Suburban Giants- NOVA vs. Orange County

[MrJester]

I don't know why people keep bashing NoVA as boring sprawling suburbia. Sure it has bland sprawl, but unlike Orange County, it's actually got Old Town Alexandria. Can anywhere in OC rival the history of Alexandria? NoVA's got vibrant, subway-oriented urban areas like Rosslyn-Ballston and Tysons Corner that make South Coast Metro/Irvine look like a joke.

The only thing OC wins is the beaches, and mountains. But when it comes to the built environment, NoVA takes the cake. And while NoVA might not have mountains or the ocean, the lush, green forests, rolling hills, and the view across the Potomac (ok, fine, the Potomac's technically in Maryland) more than makes up for it.

[the resident09]

Originally Posted by MrJester

This is a great case study. You have this paradox of OC being much more dense but much less urban than NOVA.

Irvine may not be urban, but it is actually denser than virtually anywhere in NoVA apart from Arlington/Alexandria. Remember that Irvine spreads across 66 square miles, encompassing more than 280,000 people, is still growing rapidly, has 40% of the land preserved as open space, and has virtually as many jobs as residents. So that 4,000 people per square mile figure you see for Irvine is in reality much higher when you account for this. Yes, you have pockets of density like Tysons corner that are much denser than Irvine, but outside of Arlington/Alexandria there is simply no place where the density is so uniformly sustained across such a vast area like Irvine. Not even Reston--it's already built out, doesn't have as much green space as Irvine, and its density is only 3,800. Walk a mile away from the center of Tysons Corner, and you'll find yourself in sprawling McMansion land that makes Irvine look dense.

For that matter, there is hardly, if any, other entirely U.S. postwar suburban area other than Irvine with a pouplation of over 200,000, is an edge city, and has vast swaths of green space, and still manages to be as dense as Irvine. Keep in mind that the Los Angeles urbanized area (i.e. metro area) is the densest in the U.S, at 7,000 ppsm. Even New York's urbanized area isn't as dense. While NYC is much denser than Los Angeles proper, you have to remember that most people in both metro areas live in the suburbs, so suburban density carries much more weight in determining the density of the overall metro area. So while NoVA has pockets of very high density surrounded by a sea of very low density sprawl, OC has vast areas of fairly high density suburban development and thus beats NoVA in density because the vast majority of people in either region live in suburban development, not high rise condos.

The kind of zero-lot-line development in California is just astoundingly dense for suburban development in the U.S.; in fact, it's closer to Canadian suburbs, which are generally denser than U.S. suburbs. Take a satellite picture of a typical neighborhood in Irvine, a Toronto suburb like Markham, and a picture of Reston. You'll see that the development pattern and density in Irvine is much closer to that of Markham than it is to Reston.

I agree with all of this, which is why I acknowledge OC/Irvine being more "dense" in my previous post. The question as to "urbanity" overall is a much different one. The transit nodes alone around NOVA are unmatched in Orange County, and like you mentioned the urban street scape of an Alexandria, and I'd also throw in various parts of Arlington County, cannot be seen in OC either. The places are as close to apples and oranges as we can find with regards to heavily populated suburban style or "edge city" type of development.

East Coast/Mid Atlantic, development is completely different from what can be seen in California and much of the West. As you mentioned zero-lot-line development with extremely close SFH dwellings is not existent much here in suburban areas, but the grid TOD nodes with heavy rail transit and 30 story skyscrapers is not prevalent in suburbs of OC either. Again apples to oranges.

[MrJester]

Originally Posted by the resident09

I agree with all of this, which is why I acknowledge OC/Irvine being more "dense" in my previous post. The question as to "urbanity" overall is a much different one. The transit nodes alone around NOVA are unmatched in Orange County, and like you mentioned the urban street scape of an Alexandria, and I'd also throw in various parts of Arlington County, cannot be seen in OC either. The places are as close to apples and oranges as we can find with regards to heavily populated suburban style or "edge city" type of development.

East Coast/Mid Atlantic, development is completely different from what can be seen in California and much of the West. As you mentioned zero-lot-line development with extremely close SFH dwellings is not existent much here in suburban areas, but the grid TOD nodes with heavy rail transit and 30 story skyscrapers is not prevalent in suburbs of OC either. Again apples to oranges.

But then you have Canada, which is its own beast. In Toronto, you have the enormous suburban cluster of high rise condos along parts of Mississauga that could rival anything in NoVA. Then, these high rise clusters are surrounded by zero lot line SFH dwellings just as packed as what you find in OC.

This makes Toronto perhaps the only U.S./Canadian city that can outstrip LA when it comes to suburban density.

Of course, while you can have a moderately dense but sprawling city like Orange County, when you have extremely high densities in the developed world, it automatically translates into walkability and transit oriented development, as in Manhattan, even if there was no carefully planned transit-oriented-development, per se.

[ccm123]

Northern Virginia is very livable, but I’d pick OC between these two places.

[NigerianNightmare]

This is probably my best thread created. Loved all the discussion that went on in here. Might have to do a 2020 remake with new suburban regions.