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.