It should come as not surprise to anyone that, as Jim Bacon’s 26 April post is titled: there is
“Lots of Room for Growth Left in Fairfax County.”
The surprise is that the Greater Merrifield re construction effort has stayed on track for so many years.
It was decades ago that graduate planning students outlined parameters for how the area along Gallows Road between I-66 on the north and US Route 50 on the south to Gallows Road on the south could to evolve to become the METRO-station-anchored Zentrum of an Alpha Community.
This Alpha Community would be bordered by Greater Tysons Corner on the north, Greater Fairfax Center on the west, Greater Springfield / Annandale on the south and Greater Bailies Crossroads / Falls Church on the east.
That there is “Lots of Room for Growth Left in Fairfax County” has a theme at SYNERGY/ Planning for 35 years. We demonstrated this point during the 1972 to 1975 Pause For Planning (PLUS) process in Fairfax County.
Over the next few years in our work with the Fairfax Chamber of Commerce, the Fairfax Committee of 100, the League of Women Voters, the Gang of 10, the Sierra Club and the Fairfax Audubon Society the plenty of room reality evolved into the mantra:
“If all of Fairfax County were redeveloped at Reston Density, 2/3 of the county would be vacant.”
As years went by the percentage of openspace become somewhat smaller and the data was refined to became the basis for “Five Critical Realities the Shape the Future” which is a Backgrounder at db4.dev.baconsrebellion.com . The data and analysis of this work became the framework for Regional Metrics.
No one ever challenged the assumptions and data in the Backgrounder. Many doubted that such “radical” transformation would ever take place “because that is not what the market demands.”
Later we demonstrated that these more functional and transportable settlement patterns are exactly what the market supports.
Those who profit from, or hope to profit from, settlement pattern dysfunction are counting on the fact that regulation changes and education processes are never put in place to implement the transformation.
The jury is still out on whether citizens will come to understand that there is “Lots of Room for Growth Left in Fairfax County” while there are still resources to make Fundamental Changes possible. The Greater Merrifield example provides cause for hope.
EMR
