Avent responds to the height/density debate. The crux of our disagreement seems to be that Avent wants to put more of the growth in downtown proper, which is the one place in our region that can’t get more dense without more height. Meanwhile, I’m happy with growth anywhere that’s urban, walkable, and well-served by transit. Avent sees downtown proper as the most urban, walkable, and transit-accessible place in the region, while I see potential for other parts of the city to become equally so if more infill took place there.

To support putting more growth downtown rather than elsewhere in the city, Avent’s main arguments are that 1) there are few opporunities near the core to transition from low or medium to high density, and places like Brookland will never be upzoned sufficiently because their existing character is not supportive of tall buildings, and 2) there’s no other place in the metro area with downtown’s transit coverage, so downtown is where we can best put transit-oriented development.

The first point is a bit odd, since he’s suggesting that “existing character” should be a factor in places like Brookland but not downtown, and also because in my original post I offered several downtown-adjacent locations that are ripe for redevelopment, have tremendous potential capacity, and aren’t full of single-family houses. While it may be true that getting political buy-in to redvelop East Potomac Park, National Airport, the Pentagon’s parking lots, and Bolling Air Force Base would be difficult, it would certainly be no more difficult (and probably less so) than getting political buy-in to raise downtown’s height limit. I will clarify that outside of downtown I wouldn’t necessary oppose taller buildings. Where raising the height limit can help to spur development in underdeveloped parts of the city, I fully support raising the height limit.

Avent’s second point, that downtown has the best transit service, is true today, but it ignores two key issues: That we have a lot of underused capacity around many outlying Metro stations that could be used more efficiently at much less cost than expanding capacity downtown, and that with existing transit capacity downtown topping out anyway we will soon be faced with the choice of where and how to expand the system. Avent didn’t dispute my contention that a grid-like transit network is better for residents who both live and work in the city than a single-hub commuter-oriented system focused on getting people in/out of one small area, so I assume there’s no disagreement there. If our downtown capacity is tight but we have excess elsewhere, and if investing in more capacity elsewhere would produce a better result than investing in more capacity downtown, why focus on downtown?

Long story short: Our city is going to change one way or another. Given the choice of how to change it, I would prefer to adopt a plan that retains downtown’s special character and brings the rest of the city up to its level, rather than a plan that would produce a really great and dense downtown, but would leave the rest of the city to a less dense, less mixed-use, less urban fate. Maybe some day we will have to raise the height limit, but given the current availability of drastically underused land near the core, availability that absolutely does exist, raising the height limit today would be a bad move.