Tacoma on Chris Karnes | Tacoma, WA

Ibsen elected Mayor of Tacoma

Wed, 12 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Unlike Tacoma’s neighbor to the north (Seattle), which saw a dramatic turnaround in results with Katie Wilson coming in from behind the incumbent by 9 points to lead a week later, Tacoma’s Mayoral election was essentially settled on election day - with former Tacoma Councilmember Anders Ibsen (who represented District 1) again defeating Councilmember John Hines (currently representing District 1) in a citywide electoral rematch.

A clean sweep for Ibsen in Tacoma Mayor's Race

Tue, 12 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The Election as a Geographic Test Every election is a test of the sentiments of the public. Do they seek to change or to stay the course? Are the people hungry for new leadership? Are they satisfied with public services and infrastructure, the economy? And where are these sentiments the strongest or the weakest throughout a geography? It’s difficult to answer these questions, and damned near impossible without actual data.

Happy Year of the Snake

Tue, 28 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I would like to wish my friends in China on the other side of the world a Happy New Year and happy year of the snake. I hope that this year brings you all good health, prosperity and new possibilities. If you live in the West and haven’t noticed, a quiet revolution has been taking shape on a Chinese social media app called Xiaohongshu or RedNote. In the lead up to this revolution, the US federal government enacted a draconian law meant to coerce, censor and align content filtration on the short-form social media app Tiktok with the incoming Administration.

Time to reform Tacoma's Crossroads Centers

Wed, 25 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Tacoma has spent a lot of energy and effort to revitalize its downtown into a vibrant urban center and to plan for future growth in its mixed use growth areas. These centers are meant to provide walkable commercial services, densifying environments, with added opportunities for housing, public amenities and access to robust public transportation. Growth centers are classified into three broad categories: Regional Growth Centers, Neighborhood Centers and Crossroads Centers. There are only two Regional Growth Centers: Downtown and Tacoma Mall, which represent the largest areas in the city with the highest levels of land use intensity in terms of commercial and residential development.

Home in Tacoma final passage

Tue, 19 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Today is the day. This evening the Tacoma City Council is poised to vote on the final Home in Tacoma code package. With that event, I thought I would get some reflection down for better or for worse. It’s taken five years to get this far, longer than a presidential term, longer than most people’s journeys through high school, and even longer than the COVID-19 Pandemic. The substance of the package is enormous relative to most items that the Planning Commission and Tacoma’s planning department have taken on over the years: 246 pages of changes to the Land Use Regulatory Code.

Towards Transit Oriented Development

Fri, 01 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

A primary focus of Home in Tacoma has been to identify just how to absorb new growth into areas outside of the regional growth centers and mixed use centers. The largest change by land area is the conversion of single family zoning to an inclusive zoning framework that enables more housing types citywide: duplexes, triplexes, accessory dwelling units, and clusters of townhouses or cottage housing. Housing Types considered for Home in Tacoma Another significant change is the addition of mid-scale residential along walkable corridors, which should enable a bridge between development in the higher intensity mixed-use centers with lower scale predominantly residential neighborhoods.

Addressing transit inequity in Tacoma

Sun, 07 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0000

As it stands Tacoma, the second largest city in the Puget Sound region after Seattle, has a dearth of local transit service. The most frequent bus route in Tacoma on weekdays, Route 1 - 6th Ave - Pacific Ave, will operate once every half hour due to a lack of bus operators. While other local transit services in the Puget Sound region have continued a steady expansion from Kitsap Transit’s fast ferries to Intercity Transit’s fareless service to King County Metro’s Rapidride lines, to Sound Transit’s regional light rail expansion in King County, Pierce Transit has struggled to keep even hourly service on some routes.

The Generational Disconnect in Housing

Sat, 24 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Based on written and oral testimony about the Home in Tacoma project, I conclude that there is an overall generational disconnect between people who bought a home in the housing market 25 or 30 years ago and those who are trying to find a place to live today in the 2020’s. The Housing Market in 1996 People who bought earlier in areas zoned single family made the assumption that nothing would ever change.

on transit and housing

Fri, 12 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

For Tacoma to continue to be a welcoming city to people who make less than the regional median income, we must plan to build more housing in such a way that all people will be able to afford it, regardless of their income level or family size. Access to affordable housing and access to transportation options like buses, light rail, bike lanes and sidewalks are deeply related. The old school of thought in real estate was to “drive until you qualify” in order to buy or rent a home, but people who go that route sometimes find that they get more than they bargained for by unwittingly exchanging housing costs for transportation costs.