slaughter house 5

This was on the cover of the Post Tuesday, below the fold. "Smart" development is one of the toughest issues out there. Ultimately, these people are going to live somewhere. They are going to drive their cars and go out to eat and buy groceries. Any analysis of the impact of a development like this should consider what the alternative is - where would these people go otherwise? Wouldn't they still be driving on your roads, clogging 66, or taking parking spaces at the metro stop? If you live in a big city, espically one that forbids high-rise construction (and thus high-density, low footprint housing) in the city center, your suburbia will eventually be swallowed up by growth.

If you don't like it, you can get together with Kurt Vonnegut and write an anti-glacier book.


MetroWest Development Is Approved In Fairfax

By Lisa Rein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 28, 2006; A01

Fairfax County agreed last night to let a developer replace a neighborhood of 65 single-family homes at the Vienna Metro station with a massive complex of mid- and high-rise towers that could transform the way people live, commute and work in Washington's largest suburb.

...

Instead of sprawling cul-de-sacs, MetroWest will cluster offices, stores and 2,250 townhouses, condominiums and apartments south of the Vienna Station, making the project the centerpiece of an effort to concentrate development in dense, urban settings.

It's a vision that's sweeping land-use decisions from Largo to Tysons Corner, where planners and politicians -- to the chagrin of many neighbors -- are accommodating the region's demand for housing with densely packed homes on slivers of land near public transit with the goal of coaxing people from their cars.

MetroWest's many critics have argued that the mini-city will bring too many cars to the congested roads off Interstate 66 and too many riders to the crowded Orange Line. But county leaders said the cluster of 13 buildings on 56 acres will concentrate growth in the only space left in Fairfax, the Metro station's back yard.

...

"You're ignoring the public's pleas for caution," Mark Tipton, a neighboring homeowner, told the supervisors. He called Pulte's pledge to accept fines "an excuse to grant the outrageous density in MetroWest. . . . It's like buying the right to create traffic congestion."

The MetroWest proposal, by its sheer size, generated fierce opposition from neighbors in leafy subdivisions. Town of Vienna officials down the street opposed it from the start.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/27/AR2006032701624.html