Future Growth - Solutions

If the population continues to grow as it has over the past 20 years, the greater Washington, D.C., area could gain between 2 and 2.5 million people. How much land would be required to accommodate that many new people? The simplest way to address that is by looking to existing examples.

According to the 2000 census the city of Alexandria, Virginia has an average density of about 13 people per acre. Obviously, healthy communities are not exclusively residential either - they also include office, retail, and entertainment (Alexandria has a pretty good balance of people to jobs with about 106,000 people over age 18 and 92,000 jobs). Using Alexandria's average density as a rough guide, 2.5 million people would require about 200,000 acres - 30% less land than the model projects under the moderate protection scenario.

Clearly, it is possible to grow without scattering all over the region, converting the economic and environmental value of farms and forests to sprawling development and roads.

Well-managed farm and forest lands are significant not only for their productivity, but also for the water quality and stream habitat benefits they provide by allowing rain to sink into the ground and by filtering pollutants out of runoff before it gets into waterways and the Chesapeake Bay.

There are other considerations as well.
Traffic congestion, fostered in part by the need to drive from distant, scattered locations for every errand, is not without cost. In the Washington, D.C. area the cost of congestion is estimated at $2.7 billion per year, by the Texas Transportation Institute.
New roads, required by increasing traffic from sprawling development, are a phenomenal expense. At an average cost exceeding $2 million per mile for widening a two-lane road and simply repaving running $250,000 per mile, we simply can't afford a future that scatters development hither, thither, and yon.
Emergency response time for fire, police, ambulances, necessarily increases as development sprawls out farther and farther as well.

Well designed, mixed use communities not only reduce the need to drive, but also allow people other options for getting around from public transit to walking and biking. The long and short is that managed growth makes reducing traffic costs and other related problems more possible.

Solutions

First, its important to know that managed growth is not some new idea - there are many examples of the type of development that would, if broadly invested in, lead to healthier patterns of development.

• In Montgomery County, Maryland a new development started in 1998 on the northern edge of Rockville called King Farm demonstrates many attractive elements from a broad range of housing to reasonable proximity to the Shady Grove Metro station.
• The Rosslyn-Ballston Corridor in Arlington, Virginia, offers clear examples of the value in concentrating development on and immediately around transit stations. At the same time, density around these stations decreases appropriately as one walks away from them.
• In northern Virginia - not an area renowned for limiting sprawl - a 30 year-old development in Fairfax County offers enough walkability that 70% of evening restaurant patrons are pedestrians from within Reston Town Center. Moreover, despite the lack of major public transit, offices are located in sufficient concentration to significantly increase car and van-pool use.
• In Washington, D.C. itself, a regional sports arena has been developed at the intersection of three Metro lines and numerous bus routes - resulting in over 50% of visitors to large events at the MCI center taking mass transit and thereby eliminating thousands of vehicle trips that would otherwise add to the region's traffic and air pollution woes. Additionally, the commitment to build MCI has served as a catalyst for on-going revitalization of the neighborhood.

These few examples demonstrate that we have the tools to grow more efficiently.

We know where current trends are headed.

To aim for a healthier future, we must begin now to aggressively encourage the vision, policy changes, and financial incentives that will allow us to end up where we want to be.

You can promote a better future for your family, your neighborhood, and your region by:

• Choosing to live near your work and/or other primary activities
• Investing in your existing neighborhood
• Fostering well-designed infill in your community
• Talking with your neighbors about our future and the health of our region
• Communicating with the policy makers and business leaders in your area to ensure that decisions made today enhance the future well-being of the community and the region
• Demanding that policy makers and business leaders ensure and support the budgets and incentives to revitalize and maintain existing public and private investment
• Encouraging cooperation rather than wasteful competition between jurisdictions' planning and policy practices