A facepalm moment if ever there was one

ghetto (noun)
any segregated mode of living or working that results from bias or stereotyping; “the relative security of the gay ghetto”; “no escape from the ghetto of the typing pool”
– Princeton University WordNet dictionary.

Cordoning off dangerous neighborhoods is how you create ghettos. Basic human nature dictates that most people subconsciously imitate those around them to avoid social conflict. Put a person in a mixed neighborhood where crime isn’t tolerated, and that person will more often than not lead a straight life. But put them in a place where crime is a way of life, and that same person learns that crime is the natural way of things, and goes bad. Of course there’s more to it and it’s not true for everyone, but nonetheless there is a clear and unmistakable pattern. This is why most affordable housing programs now focus on spreading low income housing around town rather than focusing all of it into a handful of gigantic housing projects.

Every city planner in the country, and most people with common sense, know that as a rule, ghettos are bad for the city. Especially ghettos of crime. Nobody in their right mind would try and create one.

It boggles the mind, then, that Mayor Fenty and Police Chief Lanier want to do exactly that, and create a ghetto in the heart of Washington.

Never mind that closing off entire sections of the city to people that don’t live there is blatantly unconstitutional, it’s a stupid, stupid idea. Even if it’s just for ten days, you’re sending a message that legitimate citizens, business and money have no place in that part of the city.

Don’t be surprised if legitimate citizens, business and money heed the message.

One of the Arlington Two

Zoning came about in the early 20th Century with a fairly limited objective – to reign in the industrial nuisances that were making life in cities of the day unbearable. It all started in 1916 when New York began regulating the shape of skyscrapers, and things really took off ten years later when the US Supreme Court upheld Euclid, Ohio’s use-segregating code. Once the precedent was set, zoning began to get a whole lot more restrictive. Over the ensuing decades as suburban life took hold, alternatives were gradually zoned out of American cities. Read the zoning code from any random town and odds are there are large swaths of that town where the Beaver Cleaver lifestyle is literally the only one permitted by law.

Sometime in the 1980s a backlash against such exclusionary zoning began, and under the names New Urbanism and Smart Growth that backlash has been gaining strength ever since. Progressive localities around the country have been re-writing rules left and right in an attempt to level a playing field that for years was more like a cliff face than a slope.

For the most part that battle has been fought to make urban legal again in a suburban world. Little thought or effort have gone into the question of where rural belongs in the equation, except to the extent that, y’know, rural areas shouldn’t be encroached upon by sprawl.

Suddenly though, Arlington, one of America’s most progressive rule re-writing places, is being faced with a decidedly rural problem. In April a homeowner in a suburban neighborhood near Ballston bought a couple of goats. Yeah, goats. The idea was the goats would keep the grass trim, provide fertilizer, and would be friendly family pets. Problem is, zoning in their neighborhood doesn’t allow “livestock” within 100 feet of the street, and goats count as livestock. The county says the goats have to go.

The homeowners are appealing, but they’re just one case. Similar restrictions are in most zoning ordinances, and have been for a long time. For several decades it’s simply been an assumption that farm animals don’t belong in quiet suburban subdivisions.

But if that’s the case, maybe it’s time to question such assumptions. What’s so bad about livestock? Just what exactly are we trying to accomplish by making ownership of such animals illegal? What makes a fenced-in goat more insufferable than a barking dog? If goats are quieter and less smelly than a gas mower, why is the former banned and the latter allowed? Horses are less noxious than motorcycles, and chickens less troublesome than an early rising neighbor with a woodworking hobby and a power saw. If noise and smell are the issues, why the loopholes for dogs, gas mowers and motorcycles? If noise and smell aren’t at issue, what is?

The answer is identity. Animals aren’t permitted even though loud, smelly motors are in many places around the country because at some point in their history a lot of places around the country decided they wanted an exclusive suburban character, and some things don’t fit that character no matter how inoffensive they are on their own terms.

But as the price of gas makes our suburban habit more and more difficult to sustain, alternatives are going to pop up with increasing regularity. Some of them will be technically illegal within the framework of our existing suburban laws, but does that mean they should be dismissed, or should the laws be changed? As time goes by jurisdictions around the country are going to be faced with the difficult question of just what character their communities should take, and we as a society are going to have to make tough decisions about just which values are really non-negotiable.

BeyondDC doesn’t necessarily have the answer. We wouldn’t mind if a neighbor owned a few goats, but then the prospect of living in a detached house neighborhood doesn’t appeal to us in the first place, so we’re not worried about protecting that lifestyle. What do readers think?

The message: Live in one of these or you’re not welcome

A quick note to the folks complaining that large single family detached houses are sometimes used as apartment buildings: YOU ARE WHY HOUSING IS OVERPRICED!

There’s a dearth of affordable housing in virtually every metropolitan region in this country with a healthy economy. There are a multitude of reasons, but the most important one is that we have systematically made real affordable housing illegal in almost every conceivable way. Apartments above shops are illegal. Granny flats in the back yard are illegal. More than 3 unrelated persons living together in a house is illegal. Even small single family detached homes are frequently illegal. The list goes on and on. In much of America it is illegal, or at best very difficult, to build anything that’s not a luxury detached house for the upper middle class. Until that changes there will always be an unsolvable affordable housing crisis, and there will always be groups of people pooling money to live in the only kind of housing the law permits there to be enough of.

News that the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority has signed the contract to build the Tysons Corner segment of the Silver Line is a big deal, and is justifiably dominating the local cycle of planning news. But if readers take a glance over to the left a bit and check out BeyondDC’s newsfeed, they might wonder where the story went.

It’s been a busy day. Normally we wouldn’t do this, but with so many stories hitting the papers at the same time, BeyondDC thought we’d recap a little here on the home page. In addition to the aforementioned Metro contract, a global warming report tells us Virginia could be a lot smaller a century from now, Maryland Governor O’Malley provided another subsidy for drivers but made up for it by reviving the Maryland Office of Smart Growth, developers and residents of White Flint came together for a Ballston-like master plan, McLean developers are trying to turn that town’s central collection of strip malls into a real town center, and last but not least, a 200-foot-tall tower was approved in downtown Silver Spring.

And it’s barely after noon.

That is the question over the District’s famous building height limit, according to Christopher Leinberger of the Brookings Institution, who recently gave a presentation on the subject at the National Building Museum. Leinberger suggests that downtown Washington is running out of space and that raising the height limit would take redevelopment pressure off downtown-adjacent neighborhoods, make downtown more competitive with the cheaper suburbs, and lead to increased tax revenues for the city. The idea, naturally, was not a popular one.

At BeyondDC we actually like tall buildings. There’s nothing inherently wrong with them; most of the problems frequently cited are either due to other factors (such as width), or merely a form of greedy NIMBYism. That having been said, though, Washington is completely unique among major American cities. The height limit gives our fair city a distinctive and monumental character. Allowing skyscrapers downtown would drastically change what it means to be Washingtonian, and we’re not sure that’s a worthwhile end. Even a minor change downtown of 20 or 30 feet would probably cause a wave of destruction and rebuilding that would utterly transform downtown. Sooner or later we would have a whole new city. That’s a prospect worth thinking twice about.

Downtown ain’t the whole city, though. Is there any reason the same rules need be applied universally all across the District? Tall buildings in Arlington provide a beautiful “frame” for the central city, and help to extend quality urbanism to parts of the suburbs that would otherwise probably be strip malls. If skyscrapers work in Arlington, why shouldn’t they in Anacostia? Could Tenleytown and Brookland one day become uptown districts rivaling or surpassing near-District nodes like Bethesda? Would that really be so bad?

Raising the height limit downtown seems like a no-brainer: The answer is no. But outside the core we think it’s worth discussing, at the very least. Maybe it’s not such a bad idea.