Adjacent to Reagan National Airport between the Pentagon and Alexandria, Crystal City is Arlington’s largest single office submarket and is home to many airport related businesses such as hotels, convention facilities and airline headquarters.

Environment-minded visitors to Crystal City inevitably notice two things: Every building is the exact same height. There are no people on the sidewalks. The first is easy to explain. Due to its proximity to the airport the Federal Aviation Authority imposes a strict height limit for safety reasons. Although possible and indeed even likely that without the height limit Crystal City might have a skyline surpassing even Rosslyn, it’s hard to find fault with such limits. The second observation is less justified. In classic Modernist form all modes of transportation and use have been totally separated. A highway cuts through the middle of town making it inhospitable to pedestrians, who are in turn hidden from sight and mind in a subterranean mall. Although some progress has been made in recent years to revitalize and improve the neighborhood, Crystal City still unfortunately bears a closer resemblance to Southwest, DC than to any of its more amiable neighbors in Arlington and Alexandria.