Living here, I think there's a distinct feeling that everyone knows commuting all the way to Seattle is fucked. https://twitter.com/TheUrbanAce/status/1310684659412418560

The main theory around here from our mainly Republican government is that we just need to develop Smokey Point and put the jobs there, thus the industrial center planning there.

I don't think this will really work for a lot of reasons.

Or at least, it won't work out like our covert-ish republican gov thinks it will.

People who live in Marysville are here for one of a couple reasons:

1. They like suburban environments
2. This is the one of last places on the north side of the metro area they can afford

Now, 1 is typically, say, an older Boeing worker/retiree who thought Everett was too urban back circa the 80s.

2 is your friend who works at restaurant and has a commute of several hours a day.

The thinking with the industrial center is that, well, if we just put the jobs here, everyone who's currently working in seattle will quit and work here, win-win-win.

But, that ignores the root of why group 2 lives here, while mistakenly assuming the economic forces that acted on group 1 still apply.

The industrial center theory essentially measures a good or worthy job by the sector it's in. Boeing is essentially a good job.

But Boeing (for the most part) isn't why people commute from Marsyville to Seattle.

An industrial center might solve some of the traffic to Everett, then, but if most of the commuters to Seattle aren't industrial, then smokey point industrial center won't really do shit to address the latter.

This also assumes that people have the capacity to just up and switch from service sector to manufacturing.

This isn't evident, and looks down on service sector jobs.

Who do you think will fill the Marysvillians' jobs in Seattle if they theoretically switched to jobs in Smokey Point? Or do you think those jobs can be done by office workers at night? Do you really think that restaurants will hire 16 year olds again?

Underneath the language, there's the nasty assumption that service work is not real work, or is only work for teenagers and people with other sources of income.

Thus, one could argue that the industrial center thesis supposes that people who work service in Seattle just need to Grow Up and Get Real Jobs, even as it acknowledges that the Real Jobs are scarce.

This is kind of ironic, considering how many downtown revitalization plans rely so heavily on the service industry to, well remake their places.

One scenario I see happening is that Smokey Point Industrial Center actually ends up employing as many folks from Skagit as much as anyone hyperlocal.

tl;dr: make your places affordable to the people you have. yes, even them.