Parks and recreation

Seattle's mild, temperate, marine climate allows year-round outdoor recreation, including walking, cycling, hiking, skiing, snowboarding, kayaking, rock climbing, motor boating, sailing, team sports, and swimming.^[196]
In town, many people walk around Green Lake, through the forests and along the bluffs and beaches of 535-acre (2.2 km²) Discovery Park (the largest park in the city) in Magnolia, along the shores of Myrtle Edwards Park on the Downtown waterfront, along the shoreline of Lake Washington at Seward Park, along Alki Beach in West Seattle, or along the Burke-Gilman Trail.

Downtown Seattle from Gas Works Park

Gas Works Park features the majestic preserved superstructure of a coal gasification plant closed in 1956. Located across Lake Union from downtown, the park provides panoramic views of the Seattle skyline.
Also popular are hikes and skiing in the nearby Cascade or Olympic Mountains and kayaking and sailing in the waters of Puget Sound, the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and the Strait of Georgia. In 2005, Men's Fitness magazine named Seattle the fittest city in the United States.^[197]
In its 2013 ParkScore ranking, the Trust for Public Land reported that Seattle had the tenth best park system among the 50 most populous US cities.^[198] ParkScore ranks city park systems by a formula that analyzes acreage, access, and service and investment.

Government and politics

Main article: Government and politics of Seattle

The city council consists of two at-large positions and seven district seats representing the areas shown.

Seattle is a charter city, with a mayor–council form of government. From 1911 to 2013, Seattle's nine city councillors were elected at large, rather than by geographic subdivisions.^[199] For the 2015 election, this changed to a hybrid system of seven district members and two at-large members as a result of a ballot measure passed on November 5, 2013. The only other elected offices are the city attorney and Municipal Court judges. All city offices are officially non-partisan.^[200]
Like some other parts of the United States, government and laws are also run by a series of ballot initiatives (allowing citizens to pass or reject laws), referenda (allowing citizens to approve or reject legislation already passed), and propositions (allowing specific government agencies to propose new laws or tax increases directly to the people). Federally, Seattle is part of Washington's 7th congressional district, represented by Democrat Jim McDermott, elected in 1988 and one of Congress's liberal members.^[201] Ed Murray is currently serving as mayor.
Seattle's political culture is very liberal and progressive for the United States, with over 80% of the population voting for the Democratic Party. All precincts in Seattle voted for Democratic Party candidate Barack Obama in the 2012 presidential election.^[202] In partisan elections for the Washington State Legislature and United States Congress, nearly all elections are won by Democrats. Seattle is considered the first major American city to elect a female mayor, Bertha Knight Landes.^[203] It has also elected an openly gay mayor, Ed Murray,^[204] and a socialist councillor, Kshama Sawant.^[205] For the first time in United States history, an openly gay black woman was elected to public office when Sherry Harris was elected as a Seattle city councillor in 1991.^[206][207] The majority of the current city council is female, while white men comprise a minority.^[208]
Seattle is widely considered one of the most liberal cities in the United States, even surpassing its neighbor, Portland, Oregon.^[209] In the 2012 U.S. general election, a majority of Seattleites voted to approve Referendum 74 and legalize gay marriage in Washington state.^[210] In the same election, an overwhelming majority of Seattleites also voted to approve the legalization of the recreational use of cannabis in the state.^[211] Like much of the Pacific Northwest (which has the lowest rate of church attendance in the United States and consistently reports the highest percentage of atheism^[212][213]), church attendance, religious belief, and political influence of religious leaders are much lower than in other parts of America.^[214]
Seattle also has a thriving alternative press, with the Web-based daily Seattle Post-Intelligencer, several other online dailies (including Publicola and Crosscut), The Stranger (an alternative, left-leaning weekly), Seattle Weekly, and a number of issue-focused publications, including the nation's two largest online environmental magazines, Worldchanging and Grist.org.
In July 2012, Seattle banned plastic shopping bags.^[215] In June 2014 the city passed a local ordinance to increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour on a staged basis from 2015 to 2021. When fully implemented the $15 hourly rate will be the highest minimum wage in the nation.^[216]
On October 6, 2014, Seattle officially replaced Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples' Day, honoring Seattle's Native American community and controversies surrounding the legacy of Christopher Columbus.^[217][218]