What Drivable Suburbanism Takes
Tyson’s Corner is an area of Fairfax, County Virginia famous for its excellent mall but also for the fact that it’s become a major center of employment, turning the Greater Washington era into a kind of binary downtown system. But whereas the Washington, DC central business district is a walkable urban area served by a decent subway system, Tyson’s is a hard-core subarbanist “edge city.” But plans are under way to build a Metro extension that will run from the city out to Dulles Airport (good idea) and the route will also include four stops in Tyson’s Corner (good idea) and planners want to change land-use rules in Tyson’s to promote sounder development strategies, with the planned stations as foci:
The Tysons Task Force wants to allow a FAR of six, rising as high as 7.8 for residential space if a developer meets green-building and affordable-housing thresholds.
That upper limit worries Ted Alexander, chairman of the Greater Tysons Citizens Coalition, an umbrella group of community officials and activists.
“We support development and growth, but the thing that we don’t want to happen is see the growth grow faster than the infrastructure,” he said.
And there you have it. Fairfax, as it currently exists, doesn’t contain any walkable urban areas because it’s actually illegal to build any communities that are dense enough to really provide for walkable urbanism. There are plans under way to let people build denser in one corner of the county, but still not all that densely, and those plans are facing regulatory opposition from people who want to ensure that the tender fabric of car-dependent suburbanism stays in place. If you did something crazy like let people build however densely the market will support, then you’d see a lot more walking, biking, taking the bus, etc. but driving would become unpleasant. That would be annoying to people who love driving, nice for people who like walking, and better for the environment and public health along with being substantially more economically efficient — boosting overall productivity and incomes.
17 Responses to “What Drivable Suburbanism Takes”
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September 17th, 2008 at 12:14 pm
Wow. What an ignorant post.
Maybe the good people of Fairfax county don’t want Tysons to turn into a downtown “walkable” zone because
1) Tysons is surrounded by wealthy suburbs
2) The plan calls for quintupling the number of jobs at Tysons
3) Even with the small increase in Tysons residents, the number of commuters is going to increase dramatically
4) Those commuters make it difficult for those people living in wealthy suburbs to move around — which would lower their property values.
Walking is nice. Turning Tysons into a density level of midtown Manhattan is stupid. You should be pointing the finger at the defense contractors and car dealers (yes, they own the land) who are pushing this boondoogle.
September 17th, 2008 at 1:31 pm
Matthew,
In particular, I worry about giving people the idea that successful drivable suburbanism is a default state, whereas walkable urbanism is this delicate flower that needs to be cultivated with careful regulatory measures. In reality, while there are regulatory structures around essentially all communities in the United States, it’s important to understand that it’s the suburbanist model that crucially depends for support on on careful regulations.
Nonsense. If “walkable urbanism” were the “default state” that arose organically from the market choices of consumers you wouldn’t keep writing posts demanding new government spending on transit and “transit-oriented development” to try and coerce people into accepting smaller and denser housing and infrastructure.
The decline of high-density urban development and the rise low-density car-oriented suburbs isn’t just an American phenonenon. It’s happened wherever societies have become rich enough to allow private cars to become the dominant mode of transportation. Europeans have been rapidly suburbanizing just like Americans.
September 17th, 2008 at 3:17 pm
One thought is that public transportation, Metro, could end up killing the shopping malls instead of helping the area. As the Metro puts in, all of the malls will have to defend their parking to keep commuters from parking in the malls parking lots. That means that the malls will have to start charging for parking. As Best Buy found out across the Rout 7, suburbanites do not want to pull a parking ticket and have it validated let alone pay for parking.
When the malls start charing for parking and when the malls and more teenagers due to the subway, the number of money spending suburbanites who actually buy things will go down. See Pentagon City for an example of what happens to a mall that charges for parking.
September 17th, 2008 at 3:34 pm
Actually, it’s large lot zoning that has made communties like Fairfax and Potomac possible. Large lot housing, and the spread out development patterns that result, are not the default development pattern. They are the product of these zoning rules, the intent of which is to keep housing prices in these areas out of reach for people of modest means. They are an artificial construct, not the “natural” development pattern.
Their real effect is to subsidize large housing lots for the relatively well off, and put housing in the area out of reach for poorer people. They do this by allowing only one house per so many acres. This lessens competition for the land because developers who would like to build more densely do not bid on it. However, because the lots are large, they still cost a lot, so only the relatively well off can afford them. If the low density developer had to bid against a developer who could build more high density row house development, the low density developer would always lose out because he would sell far fewer units to far fewer people – the high density developer would outbid him for the land. But the low density zoning requirements mean that low density developers only have to bid against other low density developers. The result is that the final homeowner gets to buy a large lot at a lower price than he or she otherwise would have – but at a price that still prohibits low income individuals from affording to move there.
Zoning laws have a legitimate purpose – there are good reasons to seperate noisy, polluting, unpleasant industrial and agricultural facilities from residential and commercial areas. Unfortunately, they are abused in this country to ensure that the poor don’t start buying houses in tony suburbs. The unintended side effect of keeping the poor out is sprawling residential development which is car dependent. There is no default about it. And by the way Charlie – I live in DC and property values in Northwest are much higher than in Fairfax County despite lots of pedestrians “impeding” the use of cars.
I agree that some people will always desire to live in less dense areas, and that there will always therefore be some communities like Fairfax that are sprawling. But without the assist that large lot zoning provides, they would not be nearly as prevalent in the U.S. Most European villages have much denser development patterns than even the inner ring suburbs of DC or most other American cities. You’ll find some large lot estates, but they are much less common in just about everywhere I’ve visited in Europe than they are in the U.S. If it weren’t for large lot zoning, I think U.S. development patterns would look more like those in Europe.
September 17th, 2008 at 11:31 pm
They are the product of these zoning rules, the intent of which is to keep housing prices in these areas out of reach for people of modest means. They are an artificial construct, not the “natural” development pattern.
Specific zoning laws in a particular area may have a significant effect on density in that area, but overall the evidence indicates that zoning has had a relatively small impact on density. The fundamental driver of the move to lower densities is the car, which allows people to have much bigger housing at an affordable price.
I agree that some people will always desire to live in less dense areas, and that there will always therefore be some communities like Fairfax that are sprawling.
Not just some people. Most people. Sprawl isn’t just an American phenomenon. It’s a global phenomenon. Europe has been sprawling like crazy during the post-war period.
September 18th, 2008 at 4:17 pm
Well, I can’t speak to European zoning laws and how they influence sprawl there. And I’d have to seem more evidence that sprawl has only a modest effect on density than your say so before I believed it. In any event, how do you explain away the fact that people pay a housing premium to live in relatively dense cities (New York, Chicago, San Francisco, DC, Milan, Rome, Madrid, London, Paris) if they really prefer to live in less densely settled suburbs? If sprawling suburbs are so desireable, why do people pay more to live in cities?
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