Here is another way to look at the census population estimates I posted yesterday. Out of the 273 cities in the United States with a population over 100, 000, Arlington and Alexandria were the 18th and 20th fastest-growing between 2007 and 2008. That’s pretty darn impressive, considering they’re both land-locked core jurisdictions with no way to grow except infill. Washington itself, for the record, ranks as the 160th fastest growing city. That’s not quite the top half, but it’s a long, long way from the bottom.

National rankings aren’t available for all incorporated cities (only those over 100, 000), so we can’t rank growth in the likes of Gaithersburg and Rockville on a national level, but we can get an update on the always-exciting race to be Maryland’s second largest city from the state list. Baltimore is far and away Maryland’s largest incorporated city, but after that it gets dicey, with three cities in close proximity to each other vying for second place. In recent years all of them have ranked as high as second, but what about this year? Gaithersburg is 4th at 58, 744, Frederick is third at 59, 213, and Rockville is second at 60, 734 – having become just this year only the second Maryland city to break the 60, 000 mark. Fifth place Bowie is relatively distant from the pack with 52, 544, but still far ahead of numbers six and seven Hagerstown and Annapolis, which have only 39, 728 and 36, 524, respectively.

The US Census released its latest round of population estimates for incorporated places today. The estimates reflect data from one year ago, so they are for July 1, 2008.

• The District of Columbia is up to 591, 833, from 587, 868 in 2007 and 571, 723 in 2000. Still far below the 1950 peak of 802, 178.
• Arlington up to 209, 969, from 203, 909 in 2007 and 189, 582 in 2000.
• Alexandria up to 143, 885, from 139, 848 in 2007 and 128, 292 in 2000.
• Baltimore is down to 636, 919, from 640, 150 in 2007 and 648, 587 in 2000.

Recently seen on PostSecret.

Driving is not a basic right guaranteed to all. Cars are not the only legitimate form of transportation. Deaths and injuries by car are not simply the price we pay for living in contemporary civilization. It’s time to adopt Vulnerable User Regulations, and codify into law that no, drivers do not in fact own the road.

Pronunciation confusion: Pronounce it with only three syllables, so orn-jing-ton rather than the orangutan-like four syllable or-anj-ing-ton.

By now most readers have probably already seen Arlington: The Rap, the hilarious spoof that lovingly pokes fun at Washington’s even-more yuppie-filled western extension. The rap isn’t really about Arlington, though; it’s about that specific portion of Arlington lying along Metro’s Orange line that over the past generation has morphed from sleepy suburb to central city destination. The rap got me thinking: That part of Arlington needs a unique name. People talk about it all the time. Why not give it a single identifier?

“Arlington”, after all, refers to the whole 26 square mile county, from Chain Bridge on the north to Four Mile Run on the south, and west almost to Leesburg Pike. “North Arlington” also won’t do, since it refers as much to the rolling suburbs north of Route 29 as it does to the Orange Line Corridor. “Orange Line Corridor” itself is too much of a mouthful, as are the other frequent substitutes, “Wilson Boulevard Corridor” and “Rosslyn-Ballston Corridor”. Even shortening to “R-B” or “R-B Corridor” leaves much to be desired.

But how about “Orangington”? It spells a little awkward, but it sounds verbally clean, fits the blankington scheme used by Washington, Arlington and Shirlington, and the connection between the neighborhoods in question and Metro’s Orange Line is so strong that it’s immediately obvious what the name refers to. Normally I’d be hesitant to try and force a contrived name on unwanting locals (Penn Quarter and NoMa, anyone?), but in this case there does seem to be a need and the name does seem to be pretty organic. Indeed, I’ve been dropping it in casual conversation lately and although I get some “I’ve never heard that” comments, everyone I’ve spoken to has understood the reference immediately. It seems a natural moniker for an area that increasingly needs one.

So how about it, folks? Orangington from now on?

Cross-posted to Greater Greater Washington.

• A WMATA demographic report shows that the median income of Metrorail riders is $102, 110. Considering some of the misconceptions out there about transit and how it brings in the “bad element”, it should be a real eye-opener that more than half of Metrorail riders earn six figures. Yes, suburbanites, there is a very real danger that Metrorail will bring hordes of the upper middle class to your community. The horror!
• A survey by the Fairfax County Economic Development Authority shows that 23% of county residents want better access to transit and 22% want to live in a more walkable environment. Given Fairfax County’s population of 1, 015, 302, this implies there are approximately 233, 000 people currently living in Fairfax County who would prefer to live in a more urban environment. Extrapolating for the Washington region as a whole, there could be as many as a million people in our metropolitan area who want to live the urban lifestyle, but for whom the market has been incapable of providing the chance. Opponents of Smart Growth and other pro-urban planning would do well to keep these numbers in mind.
• The Transportation Planning Board (TPB) has been releasing findings from its household travel survey over the last couple of months. The survey has all sorts of interesting info about transportation, from mode-share to the composition of the automobile fleet. Go here andhere.

Anyone following the BeyondDC twitter feed over the weekend may have noticed the tweet saying “MD would be a cooler state if it had a mid-size city somewhere. like if frederick or annapolis were about 5 times bigger.” What I meant by “mid-size city” was something less than a metropolis like Washington or Baltimore, but more than a satellite city like Hagerstown; something big enough to have a few skyscrapers downtown, but not to have a major league sports franchise, for example. The thought came into my head while visiting Winston-Salem, NC, which is exactly the sort of mid-size second city that Maryland lacks.

When I got home I decided to look up some population numbers to compare just how big some of the cities in the region actually are. Municipal city boundaries are too arbitrary for my purposes though; despite where the political boundaries are drawn, Baltimore is NOT a bigger place than Washington. Instead, to get real apples-to-apples comparisons, I decided to look at urbanized areas, metropolitan areas and combined statistical areas. I broadened my search to include not just Maryland, but all the population centers of the area that in my mind encompass DC’s primary sphere of influence – Maryland, Virginia except the extreme southwest portion, Delaware, West Virginia’s Martinsburg panhandle, and south-central Pennsylvania.

This is what I found:

Urbanized Areas
(w/ a population above 100, 000 as of 2000)

1. Washington, DC – 3, 933, 920
2. Baltimore, MD – 2, 076, 354
3. Norfolk/VA Beach, VA – 1, 394, 439
4. Richmond, VA – 818, 836
5. Harrisburg, PA – 362, 782 (quite a gap)
6. Lancaster, PA – 323, 554
7. Roanoke, VA – 197, 442
8. York, PA – 192, 903
9. Aberdeen, MD – 174, 598
10. Hagerstown, MD – 120, 326
11. Frederick, MD – 119, 144

Metropolitan Areas
(w/ a population above 200, 000 as of 2007)

1. Washington, DC – 5, 306, 565
2. Baltimore, MD – 2, 668, 056
3. Norfolk/VA Beach, VA – 1, 658, 754
4. Richmond, VA – 1, 212, 977
5. Harrisburg, PA – 528, 892 (quite a gap, again)
6. Wilmington/Newark, DE – 500, 265*
7. Lancaster, PA – 498, 465
8. York, PA – 421, 049
9. Roanoke, VA – 296, 532
10. Hagerstown/Martinsburg, MD/WV – 261, 198
11. Lynchburg, VA – 243, 580

Combined Statistical Areas
(all pertinent groupings as of 2007)

1. Washington/Baltimore – 8, 241, 912
2. Norfolk/VA Beach – 1, 658, 754^
3. Richmond – 1, 212, 977^
4. Harrisburg/York/Lancaster – 1, 021, 730^

* Wilmington/Newark are actually part of the Philadelphia metropolitan area; for the purposes of this list I broke them out using the population of New Castle County.
^ Washington/Baltimore is the only official CSA on the list. Norfolk and Richmond CSAs are the same as their MSAs. Harrisburg/York/Lancaster does not meet the federal criteria to be combined, but for the purposes of this list I wanted to know what the combined number would look like.

Comparatively, the city that triggered this line of thought, Winston-Salem, has an urbanized area of 299, 290, a metropolitan area of 463, 159, and a combined statistical area (with Greensboro and High Point) of 1, 535, 926 – fairly comparable to Harrisburg.

Is Maryland really “less cool” because it doesn’t have a Harrisburg? Not really. Nor is anybody’s life less full because the Chesapeake region doesn’t have a city filling that Richmond-Harrisburg gap (Albuquerque, Omaha and Albany would all about split the difference, in case anybody wonders). These are just the sort of thoughts that go through my geek brain.

Mayberry, according to some.

In my opinion there are few things local zoning departments waste more time and energy on than sign regulations. Our cities have bigger fish to fry than what sort of font a local deli uses for its advertising. In fact, I think generally speaking our cities could do with more color and variety in the streetscape rather than less, so overzealous sign regs aren’t just pointless, they’re downright counterproductive. Not that I don’t think we need them at all (this is legitimately terrible), just that too often our city planners spend far too much time on them.

So in reading about one Arlington man’s life-long quest to rid the county of real estate signs, I had to chuckle a little at the pointlessness of it all. That’s how you spend your weekends? Really? Oooo kay. Good on Arlington for not wasting taxpayer money by hiring a squad of sign-taker-downers.

But whatever. Never mind all that. Pointlessness is pointlessness. The real kicker of that article, the reason I bring it up at all, is this quote from the anti-sign crusader, a Mr. Robert Lauderdale:

“I’ve lived in this charming small town of 204, 000 people for 40 years and when I saw a plastic real estate directional sign in Four Mile Run, in my creek, I thought, ‘How could I make this go away?'”

Wait, what? Charming small town of 204, 000? I realize small towns have a mythic place in the minds of American suburbanites, but Arlington is NOT a small town. No place with a population of two hundred freaking thousand is a small town, least of all Arlington, a core jurisdiction in one of the largest metropolitan regions on this continent.

If people who live in cities with hundreds of thousands of residents (that’s hundreds, as in plural) are deluding themselves into thinking they live in small towns, what does that say about the quality of our living arrangements? And, to get back to Mr. Lauderdale’s pet issue, is making our communities even more suburban by removing what color and variety remains really the answer to our woes?

Maybe the answer is to stop building pass-through “communities” meant to be briefly experienced at 45 mph from behind the wheel of a car, and then forgotten about behind the walls of a McMansion. Maybe the answer is to actually start living in real cities and towns again, rather than insisting on the certifiably crazy notion that places like Arlington, Fairfax or Gaithersburg bear any resemblance at all to small towns.

We’ve been reading Grand Avenues, a biography of the city planner who designed Washington, DC, Pierre L’Enfant. Naturally the book spends a lot of time discussing said planning, including the interesting tidbit that the founding fathers very nearly named our city Washingtonopolis instead of plain old Washington.

A bit of a mouthful, no doubt, but somehow a little more alluring. There’s something enchanting about Washingtonopolis that isn’t present in Washington. Something a little bit more glamorous. Dare we say it, a touch sexy.

BeyondDC likes. Too bad.

Though anyone who has ever strolled down U Street or driven from Reston to Tysons Corner knows better, there are a lot of folks around the country who view our fair city as a soulless ghetto of government offices and museums, with no character or business beyond the C-SPAN scene. It’s a major pet peeve for BeyondDC, personally. And while true that we may not be able to hang with New York, seriously, who can? The fact is, as a recent story in the Post argues, Washington is a monster of an economy that competes with the top 10 or 20 commercial centers in the world.

Nice to see it laid out in a forum like the Post, even if perhaps a bit biased by local bigwigs hoping to make good.

So remember folks: The next time you come back from a weekend in the Big Apple or LA, don’t get too down on the good ole District. A lot of other cities got nothin’ on us.