Tuesday, outlining the city’s growth and development goals through 2044, with Phase 2 scheduled to begin in 2026.
A city’s comprehensive plan serves as a long-term road map for how the city will grow over the next 20 years and beyond.
It guides decisions on where housing and jobs will be located, as well as how and where the city invests in transportation, utilities and other public assets.
The newly-adopted comprehensive plan comes nearly one year after it was due by the state in December 2024.
Ahead of Tuesday’s approval, the city council held 17 committee meetings and four public hearings since Mayor Bruce Harrell initially proposed his “One Seattle” draft plan in March. The vote was delayed for additional environmental review of the updated plan, which was passed unanimously out of committee in September.
Harrell’s outlined plan remains relatively unchanged after the council’s deliberations. It increases incentives for affordable housing, cottage housing and stacked flats in neighborhood residential zones, strengthens tree protections during future development and expands neighborhood centers – areas offering a variety of housing options centered around a local commercial district or major transit stop.
Seattle City Council members emphasized the importance of the updated Comprehensive Plan for how it shapes up the city’s plan over the next 20 years. From 2010 to 2020, Seattle was one of the fastest growing cities in the U.S. with more than 175,000 jobs coming into the city. However, housing production did not match the mass migration, creating the current housing crisis.
“This Comprehensive Plan places our city on our toes to achieve our goals in housing production,” Seattle City Councilmember Bob Kettle said during the council meeting on Tuesday. “I believe this bill will help our city become the city it can be and the city we need it to be.”
Before the final vote, Seattle City Councilmember and Comprehensive Plan Committee Chair Joy Hollingsworth added an amendment to the plan that requests the Office of Planning and Community Development to remove a small area in her district that was added to the Capitol Hill regional center.
For context, Seattle is made up of approximately 53,000 acres. The small area is made up of 99 acres, or 0.2% of the city, according to Hollingsworth.
During phase 2 of the Seattle Comprehensive Plan, a 30-day notice will be posted to upzone the area to be the Central District’s urban center rather than the Capitol Hill’s regional center, or 10% of the regional center returned to the Central District.
City Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck proposed an amendment adding eight neighborhood centers to Harrell’s proposed 30 centers. However, it was not added to the plan and instead turned into a resolution passed on Tuesday.
In 2026, the Select Committee on the Comprehensive Plan will begin work on Phase 2, which includes zoning changes within new neighborhood centers, expanded regional and urban centers, and areas along frequent transit routes.
