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The rapid development around DC is a recent phenomenon that started not too long ago. It'll be interesting to see where it is in one or two decades so I don't think it should be written off as not being charming due to not being old enough.
One thing I disagree with Sav858 (or at least question) - yes those cities were there before Caltrain, but how do you know there wasn't a trolley / streetcar system along the Peninsula?
The railroad predates the cities or close enough. Caltrain was South Pacific Railroad before government takeover, the San Jose-San Francisco route been there since 1863.
TOD is Transit Oriented Development. Development oriented around a transit route. The urban centers of the suburbs are just that. They may be old, but many of them have grown significantly and developed around the adjacent transit station. It may not have the widespread residential density of Arlington, but the cores are typically better from an urban standpoint.
I look at a place like Davis Square in Somerville, MA or Quincy Center (with the $1 Billion redevelopment underway) as examples of Transit Oriented Development in older urban centers. They may not have developed from scratch because of the transit line, but the transit connection has played a significant role in their continued urban development.
I agree that the suburbs in the bay area with good urban centers have their flaws (residential density being one of them), but that same argument could be made for Arlington too. The key difference there is that Arlington has a much higher concentration of office space. I don't think that makes it better in terms of TOD. Mainly because it's not so great from an pedestrian standpoint (especially Crystal City). As a potential resident, I'd actually prefer living in one of the bigger urban centers on the SF Peninsula due to the better pedestrian scale and wider variety of retail options. Any while they may not have the same prevalence of office space as Arlington, they shouldn't be expected to given the distance from downtown SF or San Jose. Still, there's a good variety of mixed use development. Especially in the larger downtowns like San Mateo or Palo Alto.
I live in Crystal City and I think its dullness, while it is not very active, is a bit overstated. There are a number of bars and restaurants as well as pedestrian activity in the late afternoon and early evenings (no real late night activities though). As a new-ish resident, I am realizing that there are a lot of tourists. In the summer, the amount of class trips and convention-attendees is utterly ridiculous. In the same way you can't expect San Mateo to have office space, you can't expect Crystalcity/Pentagon City to be adjacent to the Pentagon and the airport and not have a large office and hotel presence. After being here for a while, I just accept it for what is.
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