Downtown Seattle is home to 1 in 10 Seattleites as urban housing push continues
Residential construction is increasingly driving development in downtown Seattle, as more than one in 10 residents now live in the city’s core.
More than 109,000 people now live downtown, and nearly 8,500 residential units were under construction citywide at the end of 2025. Of those units, 3,325 — about 40% — are downtown. Downtown residents skew younger, are more diverse and more likely to be men.
The Downtown Seattle Association’s 2025 year-end Development Guide notes that Seattle, in general, is still among the fastest-growing big cities in the U.S., with a 2.2% population increase last year.
“The past 15 years of downtown commercial and residential development have fueled Seattle’s growth, vibrancy and tax base,” DSA President and CEO Jon Scholes said in the report. “More recently, downtown Seattle has benefited from significant housing production that has produced hundreds of millions of dollars in new tax revenues, created more opportunities for people to ditch their cars and live near transit and generated thousands more customers for small businesses.”
https://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/news/2026/01/16/apartment-construction-population-growth.html