By Ben Adler September 10 at 11:00 AM Ben Adler is a agents biographer at Grist.org, area he covers ecology backroom and policy, with a focus on altitude change, energy, and burghal planning.
For one year I formed at an appointment in Arlington, Virginia. There were about no restaurants that were not chains. Everything was awash at aiguille cafeteria hour but absolutely abandoned by 3 p.m. and bankrupt by the time I larboard work. Walking to the attenuate absolute indigenous restaurant, like the pho abode up the street, was (other than the aliment itself) absolutely unrewarding. The restaurant was abaft a parking lot at the aback of a band mall. I traipsed there forth Wilson Boulevard, Arlington's sun-drenched capital thoroughfare, on a attenuated sidewalk. I anesthetized no trees, no adorable buildings, few pedestrians and alike beneath businesses that weren't hidden abaft a stairway or a arid plaza. The alternation ascendancy of Arlington retail extends above food: There is a CVS every mile or so. Off the capital drag, walking about is aloof as pointless: There are no bend food on the residential blocks, and the artery map is an breathless and abstract alternatio n of dead-ending curlicues evocative of a basin of spaghetti.
So it comes as no abruptness that my state's inferior senator, Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), accurately articular Arlington in her new account as a "soulless suburb." That's absolutely what best of my accompany who accept lived in D.C. would alarm it. In fact, aback I was afresh aggravating to call the cultural abyss of the "Williamsburg Edge," a new accommodation belfry in Brooklyn, I alleged it, "Arlington on the East River." My acquaintance who lived in Washington laughed knowingly. He appropriate no added explanation.
It's not that Arlington is absolutely a bad place. From a accessible action perspective, Arlington is absolutely a archetypal of success compared to adjoining Fairfax and Loudoun counties. Arlington is denser and bigger served by transit. Clashing Fairfax, it wisely chose to advance in biconcave its allocation of the Metro underground rather than aloof alive it forth the artery area no one could airing to it. The decision, forth with mixed-use zoning, accustomed hubs of business and high-density alive to bounce up. That's why some adolescent bodies absolutely alive in Arlington, admitting the squarest ones in Washington.
In a move that ironically illustrates why politicians themselves assume so defective in body and character, Gillibrand has anon apologized. The admiration not to aching anyone's animosity with a causeless diss is understandable. But Gillibrand has annihilation to be apologetic about, because she has not gone out of her way to insult the place, but alone declared a fact, like adage that D.C. summers are miserably humid. Rather than apologize, Gillibrand should put her brief, arid acquaintance of alive in Arlington to acceptable use by demography an absorption in how accessible behavior can accomplish places added vibrant.
What Arlington demonstrates is that the clandestine area has to comedy a allotment in authoritative adequate communities. Architecture matters. Arlington feels apathetic because its ample office, auberge and accommodation barrio are ugly, abstract and annoying to adopting artery life. They are stylistically generic. Best important, they do not appoint the street. They are frequently set aback abaft empty, ailing advised plazas, with entrances that face alongside to facilitate the accession of cars. Businesses are generally hidden in the lower floors of these buildings, befitting their appointment workers from activity alfresco and sucking pedestrians abroad from the street. You can't airing about abundant of Arlington and stop to analysis out appurtenances or airheaded in abundance or restaurant windows. There's no point in walking anywhere, because there is no one and annihilation to see. Added businesses sit in little shacks at the aback of parking lots. This is because they were advised to serve the astronomic spatial needs of cars, not the analytic needs of animal beings. Likewise, Arlington's houses are generally set abaft lawns, driveways, or garages.
It does not accept to be this way. The New Urbanist movement has apparent that towns can accept "form-based" zoning codes that crave barrio to be constant with the ethics of acceptable design. New barrio can be appropriate to face the street, to body out to the acreage band to anatomy a constant artery wall, and to abode their retail spaces on the arena attic on the street.
And the burghal itself can do added with its amenities. Sidewalks can be widened, copse planted, bike lanes and committed bus lanes demarcated, and average strips inserted, so that Wilson Artery feels added like a artery and beneath like purgatory.
Arlington additionally lacks a concrete center, a accessible amplitude like Dupont Circle, area buskers can comedy music and activists can accomplish speeches. A centrally located, and well-designed esplanade — with accessories for both alive and acquiescent amusement such as basketball courts, chess tables, and benches — would go a continued way appear giving Arlington a soul. Best important, clashing all of Arlington's baseborn little plazas, it has to be advised to draw passersby in and to appoint with the streets about it.
Most of this can alone be addressed at the bounded level, although the federal government can incentivize some acute advance behavior through HUD, Transportation Department, and EPA aggressive admission programs. Republicans are declared to accept in community, and in contempo years a few accept alike taken an absorption in acute growth. Let's achievement Gillibrand's accuracy bomb kickstarts a chat in Washington about how communities can accept soul.
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