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Mayor Murray withdraws proposal to allow more density in single-family zones

Seattle Mayor Ed Murray said Wednesday he’ll no longer pursue more density in all of the city’s single-family zones, after all.

Permitting more housing types — such as duplexes, triplexes and stacked flats — in those zones was perhaps the most controversial of 65 strategies recommended earlier this month by Murray’s panel on housing affordability.

Murray defended the proposal at a July 13 news conference where he unveiled the recommendations that together make up his new housing-affordability plan.

City Council President Tim Burgess and Councilmember Mike O’Brien, the council’s land-use committee chair, stood with the mayor for that event but have both since backed away from the proposal to change all of Seattle’s single-family zones.