2006 population distribution, Beltway to Winchester.
Luke Juday is using his mapping tools over at the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Policy to project what Virginia’s population distribution could look like 25 years from now and 50 years from now. You can see those maps here. We’ve re-published many of his maps here at Bacon’s Rebellion, so you may find them familiar. But Juday is always tweaking, and always looking for more geographic databases to play with, and he has done something really new: He shows how conservation easements in Loudoun and Fauquier counties could shape Northern Virginia’s growth trajectory over the next half century.
Beltway to Winchester 50 years from now — conservation easements in blue.
As Juday writes, “Conservation easements matter”… at least when they achieve critical mass, as they have done in the Middleburg-Upperville hunt country area. The easements could play a major role in blocking the western advance of the Washington metropolitan region, forcing development south toward Fredericksburg.
Please note that Juday does not describe these maps as a “forecast” or “projection.” Rather, they are a visualization of how population would be distributed if (a) Weldon Cooper’s planning district-level population projects prove accurate, (b) no “game-changer” roads are built such as the Prince William Bi-County Parkway and (c) regions develop at their current level of density. The visualizations ignore zoning, which is too complex to include in his mapping routine, and it does not reflect the very real possibility that Americans (and Virginians) are driving less, with the implication that trend would have for greater urban density and infill. Finally, I would add, the map doesn’t consider the likelihood that northern Piedmont landowners will continue to place land in conservation easements, meaning that the swaths of blue will get even thicker and more formidable.
Even with all those caveats, the visualization shows how, over a long period of time, conservation easements could become as important as rivers, bays and Interstate highways in shaping Northern Virginia’s future.
— JAB
