The Future of Downtown Seattle

Reporter Josh Cohen discusses the city's plans — and readers' moonshot dreams — to improve the central business core.

Just as technology was making working-from-home more convenient, the pandemic, and the social-distancing requirements that came with it, accelerated the process. Remote work is probably here to stay, so it’s unlikely offices in Downtown Seattle will ever be filled to capacity again – and the decreased daily worker traffic will impact, perhaps permanently, the businesses that depended on their presence.

Crosscut city reporter Josh Cohen has been speaking with city leaders, urban planners, real estate professionals, business owners, workers and even Crosscut readers to take stock of a post-pandemic Downtown: not only what the impact of these past few years has been, but what the central business district’s future could look like.

For this episode of Crosscut Reports, host Sara Bernard talks with Cohen about Downtown’s future: Given that things are not going back to the way they were, what could the city envision instead?

Read our report on the future of downtown Seattle here. 

---

Credits

Host/Producer: Sara Bernard

Reporter: Josh Cohen

Executive producer: Mark Baumgarten

---

If you would like to support Crosscut, go to crosscut.com/membership. In addition to supporting our events and our daily journalism, members receive complete access to the on-demand programming of Seattle’s PBS station, KCTS 9.