Equitable Transit Oriented Development

What's Happening Now?

Chinatown-International District Place-Based Group

In the fall of 2025, we sought participants from community-based organizations and groups rooted in and accountable to communities in the Chinatown-International District (CID) who want to advance a community-serving capital or place-keeping project.

This opportunity is part of our ETOD Strategy and Implementation Plan that refines the City’s approach to advancing community-driven outcomes in high-capacity transit station areas. By centering communities who are most impacted by investments in public infrastructure in the process—Black and Indigenous and people of color, immigrants and refugees, English language learners, LGBTQ people, youth, elders, and people living with disabilities—this approach attempts to address the root causes of displacement and enable self-determination through community led and owned development. An Equitable TOD Strategy and Implementation Plan is actionable and may include identifying opportunity sites and funding mechanisms for key locations.

Equitable Transit-Oriented Development (ETOD) is an opportunity to center community priorities and repair harm.

We know that institutional racism has and continues to create a painful legacy of public infrastructure projects that disproportionately impact low-income neighborhoods and communities of color. We’ve seen an increase in displacement pressures resulting from light rail investments in Rainier Valley. At the same time, we have seen neighborhood leaders reclaiming development to meet their needs and help their communities thrive in place.

ETOD centers communities as decision-makers in the planning process to support a vision for community led and owned development.

The City is leveraging a $1.75 million grant from the Federal Transportation Administration to support ETOD along the West Seattle Link Extension and the Ballard Link Extension corridors with implications for ETOD throughout the city. By centering communities who are most impacted by investments in public infrastructure in the process—Black, Indigenous, and people of color, immigrants and refugees, English language learners, LGBTQ people, youth, elders, and people living with disabilities—this approach attempts to address the root causes of displacement and deliver self-determination through community led and owned development. An ETOD Strategy and Implementation Plan is actionable and may include identifying opportunity sites and funding mechanisms for key locations.

In May of 2021, City staff recruited five core steering committee members to develop a framework and process for advancing the ETOD Strategy and Implementation Plan. They create a definition and vision for ETOD and a set of implementation and process values to continue guiding this work.

What ETOD can be:

1. Building community power through ownership and permanent stewardship of land, investing in organizing rooted in community vision and process and centered in systems change.
2. Starts with Land Ownership: Conversations about zoning, density, and transit supportive uses must be preceded by removing speculative pressures and banking land for community ownership early and at scale.
3. Holistic community benefits that include both rental and ownership housing that is affordable, but also incorporates other community identified uses such as childcare, cultural space, arts, healthy food, liveable wage jobs, healthcare, education, small businesses, open space and places to play, and more.
4. Results in mobility and access justice including fare affordability, universal design, connectivity and safety.
5. Promotes economic justice through the tools we develop to finance community projects, creating opportunities for community wealth building, and commercial ownership models.
6. A healthy environment that promotes a sense of belonging and includes strengthening mitigation and adaptation to climate change and community resiliency and health.

What is Equitable Transit-Oriented Development

We view Equitable Transit-Oriented Development (ETOD) as an opportunity to repair harm, build racial equity, and address community needs. ETOD means centering communities as decision-makers in the planning process to support a vision for community led and owned development in neighborhoods surrounding high-capacity transit. Equitable Transit-Oriented Development focuses on the process and outcomes of development, and might result in building affordable housing, child-care facilities, grocery stores, green spaces, or other types of development a community wants to see.

Our preliminary Core Steering Group of community members helped create the structure for this work and crafted a preliminary definition of ETOD below. The Community Advisory Group will refine this definition and make it their own.

• Community Power: Builds Community Power through community ownership and permanent stewardship of land, investing in community organizing, rooted in community vision and process, and centered in systems change.
• Starts with Land Ownership: Conversations about zoning, density, and transit supportive uses must be preceded by removing speculative pressures and banking land for community ownership early and at scale.
• Holistic Community Benefits: Includes both rental and ownership housing that is affordable, but also incorporates other community identified uses such as childcare, cultural space, arts, healthy food, good jobs, healthcare, education, small businesses, open space and places to play, etc.
• Results in Mobility and access justice including fare affordability, universal design, connectivity, safety.
• Promotes economic justice through the tools we develop to finance community projects, creating opportunities for community wealth building, and commercial ownership models.
• A healthy environment that promotes a sense of belonging and includes strengthening mitigation and adaptation to climate change and community resiliency and health.