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Seattle, Washington
Seattle is the capital city of the U.S. state of Washington, the seat of King County since 1853, the largest city in the Pacific Northwest, and one of the biggest and wealthiest urban centers in the country. Seattle, a significant port of entry and a key air and sea gateway to Asia and Alaska, is in the middle of a conurbation roughly bounded by Everett to the north, Bellevue to the east, and Tacoma to the south. It is situated alongside Puget Sound, a deep inland arm of the northern Pacific Ocean.
On November 13, 1851, settlers began moving into the area that is now West Seattle. The next year, it was moved to a location across Elliott Bay from an Indian community. It takes its name from the Puget Sound region's chief of the Duwamish, Suquamish, and other tribes, Seattle, a prominent Native American. The Olympic Peninsula and the Cascade Range, both of which are heavily forested, surround the city. Another attractive potential is its urban core, which is characterized by tall skyscrapers that overlook Elliott Bay and are complemented by the city's numerous parks and neighborhoods.
Like other western American towns, Seattle has access to a vast hinterland with resources that stretches all the way to Montana's Great Plains in the far east. Due in large part to Seattle's position as one of the top locations in the world for the production of high technology and for Internet-based commerce, the city has developed to assume international economic importance and is now connected to global distribution networks by road, rail, ship, and air. Inc. town; city; 1865; 1869. 83.9 square miles in size (217.3 square km). Population: 608,660 (2010); 2,644,584 in the Seattle-Bellevue-Everett Metro Division; 3,439,809 in the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue Metro Area; 737,015 in the Seattle-Bellevue-Kent Metro Division; 3,097,632 in the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue Metro Area.
Character of the City
Even though they are near to one another, Seattle's neighborhoods and urban districts differ from one street to the next. Some neighborhoods, particularly those southwest of the city center close to the Duwamish Waterway, have an industrial feel and are characterized by train yards, wharves, cranes, and low-income housing developments. Others, mostly outside the city center, serve as displays of the luxury created by Seattle's thriving high-technology industry.
The neighborhoods of Seattle have a comfortably affluent but unostentatious atmosphere, with tidy townhouses and family homes filled with professionals, professors, industrial employees, artists, and that peculiar class of technology workers that novelist Douglas Coupland dubbed "microserfs." Greater effort has been made to promote the city center as a place to live and work because it is connected to its downtown area than most of its peers in the American West.
Seattle is a busy city that is always humming with commercial, industrial, and cultural activity. Great oceangoing ships abound in its seas, as do automobiles on its streets, intercontinental freighters and passenger trains on its rail lines, and aircraft of every kind in its sky. Despite the city's reputation as a financial and commercial hub, its residents place a high importance on the performing arts, reading, athletics, and other cultural pursuits. The city is home to numerous museums, galleries, major arenas, and other works of public art.
The population of the city is dense. The metropolitan area has expanded to include formerly remote satellite cities like Everett and Renton. The migration from urban to bedroom towns is a result of a number of economic factors, including the city's rapidly rising cost of family housing. Many employees in Seattle have chosen to commute from outlying, more affordable locations. Around 200,000 workers commuted to downtown Seattle during the beginning of the twenty-first century from nearby communities, resulting in significant traffic and disturbances on interstate and local routes.
However, despite the high cost of real estate, some demographics, such young renters, continued to favor the inner city.
The arrival of workers—many of them highly talented and educated—from all over the world, as well as from recession-prone southern California, helped Seattle grow quickly around the turn of the 20th century. Growth, a recurring theme in the city's history, has been so persistent in Seattle and elsewhere in the Pacific Northwest that regional planners now place the city at the center of the emerging "Cascadia" region, a corridor extending from Eugene, Oregon, to Vancouver, British Columbia, over a distance of about 400 miles (645 km). Each year, Cascadia's economic significance increases noticeably. Other urban expansion theories include Seattle in the "Pugetopolis" conurbation, which stretches southwest along Puget Sound all the way to Olympia.
Seattle has maintained a high standard of social and public services, good schools, and an abundance of parks and greenbelts, earning it the moniker "the Emerald City" despite its vast development. Despite the whims of a very unstable information-technology economy, it is frequently ranked as one of North America's most pleasant cities, and its fortunes appear to be continually improving.
Climate
The weather in Seattle is moderate, with mild winters and chilly summers. The steep Cascades to the east buffer the city from midcontinental extremes of heat and cold, and the Olympic Mountains to the west protect it from the torrential winter rains that frequently inundate Washington's Pacific coast. While typical highs in January are in the upper 40s F (about 8 °C), average highs in July rarely go above the mid-70s F (approximately 24 °C). Every year, the temperature descends below freezing for 10 to 15 days. The sky is frequently cloudy as a result of the interaction of humid continental and oceanic weather systems. But the annual average precipitation in the city is merely 37 inches (940 mm). Even though there are often fewer than 60 totally sunny days per year, the summer sky is typically at least partially clear.
The People
Americans of European ancestry have remained the majority in Seattle ever since the city's establishment in the middle of the 19th century. They made up somewhat more than two-thirds of the population of the center city at the beginning of the twenty-first century, and this number increased to more than roughly three-fourths in the King County neighboring suburbs. However, Seattle is more ethnically diverse than other cities in the Pacific Northwest and is a melting pot of peoples, cultures, and beliefs.
Although Seattle, like other major American cities, reflects a past tainted by racial intolerance, there are currently few prominent ethnic divisions or continuing disputes. This was true early on between American settlers and the Native American population of the region, some of whom were relocated from traditional lands to interior reserves as a result of the 1850s and 1860s Indian Wars. Throughout the 19th century, Native Americans were discouraged from residing among the settlers. The Native American community still makes up a minor portion of the city's overall population.
In a similar vein, Seattle's African American population was modest before World War II; as a result of the abundance of jobs in the defense and transport industries, it increased from around 3,800 in 1940 to more than 30,000 by 1945. Immediately following the war, the number of African Americans decreased but remained considerable at around 16,000. African Americans experienced a pattern of discrimination that was severe even by the norms of the time's racist American West. They were largely limited to the harbourside section of the city known as Skid Road in the 19th century. For instance, segregation in housing and public services lasted far into the 1950s, and they were not permitted to join skilled trade unions until the late 1940s. African Americans comprised just under one tenth of the population of greater Seattle at the beginning of the twenty-first century, with nearly half of them residing in the suburbs.
Asian residents in Seattle outnumber African Americans by a little margin. Chinese immigrants first began to show up in significant numbers in the 1870s to work in service jobs and the lumber industry, which paid them significantly less than their counterparts of European descent; in later years, they made significant contributions to the construction of the transcontinental railroad. The Chinese had begun to settle in the area in small numbers in the early 1800s. These Chinese immigrants were accused of stealing jobs from the majority population during a recession in the mid-1880s, and as a result, they were expelled from the city through a series of violent anti-Chinese riots.
The majority of the immigrants fled to San Francisco, where they encountered less violent but steadfast resistance. Although it has started to spread outside of the downtown International District, Seattle's Asian community is mainly concentrated there. Seattle has a sizable Asian population, with the majority being of Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, and Vietnamese ancestry. Although they make up a lower percentage of the population, Hispanics are becoming more prevalent. The majority of recent immigrants who speak Spanish are of Mexican heritage or have recently arrived from Mexico; other recent immigrants hail from Cuba, El Salvador, Guatemala, and other Latin American nations. West of the Duwamish Waterway, in the South Park neighborhood, many Hispanic immigrants have made their homes.
Protestantism is the most popular religion among Seattle residents of European descent.
Roman Catholicism is also quite popular, and the Orthodox church has a sizable following because of an established eastern European immigrant community. Additionally, Seattle is home to a sizable Jewish population, who have lived there since the 1860s. The first Jewish congregation was founded in 1889, and the first synagogue was built in the city in 1892. Seattle's liberal social and political environment suggests that the city has at least the same proportion of nonreligious residents. Although exact numbers are difficult to come by, statewide religious surveys show that anywhere from one-sixth to one-fourth of Washingtonians are atheists, agnostics, or otherwise unaffiliated.
Economy
Seattle's economy relied on forestry and the extraction and transportation of other locally available natural resources up until the turn of the 20th century. The early 20th century saw the growth of the manufacturing (particularly heavy industry and aircraft), food processing, banking, insurance, and transportation sectors, all of which saw significant expansion during and after World War II. The 1980s saw a rise in the importance of electronics-based sectors, particularly those related to software development and manufacturing, which are today the most productive sector of the economy. While agricultural products grown in the so-called Inland Empire of the interior Northwest continue to be an economic pillar, biomedical manufacturing is becoming increasingly important. Seattle is home to a large number of government entities. When it comes to per-capita exports, Washington State is among the top states in the nation. The vast majority of these exports are produced, processed, or transported out of Seattle. The development of the World Trade Center Seattle complex serves as a symbol for the state and city's most dynamic economic sector, which is international trade.
The workforce in Seattle is sizable and typically highly educated. Nearly half of full-time employees are women. A robust local and regional economy may be seen in the median family income, which is significantly higher than the national average.
Education
Up to the start of the 20th century, Seattle's economy was based on forestry and the exploitation and transportation of other locally accessible natural resources. Manufacturing (especially heavy industries and aviation), food processing, banking, insurance, and transportation all experienced tremendous growth in the early 20th century. This boom continued during and after World War II. Electronics-based industries, particularly those associated with software development and manufacturing, saw an increase in prominence during the 1980s, and they are now the most productive sector of the economy. Biomedical industry is gaining importance while agricultural products grown in the so-called Inland Empire of the inner Northwest continue to be a foundation of the economy. Governmental organizations in considerable numbers can be found in Seattle. Washington State ranks among the top states in the nation for per-capita exports. These exports are manufactured, processed, or transported mostly outside of Seattle. International trade, the most dynamic economic sector in the state and city, is represented by the construction of the World Trade Center Seattle complex. Seattle has a huge and often well-educated workforce. Women make up almost half of full-time workers. The median family income is much greater than the national average, indicating a healthy local and regional economy.
Cultural Life
Seattle has a vibrant mix of cultural events that take advantage of the city's ethnic variety, history of municipal support for the arts, and its position as a regional and national hub for economic development and education. The city of Seattle's relationship with coffee and coffeehouses is a distinguishing aspect of daily life and popular culture. The love of specialty coffee among Seattle residents has allowed hundreds of small businesses to flourish in the city that also gave birth to the retail giants Starbucks and Tully's. Seattle has the highest per capita consumption of coffee in the United States. According to one theory, the city's overcast, rainy weather provided the ideal catalyst for coffee's remarkable level of popularity because caffeinated beverages enjoyed in quaint shops and eateries offer tremendous relief as well as protection from the rain.
In Seattle, there are over twenty museums. The Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, located on the campus of the University of Washington, has extensive ethnographic collections relating to the native peoples of the Pacific Northwest, the Museum of History and Industry, and the Pacific Science Center, both of which offer educational programs, are among them. The Seattle Asian Art Museum also has internationally significant collections. The Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience, which is situated in the International District, honors the contributions made by Chinese, Japanese, and other Asian peoples to the history, politics, and culture of the area. In Ballard, there is a museum dedicated to Nordic heritage.
Numerous works of public art, including the imposing sculptures of Seattle Center, may be found in the city's parks and streets. The South of Downtown (SODO) Urban Art Corridor started to establish a landscaped district with murals and sculpture gardens around the end of the 1990s. On the waterfront with a view of Puget Sound, the Olympic Sculpture Park, which opened in 2007, houses pieces by Louise Bourgeois, Alexander Calder, Ellsworth Kelly, Louise Nevelson, and other artists. The city's excellent public library system, the centerpiece of which is the Central Library, whose building was designed by Rem Koolhaas and former Seattleite Joshua Ramus, as well as the Richard Hugo House, honoring a local poet, all serve Seattle's literary community. The Langston Hughes Performing Arts Center is housed in a former synagogue and was designed by architect B. Marcus Priteca.
Seattle has made a lot of cultural contributions. The early 1990s grunge style was influenced by bands like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and Mudhoney, the majority of whom initially recorded for the ground-breaking local indie label Sub Pop. Jimi Hendrix, the iconic rock guitarist, was born and raised there. Modest Mouse, Death Cab for Cutie, Band of Horses, and Fleet Foxes, among other groups, have recently infused new life into Seattle's still-thriving music scene. The Experience Music Project Museum in the city, which was created by Frank Gehry and opened in 2000, honors the history of these singers and other artists. In 2016, the museum changed its name to the Museum of Pop Culture and broadened its scope. The city also serves as a major hub for the creation of multimedia that combines the visual, musical, and technological arts.
The Seattle Philharmonic Orchestra, which features a large number of amateur musicians, hosts popular performance series. Pacific Northwest Ballet, the University of Washington School of Drama, and the Seattle Repertory Theatre have all garnered widespread attention for their performances. The Seattle Symphony, established in 1903, was the first orchestra in the world to have a female conductor, and it has produced several live and recorded performances. The Seattle Opera and the orchestra frequently share the stage.
The Folklife Festival (Memorial Day weekend), the Earshot Jazz Festival (October), the Bumbershoot music and arts festival (Labor Day weekend), and Seafair (July), which includes parades, hydroplane racing, and air shows, are just a few of the city's numerous yearly cultural events. The Seattle City Council oversees a network of more than 70 public parks through its committee on culture, the arts, and parks. The largest is Discovery Park, which spans 530 acres (214 hectares), most of which used to be the decommissioned Fort Lawton of the United States Army. Discovery Park, which is perched on a wide cliff overlooking Puget Sound, provides views of surrounding beaches, distant mountains, natural meadows, forest groves, dunes, and tidal pools. Other well-liked parks include Volunteer Park, which has a sculpture commemorating the 1867 purchase of Alaska, Gas Works Park, a 20-acre (8-hectare) parcel on the grounds of a former coal-to-gas conversion plant, Woodland Park, a former private estate on Green Lake that now houses a zoo, ball fields, picnic areas, and a sizable rose garden, and Alki Beach Park, which commemorates the first American migrant settlement in the region. In north Seattle, Green Lake is surrounded by one of the city's most popular parks; among its public amenities are a beach, boating opportunities, walking and jogging trails, and a community center. Near Pioneer Square, a historical park called Klondike Gold Rush National Historic Park honors the city's function as an economic and transportation hub for the exploration and settlement of the Far North.
Seattle experiences a lot of tourism every year. The city is a gateway to the San Juan Islands, Mount Rainier National Park, North Cascades National Park, and Olympic National Park in addition to having its own attractions like the Space Needle and the Seattle Aquarium. It is also adjacent to many state parks and national wildlife refuges. Whale viewing is a well-liked tourist activity; a park with facilities is situated in the San Juan Islands and is reachable via ferry. In and around Seattle, there are other opportunities for hiking, rock climbing, skiing, snowboarding, boating, and fishing.
There are numerous professional sports teams in Seattle. Since 1976, the Seattle Seahawks of the National Football League have competed there, while the Seattle Mariners of the American League have done the same since 1977.
These groups, together with the professional women's basketball team from the city of Seattle, the Storm, draw sizable crowds to their home games. From 1967 to 2008, when the SuperSonics (better known as the Sonics) of the National Basketball Association moved to Oklahoma City, Seattle served as the team's home base. Men's professional football (soccer) teams have frequently called the city home since the 1970s; the most recent team to play professional football in the city is the Sounders (the third Seattle team to bear that name), a Major League Soccer team that attracted a devoted fan base after its 2009 debut season. The University of Washington was the center of sports spectatorship in the city long before professional sports became a part of Seattle's cultural landscape, and the school's teams still enjoy the ardent support of locals. University of Washington teams have had success in a variety of sports, including volleyball, men's and women's basketball, rowing, softball, and the gridiron football program.
Sports
Greater Seattle will have 4.1 million residents in 2022, making it the 15th-largest metropolitan region in the country (after the Twin Cities with 3.7 million and metro Detroit with 4.4 million). King County, Pierce County, Washington, Snohomish County, and the satellite cities in these counties (Bellevue, WA, Tacoma, WA, and Everett, WA) have experienced rapid population growth in the 21st century, which has quickly increased both the variety and the level of talent in professional sports teams based in the Puget Sound region.
The Seattle Sounders, whose original squad competed from the 1970s until its dissolution in 1983 in the now-defunct NASL, have always been a part of professional soccer in Seattle. A second iteration of the team, which competed in US soccer's second division from 1994 through 2008, carried on the name. Seattle will host Major League Soccer's fifteenth club, which will begin competition in 2009, the league announced in November 2007. Between March 27 and March 31, 2008, the team's fan base voted on the name of the team, and Seattle Sounders FC was selected as the winner. Lumen Field is the home of the current Sounders.
Seattle Seahawks of the NFL started competition in 1976. The Kingdome was the home of the Seahawks up until its collapse in 2000. Lumen Field is now where the Seahawks play. The MLB awarded Seattle a new baseball team in 1977, the Seattle Mariners, after years of legal disputes over the relocation of the Seattle Pilots to Milwaukee (where they would later become the Milwaukee Brewers). The Mariners began playing in the Kingdome in 1977 and remained there until the middle of the 1999 season, when they relocated to what is now T-Mobile Park, where they still play.
The Seattle Storm of the WNBA moved to Seattle in 2000 and continued to play at KeyArena through the 2018 campaign. The Storm will split their 2019 home games at Angel of the Winds Arena in Everett and Alaska Airlines Arena on the University of Washington campus after KeyArena was shuttered for its transformation into the climate pledge arena it is today. The 2020 WNBA season was entirely relocated to Bradenton, Florida, and took place during COVID-19. The Storm played all of its home games at Angel of the Winds Arena when the league moved back to home markets in 2021, before moving back to Climate Pledge Arena in 2022.
OL Reign, a professional women's soccer team from Seattle that featured several players from the US women's national team that won the World Cup, debuted in the National Women's Soccer League in 2013 at Starfire Sports Complex and continued to play there through 2018 as Seattle Reign FC. The renamed Reign FC started competing on their new home field at Tacoma's Cheney Stadium as of the 2019 NWSL season. Reign FC was rebranded once more as OL Reign after the parent business of illustrious French team Olympique Lyonnais acquired a controlling ownership in the team during the 2019–20 offseason. After moving back to Seattle in 2022, the team now shares Lumen Field with the Sounders and Seahawks.
The Seattle City Council decided to proceed with plans to erect a $490 million sports arena in the city's SoDo neighborhood in September 2012. This pledge was made in an effort to support the NHL and NBA returning to Seattle. Instead, on December 3, 2017, five years later, the Council authorized the Oak View Group's plan to expand Key Arena in Seattle Center. On December 6, 2017, three days later, the NHL granted Seattle a new franchise opportunity. Seattle was given a provisional NHL franchise in 1976, but this chance never materialized. If the Arena expansion project is completed on schedule, the new professional hockey team will be eligible to play in the league in 2020–21. The Seattle Kraken, who will be the 32nd NHL team, received unanimous approval from the NHL Board of Governors on December 4, 2018. In October 2021, they began their first season in the remodeled Climate Pledge Arena. With the addition of the Seattle franchise, the league's size increased to four divisions of eight teams, which is equivalent to the NFL.
The Seattle Seawolves joined the newly established Major League Rugby as one of its inaugural teams in 2017. In the league's first two seasons, the Seawolves won back-to-back championships, defeating the Glendale Raptors 23-19 in 2018 and the San Diego Legion 26-23 in 2019.
Top 2 News Websites in Seattle, Washington
#1 KING 5
In comparison to its Seattle rivals, KING 5 consistently attracts the greatest audiences across all screens, making it one of the strongest and most dependable local news brands in the nation. For the most recent information on news, sports, politics, traffic, weather, and other topics, visit their website.
#2 The Stranger: Seattle's Only Newspaper
The Stranger, Seattle's Only Newspaper: Covering Seattle news, politics, music, film, and arts; plus movie times, club calendars, restaurant listings, forums, blogs, and Savage Love.
Government
Seattle has been governed under a series of charters since it became a city in 1869. In accordance with the most current one (1946), the city is run by a mayor who is elected to a four-year term and a nine-member city council, each of whose members is chosen for a four-year term in a city-wide election held every odd-numbered year. The council is led by a president, chosen from among its members, who oversees the legislative branch of the city government, plans the council's overall agenda, and acts as interim mayor in the absence of the elected mayor. The council has the power to levy local taxes, provide for public health and safety, commission public improvements, approve expenditures, and manage the assets and finances of the city. Ordinances passed by the council are subject to the mayor's veto, which can be overridden by a two-thirds majority. Seattle is home to district and superior courts that are connected to the Washington state court system, as well as municipal courts where misdemeanor offenses are referred.
Current City Mayor
Mayor Bruce Harrell was sworn in as Seattle's 54th mayor for a temporary period in 2017 before being elected the city's 57th mayor in 2021. Find out more about his history and priorities. Bruce Harrell was born in Seattle to a Japanese American mother who had been interned in Minidoka during World War II and an African American father who was one of the first Black union linemen at Seattle City Light. Rose, his mother, was a librarian for the Seattle Public Library and a member of the board of directors for the Seattle City Credit Union. He is the second Black mayor of Seattle and the city's first Asian American and multicultural mayor. Bruce has challenged injustice, celebrated our communities' diversity, and brought people together through our shared Seattle values from an early age. He has done this by drawing on the experiences of his parents and the teachings he acquired as a young person.
Bruce Harrell attended Garfield High School in Seattle's red-lined Central District and graduated as the class valedictorian in 1976. Bruce later accepted a football scholarship to the University of Washington, turning off offers from Harvard and Stanford to remain in his hometown. Bruce graduated from the University of Washington with a Bachelor of Arts in political science, won the Rose Bowl, and was named to the football Academic All-American First Team. As a college player, Bruce was inducted into the Pacific Northwest Football Hall of Fame in 2013.
Bruce later graduated from the University of Washington School of Law with a Juris Doctor. He worked as an in-house attorney during his early legal career in the technology and telecommunications industries. Later, he joined a downtown firm that defended workers' rights, young people's issues, small businesses, and nonprofits. He frequently acted as a coach and mentor for young people and students in South Seattle. Bruce was elected to the Seattle City Council in 2007 on a citywide basis, and after being re-elected twice, he began representing his neighborhood, South Seattle. He was one of the few individuals to hold that position for more than one term after being chosen twice as City Council President by his peers. Bruce also held the position of interim mayor in 2017.
Bruce was a pioneer on the Council when it came to racial equity, public safety reform, and equal access to economic and educational opportunities. He was the driving force behind the "Ban the Box" ordinance, the first bias-free police law passed in Seattle, and the introduction of body cams for SPD officers. He supported Seattle's Race and Social Justice legislation, which mandates that all city policies be examined from an equity perspective.
Bruce was the first to implement the Seattle Promise, which offers free college education to kids in Seattle Public Schools, as well as the Great Student Initiative, which gives 20,000 students in those schools access to computers and high-speed Internet. Before leaving the Council in 2019, he managed discussions to approve the $15 minimum wage and backed other ground-breaking bills to boost support for workers and small businesses.
On a platform of ensuring the safety of all communities, addressing the homelessness crisis with compassion and urgency, and reestablishing faith in local government and civic life, Bruce was elected mayor of Seattle in 2021. He serves as the chairman of the Standing Committee on Technology and Innovation for the United States Conference of Mayors.
With the conviction that we can accomplish more when we work together, Bruce works tirelessly to promote creativity and practical responses to the challenges and possibilities Seattle faces. He thinks that developing One Seattle—a Seattle where we embrace our diversity and celebrate our commonalities—will be essential to addressing the issues of the day.
Being grandparents to two grandchildren in addition to being the parents of three children makes Bruce and his wife Joanne happy.