A Rant on Arlington, VA

Arlington, Virginia is a county in the US state of Virginia across the Potomac River from (and formerly part of) Washington, DC. As an inner ring suburb of DC, Arlington receives a fair amount of benefits from being close to one of the major cities in the US such as the Washinton Metrorail and the business of many companies wanting to be adjacent to the US capital. In fact, many of the things associated with a trip to Washington, DC are in Arlington including: Washington National Airport, The Pentagon, and Arlington National Cemetary.

Arlington is often lauded for its use of transit-oriented-development (TOD) and I actually think it does an amazing job on paper. Some issues do arise with how it ended up implemented but it fulfills many of the goals on paper.

There are many positives to living in Arlington such as Virginia’s lower taxes and cheaper rent (depending on where) than DC. There are also many downsides that may or may not matter to most people. I spent a little over a year in Arlington and had quite a number of issues with it that had me yearning to move to a “real” city in just a matter of months.

To clarify before going into the full rant, I am mostly going into a rant about the portions of Arlington along the Orange/Silver lines of the Washington Metrorail.

The Good of Arlington

While this page is going to mostly be a rant, I can’t talk about Arlington without mentioning the positives of it. Arlington has done many things extremely well and can be a model for other places to follow for beginner steps on how to build suburbs. I think most of what the Arlington County board and residents have built is pretty good but needs some improvement along that Orange/Silver line corridor that could put it in bigger leagues.

Transit Oriented Development

Arlington County took great initiative to ensure that when the Washington region was building out its metrorail they would not be left with scraps. The county ensured that they had density around the underground stations in the county. Rosslyn, the convergence of the Blue and Orange lines (the Silver line didn’t exist until much later), became a primarily business area. Courthouse (or Court House) became the area for most of Arlington County’s government buildings and residential. Clarendon and Virginia Square are primarily residential. Ballston seems to be a mix of commercial and residential.

From my observations of the buildings around Courthouse to Ballston, many of the Metro station adjacent buildings were built in the last 20 years and they hold a large number of the residents of the Orange line corridor. Many of them are actually quite tall. 15+ floors aren’t uncommon around here. With DC’s height limits, many visiting are often surprised to find out that the place with all the high rises is the suburb and the (relative) lowrises of DC is the city.

These high rises make for pretty good land use that limits the amount of built earth. Infrastructure is well built out and during initial construction, it’s easier and cheaper on a per capita level to build out utilities for one building vs a bunch of single family homes. However, one problem with this corridor is that there are a number of high rises and then it very rapidly drops off within a few blocks and that creates some of the issues I will go into in my cons section.

Data Availability

Arlington County has a very easy to use site for accessing data they’ve made available publicly. I have yet to encounter a jurisdiction that’s made it this easy to download data in multiple formats. They even have their own API. I respect whoever decided to create this and whoever made it such an organized and beautiful site.

Public Use

Arlington has a top tier public system that makes good use of the space afforded it

Trails

Arlington has a better than average trail network running through it that make it extremely easy to use the trails to get to different corners of the county. If I wanted to, it would be pretty easy to ride my bike to National Airport (DCA) using the trails they have in place. The trails are really nice for leisure rides, runs, and walks, but the actual core of the county can feel a little frightening to use for commuting outside of the trails.

Multipurpose Use

Arlington does an amazing job of using what it has for multiple purposes. In particular, I think of one of the high schools which is, obviously, a high school during the day, but becomes somewhat of a community center at night. The county uses it to host night classes, allows people to use the pools, and allows people to host events and meet there. The vast majority of schools where I’m from get virtually zero use during non-school hours.

The Bad of Arlington

Here’s where I flip the switch and go into the cons with Arlington. I initially decided to live in Arlington to be between DC and work in Tysons (that’s a bigger rant for another day). For all its pros, there are a number of cons with Arlington that were dealbreakers in my decision to move away from there. Although the initial high rises and Metro stations make me think of it as an urban area, the flaws in the current way things are laid out makes that facade fall off relatively quickly.

The Great High Rise Fall Off

I mentioned earlier that I am a fan of density (to an extent) and that Arlington has that immediately around those Orange line stations…but there’s a catch. Going down Wilson or Fairfax Drives in Arlington, you’re greeted by a city like scape of high rises leading you to think that there’s quite a bit of this, but one thing you notice is that it only lasts for a bit. Walk a few blocks north or south and all of a sudden you kind of feel like you’re in a gridded suburb with mostly single family homes (SFHs). If you live in one of the high rises, you likely have very little reason to venture out to one of these areas because it’s mostly just homes. It’s not surprising that there are single family homes in Arlington at all, but the rapid drop off in high rise to SFHs is so rapid that it creates a sort of island where most of what you do in the county is within the bubble of the high rises. The high rises would have more potential if there were either more of them or rather than having concentrated high rises, have more mid rises.

The problem I have with this fall off is that it kind of limits things to do in the area. Especially since most of these buildings are only residential or office space. Having this small amount of high rises kills off a lot of potential street life that could have been possible. Because it’s usually only the first floor that has the restaurants and bars, the small number of high rises limits the variety of options that could have been available in the area.

Lack of Local Businesses in Urban Part

As mentioned in the prior section, the high rise buildings and fall off limit what’s available within (reasonable) walking distance. Having just a few tall buildings where there’s only ground floor retail limits opportunities for local businesses to find their footing. When the retail space is scarce, you end up with a market where the few spots are taken by national chains who want to maintain their footing. Exit at any stop on the Orange line and you’ll see the same things: Starbucks, CVS, 7/11, Dunkin’. The local businesses are usually in a farther spot that would require a less than ideal walk or having to drive there. These local spots deserve to be in a place that would cater to the people living at the core of the Metro line but the way it’s built makes that a difficult task.

Streets Designed for Cars

Despite the transit oriented development, the area around the Orange line is still very heavily car-oriented. Take a walk along Fairfax Drive and you’ll have cars zooming past you the entire time. Crossing that street often doesn’t feel too pleasant. This holds especially true in the unmarked crosswalks where crossing often feels like you’re about to get hit because of the speed of the cars along that road. I don’t think areas with this many pedestrians (at rush hour) should have speed limits as high as this. There are often bike lanes in areas, but they kind of feel like they are half attempts that lead to nowhere. The trails that are available are extremely nice, but mostly useful for a few things such as recreation and getting to specific areas, but for commuting around the county, it often feels like it would be hard to get anywhere in the urban core. I actually feel like it was much easier and safer to bike in the more suburban parts of the county because of the slower speed limits.

Lack of Things to Do

Overall, I would say my primary issue for me ended up being having nothing to do in Arlington. If I didn’t want to hit up the Starbucks or see a specific person, I didn’t really have much to do in Arlington. If I wanted to go to a concert or a particular restaurant, or a museum, or any event, it was more times than not in DC. If I wanted to do something after work, having a layover in Arlington added a surprising amount of time.

Summary

Overall, I would say Arlington is actually mostly a really decent place that I had problems with. I think it could be easily improved by adding more mid rises and local businesses and also making traffic slower and allowing for easier alternative modes of transportatino to be used. The things I mentioned here mostly apply to the Orange line portion of Arlington, but I do also have some issues with the Blue line portions of Arlington that I may decided to go to in a later rant. Arlington County as an organization gets props from me for its efficiency and data collection and I still think that the high rises are significantly better than giving in to exurban sprawl, but I also think that improvements to make living in Arlington far more pleasant (to me) could be easily made over the course of a a decade or two, but that is to be seen.