Puget Sound Regional Council: Policy Scenario Modeling and Site Analysis for Local Planning
To democratize data access and facilitate planning for housing production, HR&A partnered with the Puget Sound Regional Council (PSRC) to develop "Build Here, Puget Sound!" — a platform that provides planners, policymakers, and advocates across the region with the resources they need to identify development opportunities and model the effects of policy change.
The Puget Sound Regional Council (PSRC) coordinates regional planning across King, Kitsap, Pierce, and Snohomish counties in the greater Seattle area. As the region explores land use reform opportunities to meet growing housing needs, PSRC partnered with HR&A to develop the "Build Here, Puget Sound!" platform for planners and policymakers to identify development opportunities and understand rapidly shifting market conditions.
The Challenge
Housing stakeholders across the Central Puget Sound region were actively exploring land use reforms to accelerate housing production but had no common tools to evaluate their impact. Decision-making was difficult to ground in evidence without a way to assess where sites were available, understand local market dynamics, or model what regulatory changes might yield.
The Approach
Using HousingWeaver, HR&A worked closely with PSRC to build a multi-tool platform that captures demographics, housing supply, affordability, market conditions, and parcel-level development potential across all four counties.
Map feature for exploring demographic and housing data across the region.
Key features include:
- A soft-site explorer that screens 1.43 million parcels across four counties by zoning, ownership, and environmental constraints — then ranks remaining sites by development potential for scenarios ranging from transit-oriented housing to gentle infill
- Snapshot, comparison, and map views to explore housing trends and affordability metrics across multiple geographies
- Narrative reports for jurisdictions across the region, explaining their housing market challenges, with data exports in CSV, Excel, and shapefile formats to support planning workflows and grant reporting
Results & What's Next
Parcel-level explorer identifying underutilized sites across the region.
The platform has already shaped state policy: before its full launch, HR&A used an early version of the tool to analyze SB 6026, finding it could unlock thousands of commercial parcels for residential development across the State of Washington — helping inform the bill's passage in March 2026. As a five-year investment in regional housing planning infrastructure, "Build Here, Puget Sound!" will serve as the primary shared resource for local governments, planners, and advocates across the four-county region, arming communities with the evidence they need to make data-grounded decisions that accelerate housing production.