Elements of Urbanism: Arlington, VA

[thelakelander]

I think well be lucky if more density is allowed in Jax's future transit corridors than what Arlington currently requires as a minimum around its stations.  I can see the average Jax resident fighting zoning density increases tooth and nail, which will limit us to nodal development still surrounded by sprawl outside of the preconsolidated city limits.  Neverthless, I do agree with you that there is always room for improvement and that we should strive for the highest standards.

[stjr]

Lake, I think density will be driven by demographics.  When sprawl gets as bad as the DC area here (God, help us!), closer in and "nodal" land values will become so high that they will drive development vertically.  Maryland and Virginia have much stricter planning and development regulations than we do from what I have understood (Maryland maybe more than Virginia), but, nevertheless, they have succumbed to high rise developments around their Metro stops, most of which are fully surrounded by sweeping suburban homesteads.

Even here, we have begun preparing for such possibilities, wiping out most all single family housing around the greater downtown area:  the Southbank, Brooklyn, LaVilla, southern Springfield, the Stadium area, and, going back decades, Downtown itself.  High rise living will be coming to Jax in the suburbs, its just a matter of demographics over time.

My guess is JTB at I-95, Southside Blvd, and 9-A will be the first suburban high rise places since most of this is office/commercial already or multi-family (always an easy target!).  The Avenues and St. Augustine at I-95 are candidates also.  9A and Beach, 9A and Atlantic, and Regency (it already has one high-er rise behind the mall) are other prime possibilities.  University, Emerson, and Baymeadows, each between Philips and I-95 could fall in at some point as well, Baymeadows being the first.

Interestingly, the suburban high rise office building that comes to mind is Allstate off JTB at the entrance to the exclusive Pablo Creek community!  Good thing it was there first.  The only other high rises (over 10 stories or so) in the suburbs I can recall are the apartment/condo towers on the Ortega River, in Lakewood on the St. Johns, on University near I-95, and at Phillips Mall and in Jax Beach (Pablo Towers).

[thelakelander]

Lake, I think density will be driven by demographics.  When sprawl gets as bad as the DC area here (God, help us!), closer in and "nodal" land values will become so high that they will drive development vertically.  Maryland and Virginia have much stricter planning and development regulations than we do from what I have understood (Maryland maybe more than Virginia), but, nevertheless, they have succumbed to high rise developments around their Metro stops, most of which are fully surrounded by sweeping suburban homesteads.

The bold part drives the physical side of density, not general demographics.  This is what we need to address locally, especially within a 1/4 to 1/2 radius of our future transit stations.  We can physically change our make up over time by simply chaning certain requirements in our land use and zoning regulations (see Building 101 series).

Even here, we have begun preparing for such possibilities, wiping out most all single family housing around the greater downtown area:  the Southbank, Brooklyn, LaVilla, southern Springfield, the Stadium area, and, going back decades, Downtown itself.  High rise living will be coming to Jax in the suburbs, its just a matter of demographics over time.

Increasing density levels don't have to be equated with "high rises".  If zoning does not allow you to create massive oversized surface parking lots, large setbacks and encourages mixing of uses, density will increase and the development that takes place will be more pedestrian friendly, thus transit friendly.  Ideally, imo its best to have a mix of actual building styles but its more important that all development is walkable and transit friendly (see Building 101 series). 

[Traveller]

Some responses to earlier comments.

Regarding density, the zoning for land within two blocks of Fairfax Drive or Wilson Boulevard (under which the Metro runs) is high density, while more than two blocks away is lower density.  This is why you see so many high rises around Metro stations, and either low rise apartments, townhouses, or single family homes further away.  The whole county can't go dense unless they change the zoning rules.

The photos don't show it, but there are things to do in Arlington.  Ballston Common has evolved from a low end shopping mall to more of a lifestyle center as cheap stores have given way to restaurants, a gym, a movie theater, even an ice skating rink.  Clarendon is the nightlife hub of northern Virginia, with plenty of bars, restaurants, and music venues within a block or two of each other.  There's also Clarendon Market Common, but that was built after I left so I can't comment on it.  The only real park in north Arlington is Quincy Park near the FDIC, but it's a short bike ride to Lady Bird Johnson park along the river or to the National Mall.

Rosslyn is a pretty boring place, although they almost built the new Nationals' stadium there.  Admittedly, there aren't many historic buildings in Arlington (besides Lee's house in the cemetery).  People don't move to Arlington for its charm, they move there for its convenience.  Fortunately, Georgetown and Alexandria aren't far away.  Besides, if you want charm, walkability, AND safety in the DC area, you will pay through the nose for it.

The original plan for the Metro was to have the orange line continue down the median of I-66 all the way to the District.  Someone from Arlington County convinced WMATA to run the line under the county instead.  Had this not happened, this area would look completely different.

P.S. If you want to see dull dense development, check out Crystal City.

[thelakelander]

^Good post.  Btw, I didn't even bother taking shots of Crystal City.

[finehoe]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4T1RMuoQnKo

[krazeeboi]

A few years ago, I flew with a friend to DC on a 24-hour trip. We flew into Reagan, took the Metro out to Ballston, walked to our hotel room, which was a few blocks from the Metro station, and then walked to Ballston Common Mall from the hotel. A little later, we took the Metro into DC and from there took a bus to our destination in the city. And then we took the Metro back to the airport in the morning. We did all of this without having a vehicle up there, and that was the first time I was able to take a trip like that. And yes, there are certainly things to do in Ballston beyond what's covered here A good profile of the neighborhood can be found here). It's not perfect, but it's better than the vast majority of suburbs I've ever spent time in.

[krazeeboi]

ARLINGTON, Va. â€" While many metropolitan markets around the country are enduring steep increases in vacancies in their office and retail sectors, the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor in the Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington is an oasis of stability â€" and even of prosperity.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/07/realestate/commercial/07ballston.html

[stjr]

ARLINGTON, Va. â€" While many metropolitan markets around the country are enduring steep increases in vacancies in their office and retail sectors, the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor in the Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington is an oasis of stability â€" and even of prosperity.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/07/realestate/commercial/07ballston.html

Good followup article.  Thanks for posting it, krazeeboi.  Of course, when you have goverment-related, especially the Federal government, as tenants, stable occupancy is all but assured:

Government agencies and related contractors account for 60 percent of the leased office space in the corridor, Mr. Holzheimer said.

A few more quotes of note, including ones about mass transit and the presence of higher education institutions having a supportive impact  (Interesting observation about the frequency of subway stops.  A much higher density than talked about for Jax.  Maybe we aren't being ambitious enough.) :

Served by five Metro subway stops within four miles, the corridor continues to attract new tenants, buyers and developers in the face of the deepest recession since the Great Depression.

....“We just consistently have new development in what we call urban villages,” said Terry Holzheimer, Arlington County’s director of economic development, recalling that “we were a decaying urban corridor in the 1970s.” Since then, he said, “Arlington has been nothing but consistent in terms of adding buildings over time: 20 million square feet of office space and 20,000-plus housing units over a 25-year period.”

...Arlington County’s 26 square miles were a part of the original District of Columbia, but were returned to Virginia in 1846. The transit-related development in the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor has won national recognition for smart growth that mixes offices, shops and living quarters close to subway stops. “We really worked on creating a sense of place, and on what kind of development we wanted near our Metro hubs,” said Barbara A. Favola, chairwoman of the county’s governing board.

....“The Rosslyn-Ballston corridor, with its immediate access to downtown Washington, D.C., is an ideal submarket for transit-oriented, mixed-use development,” said Brian P. Coulter, chief development officer of the JBG Companies, which has been a major developer in Rosslyn and is also active in Ballston.

While Wilson Boulevard, a main artery, helps define the corridor, the key element in its success has been the subway. Planners had wanted to place it in the median of Interstate 66, on a more northerly alignment. But Arlington officials fought to have it run underground in the corridor to spur development.

... The National Science Foundation moved to Ballston in 1993, in the vanguard of many institutions.

These include Marymount University, whose business school is across the street from Virginia Tech’s planned expanded research center.

...One Metro stop closer, Virginia Square, just blocks from Ballston, has George Mason’s Law School and School of Public Policy and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

....Dan McCaffery, a Chicago developer, saw the corridor’s potential a decade ago when he bought land in Clarendon. Former owners had wanted to build a Home Depot, but citizens resisted.

Mr. McCaffery instead built Market Common, a mixed-use project that opened in 2001 and continues to thrive with two street-facing levels of high-end stores arranged in a horseshoe facing a long landscaped lawn, with apartments and offices above and adjacent. “It’s all self-contained,” Mr. McCaffery said. “There’s always a buzz.”

[AaroniusLives]

As I live in DC (Georgetown) and work in Arlington (Rosslyn,) I think I can comment and provide insight regarding this quite interesting "Learning From..." article.

If we don't build these town centers today, in 100 years people will still be saying, oh, it's not 200 years old, so it can't be done?  How to get off the treadmill turning out the Arlingtons of the world?  By changing models now!

In the first place, what Arlington planners did was to create town centers out of sprawl. Both the Orange and the Blue lines run through areas that were essentially automobile sewers. Now each stop is a center in its own right (including the wild, "TRON"-like Crystal City.) Moreover, Arlington effectively splits the difference between the best of the 'burbs (safety, conformity, chain stores and malls) and the best of the city (transit, walk/bike/run, density) into it's current form. In the next place, if most metropolitan statistical areas got on the treadmill and turned out Arlingtons, the world would be a much better place, indeed.

People don't move to Arlington for its charm, they move there for its convenience.  Fortunately, Georgetown and Alexandria aren't far away.  Besides, if you want charm, walkability, AND safety in the DC area, you will pay through the nose for it.

Truer words were never written. However, the savings is relative. It's quite expensive to live in Arlington, especially along the Orange Line corridor, and at the Crystal City and Pentagon City stops (both feature dense mixed-use development; the latter features a multi-story enclosed mall as well.) Is it more expensive in the safe, walkable and charming areas of the District? Absolutely, but not by much. I'd spend about $2000 a month to live in Arlington. I spend about $2200 a month in Georgetown. Not much "savings" there. People pay to live in Arlington (and Bethesda, Silver Spring, Rockville Town Center, etc) because they are desirable places to live.

Yes, its walkable - they have nice clean, well maintained sidewalks.  But, where are they walking to?  The Metro and nowhere else?  And, what engagement do they experience during the walk?  Brick walls and shiny glass windows reflecting like mirrors?  It looks to me to be a half baked solution.  I think I could do better.  Put me in charge! 

They walk to a variety of shops, restaurants, grocery stores, bars and parks. As well as the Metro. The sidewalks are a safe place to walk, with actual people using them to walk. As for the architectural style of the place, in DC, where much of the building is in Roman-American drag, the modern sleekness of the Arlington neighborhoods is a nice change. The District only recently started to build postmodern buildings: a lot of it is columns and marble and "New England by the river."

Arlington's success has a great deal to do with the Metro, and in many ways, it's not a model to be followed for that reason. It sounds counterintuitive, but hear me out. The Washington Metrorail is an expensive, vanity transit system. A lot of money was (and is) spent on making the subway appealing to the middle class. From the expansive, vaulted stations to the trains themselves, the Metro is the antithesis of the stereotype of a heavy-rail transit system. Indeed, it was designed to not be like New York City's subway.

As a result, expanding and maintaining the Metro is costly, which is why, despite the Washington Metro being the 2nd most used heavy rail system in the country, there are gaps in the coverage. As an example, I either take the Georgetown Metro Connection bus or walk .75 miles to the Rosslyn Station, despite the fact that I live in a very dense neighborhood.

Metro succeeds because everyone takes it. Rich folks. Poor folks. People in between. Everyone takes it because it's a nice way to get around. It's not cheap to get this appeal, and that's why I don't think that the Arlington model is easily transferrable around the country, as most metro areas don't get the Tiffany of heavy rail transit funded. Even the buses here are generally nicer than those elsewhere.

You can see the effect that a jewel of a transit system has by comparing it to others. The Miami Metrofail, doesn't work for many reasons, not the least of which is that it's looks, smells, and drives cheap. Their "Arlingtons" around their stations feature massive parking decks, because even though people live near the Metrofail in a fake downtown, they (a) still have to drive and (b) probably would rather drive, considering the state of Miami's transit. Atlanta has a similar problem with the MARTA. If a transit system is viewed as third-class transit, and is built and funded as third-class transit, nobody will want to take it.

They take the Metro in DC because it's first-class transit, at least for an American subway system.

A great transit system to look at would be the DART light rail in Dallas. By not using heavy-rail, Dallas was able to spend more on the stations, the trains and the overall reach of the system. They have, in effect, a first-class light rail transportation network.

But Dallas, DC, Miami and Atlanta's metropolitan statistical areas differ hugely from Jacksonville's in one key difference: population. Each of them have at least 4 million more residents, which increases both the need for transit and the funding available.

I know it's a poisoned opinion here, but if I lived in Jacksonville, I'd embrace the BRT system that seems to be moving forward...but with the goal to make it a first-class transportation option. Use DART as a model here, rather than Miami, Atlanta and the unattainable goal of DC. Make those BRT stations as nice and clean as can possibly be. Make them architectural icons of design and consistency (a DC and DART trick.) Make the buses themselves be clean and comfortable. Part of the problem with any transit project in the States is woeful underfunding, which frequently results in cheap, unwanted transportation. Change the paradigm with your BRT. Create a top-drawer experience that people will want to use. If that means the best damned BRT the world has ever seen, so be it! Anyhoo...   

Another reason why the DC region model isn't easily applied involves history. While 1960-70s white flight decimated the population of the District, following the trends of basically every city in the US, the city itself wasn't divided by highways, wasn't road raged with widening projects, and didn't lose their office business to the suburbs, thanks to the government not moving their offices. This effectively means that DC doesn't have much to undo, in terms of poor urban planning of the past. It also means that Arlington, located right across the river, had a desirable location, if not a desired set of buildings, when they were laying out the Metro.

Contrast that situation with the firebombed husk of downtown Jacksonville, the highways slicing through the city, the businesses entrenched in sprawl. It's an apples to oranges comparison. Jacksonville first has to undo the damage you can even hope to become another fruit, and complain about the blandness of your variants of Arlington. You are two steps behind the place where Arlington-clones can effectively exist.

[thelakelander]

^Unfortunately, true BRT costs just as much as LRT and has limited potential in stimulating the type of transit oriented development that has taken place not only in Arlington, but also Jax sized peers like Salt Lake City, Charlotte and now Austin.

I think our answer is clear and is proven by cities like Charlotte, Little Rock and Norfolk.  While DC-like heavy rail makes no sense in Jax, rail can work in a city our size (it also worked 100 years ago) and BRT should be designed to complement it.

[AaroniusLives]

thelakelander, i totally agree that Jacksonville can support LRT. I think LRT is much better than BRT, and in most cases, better than heavy rail (the current Silver Line extention in DC should be light rail, IMHO.)

However, if the politics, which seem to be veering towards a BRT-based system, get gridlocked and sidetracked, then Jacksonville gets no system, or worse, a repeat of the last 60 years of "future improvements and plans" that never materialize. My point regarding the BRT moment is thus: as long as it's a top-drawer, first-class, utterly awesome, clean and beautiful system, it almost doesn't matter which system (BRT/LRT) you get. I'm suggesting that perhaps the focus needs to be on the 1st-class nature of the system, rather than the rail/bus debate.

[thelakelander]

However, if the politics, which seem to be veering towards a BRT-based system, get gridlocked and sidetracked, then Jacksonville gets no system, or worse, a repeat of the last 60 years of "future improvements and plans" that never materialize.

From my take the politics statewide have done a 180 from what they were five years ago.  We're past the typical bus/rail debate in Jacksonville.  We'll have both.  Now the question is how to fund and best implement them. 

My point regarding the BRT moment is thus: as long as it's a top-drawer, first-class, utterly awesome, clean and beautiful system, it almost doesn't matter which system (BRT/LRT) you get.

This is where I differ, from a land development standpoint.  The only thing worth discussing with the rail/bus issue at this point, is understanding what you'll get with each specific mode and design.  This is where we need to accept and work with the truth on what things bring to the table.

No matter how you design these modes, they are different animals with a separate list of pros and cons.  For example, if land development is a goal, one has a well backed proven track record for stimulating transit friendly development and one does not.  If development is the major goal for certain areas of town or corridors, go with the proven mode.  Both cost too much to base things on theory, wishes and dreams.

I'm suggesting that perhaps the focus needs to be on the 1st-class nature of the system, rather than the rail/bus debate.

I agree. The development of a 1st-class "integrated" mass transit system has always been a priority of Metro Jacksonville.    A one size fits all strategy does not lead to the creation of a successful mass transit system.  So, there should be a mix of several modes all designed to best cater to the different built environments of the region that they'll serve.  From my take, this is where we're at in Jacksonville.  Now we just need the political will and financial resources to pull it off.

[AaroniusLives]

I will offer one piece of advice from DC: no carpeting. Whomever thought that a subway train would be made "classy" by carpets trampled by dirty feet every damned day should be shot.

Now we just need the political will and financial resources to pull it off.

You also need it to be a success, and to be planned correctly to be so. The SkyTrain probably ended any meaningful debate in Jacksonville regarding transit for years, due to its poor ridership (due in no small part to the thing not being completed.) It took Miami-Dade County nearly 20 years to overcome the taint of the MetroFail and authorize a much-needed transit plan...which is a boondoggle that has produced nothing while siphoning hundreds of million of taxpayer money...thus completing a cycle of suck, and basically ensuring another 20 years of inaction.

Whatever you all decide to implement as your integrated system, it has to work, has to work well, and has to show demonstrable results. Transit is under much greater scrutiny in this country than the personal automobile; it's why the top-tier nature of your system is so integral towards its success. 

[thelakelander]

lol, I agree.