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Good point, and you're right that the self-righteous lecturing in this forum in general has become very tiresome. So easy to be holier-than-thou when you're in school or some other sort of bubble (like a job that you thought was guaranteed for life). But life is full of curve balls. You end up making all sorts of compromises you never expected.
I sure hope I haven't come across as lecturing (and if I have I apologize). I really dislike people who are judgemental, to me it's a sign of immaturity (the longer you live the more you see that life isn't so black-and-white and no matter how good your intentions are you'll end up being a minor-league hypocrite in some way or another). So I try to to state opinions, but not lecture--that's my goal, anyway. For the record, I'm one of the people who urges people to try living near their jobs, but I also know all you can do is strive towards an ideal. As you pointed out, jobs can move and even with the best intentions you may still end up with a long commute.
And so what? Traffic congestion is annoying, but it's just part of life. It's like getting mosquito bites or poison ivy, you do what you can to avoid it, but when it happens it's not the end of the world.
I've just seen it said many a time that we wouldn't have traffic congestion if everyone lived near their jobs. I used to live 3 miles from my job, then IBM sold the division and things went downhill. After that, I've been bounced around so many times between so many offices that I'd have to pick up and sell my house every 3 years if I wanted to live within 10 miles of my job. In this area, it is pretty near impossible to stay close to one's job. I was successful at it for 12 years but since then the longest I've been in one office building 3 years - employers have moved me around from one building to the next and usually the moves were more than 5 miles.
I agree with you. In the four years I worked at UUNET, I worked on Route 50 near Gallows Road; then in Reston off Sunset Hills; then back at a different building on Gallows Road; then finally in Ashburn. For part of that time I lived in South Arlington, and the other part in Falls Church.
It's especially difficult when both spouses work. When we first put in a contract to build our house, my husband and I were both working at UUNET (WorldCom, by that point) in Ashburn, four miles away. By the time the house (and WorldCom) was finished, neither of us worked there anymore. He was working in Herndon and I was working at L'Enfant Plaza.
Hah! I worked at WorldCom too but got out while it was on the way to going downhill (I left in late 2000) - and at the time that was one of the shorter commutes I had after my "3 mile" commute of 12 years. I was sorry to trade that fairly short commute for a longer one. Glad I didn't decide to locate near WorldCom - THAT would have been a real disaster.
I can only sympathize with dual career families - that must be doubly difficult.
I've learned there is no way to predict where you will be working 3 years from now. Maybe for some people's careers, but not mine.
I've just seen it said many a time that we wouldn't have traffic congestion if everyone lived near their jobs.
Is that really what people have been saying?
Of course, maybe you've been hearing this someplace other than this forum. But here in the forum all I've seen are comments like "try to live near your job because long commutes are aggravating." I don't recall anyone saying that by living near your job we could eliminate traffic congestion. If only it was that easy!
The truth is traffic congestion is going to exist no matter what we do. And building highrises or any other urban planning is not going to eliminate traffic congestion, either.
You know, this brings up another urban design topic. The way jobs move around these days can undermine the best laid plans in urban design. By the time they finish the metro, maybe all the jobs will have shifted to another area.
This happened in Los Angeles. When they planned their rail system, there was a big demand for service to El Segundo, a once bustling center for Aerospace companies. Hughes Aircraft had numerous buildings in El Segundo. Mattel was also headquartered there.
Then in the early 1990s aerospace crumbled. Hughes sold all the buildings. The Mattel campus became a Wal-Mart/Lowes complex. By the time the train was completed, workers were no longer commuting to El Segundo. Most of the passengers seemed to head for the Wild Goose (a strip club near the station). It became a standing joke that the Blue Line was built just to service a strip joint. Literally, a Wild Goose chase.
Yet another reason to favor improving our busses rather than spending a lot of money on a metro system.
I find it interesting that people here act as if zoning and planning have nothing to do with how far people commute from their jobs. The reason prices in any area are higher than $X is because for the number of houses/condos/apartments in the area the number of people willing to pay $X or more is greater than the number of housing units so naturally they get bid up to a point $Y where the number of families willing to pay that amount is roughly equal the number of houses/condos for sale, or for rental which is more apt the number of people willing to pay $Y for rent is equal to the number of rental in the location. If you allow commercial building, or office buildings to be built in a certain location you will eventually get people that go work at these places. If you then refuse to allow residential to be built because the people already living there don't want apartments nearby, or town houses, or houses packed too close then you end up having people that have to commute from other regions to this region. Simply allowing commercial and residential all over the place leads to people driving everywhere, and due to issues discussed earlier, including the incentive for home ownership people will drive long distances. If an office complex only has about 500 jobs there it is unlikely you will work there for your next job. If you work in a CBD with 40k jobs it is likely you can find another job in the CBD. Concentrating jobs in certain locations leads to easier planning for transit, and so people are not as dependent on cars to get there. People don't necessarily lead to higher traffic.
There is a lot of information about planning, I am not saying I know most of it. I don't. I know a lot of stuff on the internet also involves studies by people with particular agendas so you have to read things knowing that.
One reason I have heard that people don't like planning for bus systems is due to the non-permanence of routes. Many people are unwilling to commit to buying a condo near a bus route, if the cancellation there of would make the commute a major hassle. But the cancellation of Metro service on an existing line seems far-fetched in comparison. The reason that comes into play is that planners might like a BRT system running on dedicated lanes on the highway connecting dense areas at the core of towns, but developers might not think it is viable if it is just a bus. If all the or most of the jobs are near a BRT, rail or other transit station they have incentive to park and ride to work. Otherwise they don't, and that does affect traffic.
I hope I don't offend anyone, I just wanted to persuade you in that planning does have an effect on traffic and commutes.
Cardinal, I don't think anyone is offended (although I do want to remind everyone that this is a forum to discuss Northern Virginia, not a forum to discuss urban design in general. That's a topic you can discuss in General U.S. forum.) Anyway, the ideals you talk about are nice, if you were starting a major city from scratch. But in this forum we're talking about a metro area that already exists, not a theoretical city. The reality of Nova is we have traffic. And we will continue to have traffic no matter what sort of urban design you come up with. Building a dense area of highrises out in the suburbs is not going to change the fact that people's jobs move to new offices that are huge distances from the former office (forcing them to commute). You can design something labelled a "commercial center" if you wish but people will still commute to the thousands of commercial and business centers that already exist in the 6-7 counties surrounding this area. They're not going to relocate to a new commercial center just because it's a "model of smart urban design."
Some of the smaller city planning issues discussed in this thread seem good to me. I like the street light issue. I personally think the sidewalks in Reston issue is silly, but I guess I can see some merit in adding a pedestrian bridge across Noth Shore Drive where it meets the Lake Anne Plaza. Won't happen, though, (too expensive).
I can also understand the desire for pedestrian malls (discussed in an ealier thread), but again it's an expensive luxury. People just think you wave a magic wand and sidewalks and bridges and pedestrian malls magically appear. Nope, these things cost money. Now when it comes to the idea of building in the suburbs I'm a little less thrilled--but hey, why not? Even if I would never live in such a place, it's ok by me if someone else wants to build something like that. I just don't think it will sell very well, and to be honest I don't think it will stop sprawl in Northern Virginia. The same number of homes will be built in the suburbs no matter how many highrises you build. You may not want to believe it, but it's true. The one problem I see from building a bunch of highrises is that it possibly might lower rents in the less desirable units. I know, that sounds like it would eb a good thing. But as we've noted before, that can cause more problems.
But if you want to build a bunch of highrises out in the suburbs because that's the sort of building you like living in, be my guest. As long as you find someone to finance it.
Whether or not there were already developments in WV is a moot point, the point is the very same projects that were slated for western Loudoun were not halted, they were simply moved.
I guess that's what I'm questioning. If there were already projects going up in WV, how do we know that the re-zoning caused more sprawl? Not that I can't believe it, but I haven't seen the claim backed up with evidence.
Even so, if 10 projects in Loudon got cancelled and 8 went up in WV, is that a win or loss? We don't have infinite domain and can't account for people willing to spend 3 hours in their car every day, but certainly the further removed a development is from the economy, the fewer people that will be attracted to it.
I guess that's what I'm questioning. If there were already projects going up in WV, how do we know that the re-zoning caused more sprawl? Not that I can't believe it, but I haven't seen the claim backed up with evidence.
Even so, if 10 projects in Loudon got cancelled and 8 went up in WV, is that a win or loss? We don't have infinite domain and can't account for people willing to spend 3 hours in their car every day, but certainly the further removed a development is from the economy, the fewer people that will be attracted to it.
Well, that's certainly one way of looking at things. I like the silver lining way of looking at things. But even as we make the best of a situation, I still remember that how things turned out was not what the "no growth" people who pushed for the 10-acre zoning promised would happen. And maybe that's what ticks me off more than anything else... it was the arrogance of the whole thing. They were so insistent that they knew better than everyone else, that they were going to "save" Loudoun and reduce traffic. HAH!!!!
They insisted they were going to contain development so that it would go no further west than Leesburg... and as a result meadows would remain untouched, and traffic congestion would be greatly improved. And unicorns would prance in the air, I guess--I don't know, it all sounded good at the time. But guess what, none of those things happened. The meadows still became developments, trees were still torn down for those 10-acre homes. The developments that moved to WV brought even more traffic. Loudoun lost a lot of property tax dollars, which meant my taxes went up. I didn't feel like we had been "saved" I felt like we lost out.
Oh well, now I know better than to listen to urban design buffs. I used to think it made sense, but now that I've actually experienced it and see how "growth limits" actually turn out, I'm no longer a fan. If you're a fan, I'm happy for you. But to me it's just as foolish as the ancient peasants who used to bind children's feet to keep them from growing. Instead I've decided growth is beautiful, and I think a lot of other people around here have too.
I say that yes there should be expanded metro service; but along with wider freeways that aren't straight out of 1965 when there were only like 300,000 people in Northern Virginia if that.
I'm not sure we need wider freeways as much as we need different freeways and more primary and secondary roads. If there is an accident on one road the entire road network collapses. There should be more redundancy in the system.
We also should attempt to facilitate those only traveling a short distance by not forcing them on to a freeway or primary arterial and creating more connected secondary roads (getting rid of cul-de-sacs). So much blacktop poured in the last 2 decades goes nowhere.
Quote:
Originally Posted by terrence81
See one thing that the anti-sprawal rhetoric forgets is the reason behind the sprawl. People aren't just arbitraily living further away from work. Yes the desire for more land is part of it but really and truly most new houses are built on small plots of land anyways. In this area I think it's the lack of affordable homes in the city that has fueled the sprawl in VA. I mean the old saying "drive 'til you qualify" didn't just come from nowhere.
True to an extent, but based on the growing size of houses I think its really more people want to buy a large house, when they could afford a smaller house closer in.
Quote:
Originally Posted by terrence81
So addressing the housing issue would be key. There in lies the problem. Most people myself included don't want to live in subsidized housing or housing with subsidized neighbors. Call it classist but that's the truth of the matter. So how to make housing affordable in the city without having people living on top of undesirables or decreasing the property values of those that bought their houses at the height of the housing boom? Also what about those that want a nice house that doesn't mean living in an apartment setting? What about those that enjoy the suburban setting but just wish traffic wasnt' so horrible (like me)? I don't have all the answers but addressing housing is key to addressing sprawal.
Probably the most difficult thing people have with accepting controlled growth is the realization that we all can't have 2 acre lots with a white picket fence and a 3000sf house. It just can't happen. Once that illusion of nirvana disappears there are a lot of other choices. Buying a home anywhere is going to be a compromise in some way, and I think the smart growth movement is an incentive for those willing to compromise on space for increased accessibility.
It also is a little bit tiring to hear the constant lecture "people should live next to where they work". What if your job near your house ends and you have to take a job elsewhere in the area - are you supposed to just pick up and move every time your job changes? Companies are forever closing offices and consolidiating, and my company is going to do just that on the ridiculously expensive lease for their office building in Reston. In a year we are all moving out to the new Dulles campus where the company is consolidating to. And who knows how long that will last?
The idea of "living close to where you work" is facetious - at least in these modern times where companies relocate offices every few years. I just love it when people lecture everyone about living close to work. There's a lot of reasons why that is impossible.
Agreed that in this area it is especially difficult since government agencies often operate from multiple locations and government workers move about frequently.
The smart growth movement is not necessarily geared towards making people live right next to where they work. It will eventually end up reducing the number of "discretionary" trips made and shortening the average length by interspersing residences, commerce, and retail.
Chances are you live in a residential area full of house, and you have to get in your car to drive to a commercial area full of office buildings, then stop in a retail area full of shopping on your way home to buy groceries, then return to your residential area. Imagine if residences and businesses were co-mingled with retail. Rather than a complete exodus of vehicles from your area in the morning heading towards their places of business, you now have cars also coming in to your area for work. Maybe you'll be able to walk to the store to buy conveniences. The road network is now being used much more efficiently. Maybe enough people are in your area all day to support mass transit.
The old model of living in one place, working in another, and shopping in another is very inefficient.
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