Governing.com: "How Well Can a City Predict Its Future 20 Years Out?"

"In 1994, Seattle won praise from urbanist thinkers nationwide with its 20-year plan for population and economic growth"

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"Twenty years ago, Seattle was America’s epicenter of urban planning. Its mayor, Norm Rice, had sponsored and guided into law a long-range blueprint that laid out in copious detail what the city was projected to look like in the faraway year of 2014.

"According to Seattle's Comprehensive Plan, as the document was officially known, the city would emerge from a period of slow growth and increase its population significantly in the ensuing two decades. It would use its planning tools to direct the new growth into 39 'urban villages' scattered across the city. These communities would gradually evolve into urbanist showplaces: compact enclaves organized around walkable streets, neighborhood commerce, reliable public transportation and abundant green space. Elements of the plan seemed to come straight out of the writings of Jane Jacobs, the author of the influential 1961 book The Death and Life of Great American Cities.

"... In 2013, newly elected Mayor Ed Murray did something mayors typically forget to do. He asked what the consequences of the once-famous urban plan had been. And he hired Peter Steinbrueck, a longtime city council member who had opened up a private urban consulting firm, to launch a study to find out. Steinbrueck’s team spent a year on what it called the Seattle Sustainable Neighborhoods Assessment Project, studying 10 of the urban villages in minute detail and gathering more general information about the city itself. Earlier this year, it produced a 170-page report."