As I’m sure most readers have noticed, BeyondDC loads slowly. The header shows up right away, but the rest of the home page can take a minute or more.

Hopefully I’ve solved this problem. I think it was due to a slow-running script associated with the Newsfeed. I’ll look into fixing that script, but for the time being I’ve simply removed it. The Newsfeed still works, it’s just not being displayed on the main BDC home page.

Please let me know in the comments if you do in fact notice a difference in page load speed.

Midwestern-oriented blog The Urbanophile has a great post up titled Planning and Free Market Density, laying out the basics for why the so-called “Libertarians” in the planning world are actually the most pro-interventionist camp among us:

Virtually every piece of planning regulation I see acts to discourage urbanization and especially to reduce densities below market demand. The free market wants more density.

I read articles out on the net with the general theme of claiming that a cabal of planners is conspiring to force us all to move back into overcrowded tenements in order to recognize their dream of reurbanizing America… The practical reality in most of the United States is exactly the opposite situation. Virtually every piece of planning regulation I see acts to discourage urbanization and especially to reduce densities below market demand.

If you want people to live more densely, no nefarious planning rules are necessary. In fact, simply remove a lot of the ones we have and American cities would get much more dense in a hurry. The free market wants more density.

If you look at zoning laws across America, almost all of them specify maximum densities, such as residential units per dwelling acre, that put a cap on buildout. Additionally, there are a host of other planning regulations such as minimum parking requirements, setback requirements, etc. that have the same effect.

The truth of this proposition can easily be verified by simply showing up at your nearest neighborhood meeting or planning hearing when ever a new development is proposed. Almost inevitably, the developer wants to put in a certain number of units, and the neighbors think it is too many. Frequently, developers are forced to scale back their projects in the face of objections…

Developers are in business to make money. They obviously have some reason to believe that the market will absorb more density and less parking. They certainly aren’t proposing things out of any purely altruistic motives… There is no doubt in my mind we would frequently see greater density if we only allowed the market to operate. No heavy handed planning required.

This follows a report posted on Streetsblog yesterday that the federal government subsidizes parking six times more than transit, just the latest in a seemingly never-ending string of subsidies that all but force Americans to live their lives behind the wheel.

Municipal governments love speed bumps. They just love them. They’re a cheap way to respond to the citizenry. Somebody complains about traffic on their street? BAM! Install a speed bump, and look at that wonderful example of government working for you. How responsive. How fantastic. I’ma vote for that nice mayor who obviously cares about my needs.

I’m not a big fan of them. Oh, I’m all for traffic calming. Streets ought to be safe for everybody, and ought not to be thought of as mere funnels for high speed traffic. But as a story in today’s Post illustrates, speed bumps specifically have the curious effect of turning fast drivers into angry and aggressive drivers. That isn’t an improvement.

People drive at whatever speed they feel comfortable driving. Instead of building overly-wide racetracks designed for high speeds and then haphazardly plopping bumps along them whenever somebody complains, inducing a bunch of angry behavior in the process, how about we build narrow streets on which drivers naturally want to go slow. Don’t guilt drivers into going slowly, make them want to for their own good. Do this, not this. I guarantee the former is a safer, and slower, street.

Rockville (top) and Ballston (bottom), two of Washington’s best suburban TODs.

How about a new feature for BeyondDC: The top ten list. You know the drill; I give a category and then ten good examples of things that are in that category. Everybody likes lists, right? Fun times.

I’ll be doing additional lists like this on the approximate schedule of “whenever I feel like it”, but there’s a lot of good fodder, so readers can definitely expect to see more.

For today, the Top ten suburban Transit Oriented Developments. The Washington region is famous for turning otherwise suburban areas around Metro stations into bustling urban downtowns. The following are the best of the lot. To qualify a neighborhood must be located outside the District of Columbia and must be within walking distance of a Metro station (preferably centered around one). Rankings are based on the quality of a neighborhood’s urbanism, measured subjectively according to the Three Ds theory. Size counts for something, but I’m looking more at urban quality. Number 10 is the tenth best in the region, number 1 is the best, etc.

Number 10: Crystal City
The quintessential mid-century Corbusian block of towers in the park, Crystal City is frankly awful (although the re-done Crystal Drive helps). Its saving graces are that despite pedestrian-unfriendly design, it’s got good density, a good mix of uses, and really good transit connections.

Number 9: Rockville
15 years ago Rockville probably wouldn’t have made the cut at all, but recent redevelopment has helped a ton. If they can ever redevelop that huge parking lot in the middle and improve the connection from Metro, Montgomery County’s seat of government could shoot up the list.

Number 8: Silver Spring
Strong urban pedigree and almost limitless potential are held back by the insultingly anti-urban Discovery Building, which sits dead in the center of downtown and kills what should be Silver Spring’s best block. If you didn’t have to walk through such trash to get to the better parts, it would rank higher.

Number 7: Rosslyn
Sort of a Crystal City, but with enough skyscrapers and newer infill that it’s a lot more interesting. Check back in two years after the Central Place and 1812 North Moore redevelopments are complete, and Rosslyn will be a whole new city with a vastly superior center.

Number 6: Ballston
The western anchor to Arlington’s Orange Line TOD corridor (see numbers 7, 5 and 3) is more livable and has a better mix of uses than eastern anchor Rosslyn. Stuart Street and Welburn Square are great places. Unfortunately, too much of its retail is bottled up in that darn mall.

Number 5: Court House
The seat of Arlington’s government is smaller than Ballston or Rosslyn, but has a great urban room where Clarendon and Wilson Boulevards come together for two blocks, and has more comfortable, homey character than its larger cousins.

Number 4: Friendship Heights
Technically half inside the District, Friendship Heights is a smaller, more wealthy version of Bethesda (see below).

Number 3: Clarendon
Urbanistically the best of Ornjington, Clarendon has that mix of old and new buildings that’s rare on the Virginia side of the river. It’s also here that Arlington is best implementing the urban design lessons it learned during 20th century redevelopments elsewhere in the County, like the need for architectural diversity on the ground level and that setbacks help offset skyscraper shadows. Those lessons mean Clarendon not only has a good mix of old and new, but that its new is better than the new in, say, Ballston. It also has some excellent small-scale green spaces.

Number 2: King Street
Maybe it’s the DC-like height limit, the weird street grid, or the presence of so many rowhouses nearby, but for whatever reason the area around King Street Metro in Alexandria feels more like a bona fide downtown than any other place on this list. The massive redevelopment south of Duke Street isn’t as high quality as King Street itself, but it sure has added to the activity level.

Number 1: Bethesda
The architectural diversity and quality, the density and land use, the almost European-like tangled grid of streets, the direct un-cut connections to adjacent residential neighborhoods… Bethesda is the gold standard in just about every way. A great model for developers or planning departments looking to implement TOD elsewhere (pay attention, Tysons Corner).

Just missed the cut: Pentagon City, Braddock Road, Virginia Square, Wheaton.

Metro does a pretty good job with wayfinding. Not perfect, but pretty good. There are uniform system maps, bus maps and neighborhood maps at every station, platforms with multiple mezzanines have signs indicating which are best for nearby landmarks, etc. They could do a whole lot worse (Baltimore comes to mind, where there’s not even a unified light rail / Metro map).

But one thing that Metro does at some stations completely flummoxes me. Take a look at the diagram of the red line on this sign:

How am I supposed to know if the next station after Tenleytown-AU is Friendship Heights or Grosvenor-Strathmore? Even if arrows were added to make it clear that you’re supposed to read them as columns rather than like a snake, the diagram is still unnecessarily awkward. Why in the world would you choose to lay it out like that when there’s perfectly good alternative that makes much, much more intuitive sense?

This is the solution to the problem of streetcar wires in the L’Enfant City.

Reasonable people should make reasonable compromise for the betterment of everyone.

PS: Read about the difference between heavy catenary and light trolleywire at transit blog The Overhead Wire. For streetcars in DC, we’d be dealing with the lighter option.

Urban intensity and the proposed local street grid, from the Task Force recommendations.

“If you want to get people out of their cars and into public transit, stop putting in incentives to drive.”
– Clark Tyler, chairman of the Tysons Corner Land Use Task Force

You said it, Mr. Tyler.

This is the vision Tyler’s task force of elected officials, citizens and business leaders came up with to transform Tysons Corner into something approximating a real city. The plan is lovely, and illustrates exactly how the transformation can be possible. This is Fairfax County planning staff’s recommendations for accomplishing that vision. If you read the recommendations you will find that they say, in order to transform Tysons Corner from suburb to city, the County should:

• Widen I-495 and the Dulles Toll Road.
• Widen Leesburg Pike, Chain Bridge Road, Spring Hill Road, Kennedy Drive, and Holly Ridge Drive.
• Add new highway ramps at Greensboro Drive, Boone Blvd, and Jones Branch Drive.
• Impose rules that limit the density of future development drastically below that of downtown Washington, and far below what the Task Force recommended.
• Retain the scale and character of existing suburban-style office building along Route 7, and not permit residential redevelopment at those sites.
• Construct large suburban-style parks with multiple athletic fields, in the heart of the business district.

Excuse me?

This defies common sense. Route 7 is already wider than any street in downtown Washington, and in order to accommodate densities much lower they want to widen it even more? This suggests County planners are still thinking in the obsolete, proven-wrong terms of their predecessors. If the people writing the plan for an urban Tysons don’t think it can work, that naturally undercuts the whole concept. The more suburban thinking creeps into the plan, the more the plan will be doomed to fail. Tysons can be urban, but it won’t happen if the County doesn’t fully commit.

When it comes time to adopt official development regulations, the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors should listen to its own Task Force and actually carry though with the agreed-upon vision for a genuinely urban Tysons.

Just a quick note: The BeyondDC Newsfeed was on hiatus for a couple of weeks due to personal reasons, but is back with daily updates starting yesterday. Sorry for any inconvenience.

Five quick snapshots from last Thursday’s inaugural White House Farmer’s Market on Vermont Avenue. Although not exactly in front of the White House, the location is extremely convenient to McPherson Square Metro. I give it thumbs up.

And for the record, I love arugula.