It’s hard to imagine now, but there was a time when most of the region we call “Northern Virginia” was like the rest of Virginia. Once upon a time, Fairfax County was known for its dairy farms. Once upon a time, people referred to the Rest of Virginia as “south of the Occoquan.” Today, the Washington metro area has leap-frogged past the Occoquan — and even past the Rappahannock.
Now we can contemplate the time when the Washington metro area subsumes the Richmond region. In an op-ed piece published today in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Robert Land and Chris Nelson, co-directors of the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech in Alexandria, suggest that the 2010 Census could find, based on commuting patterns, that the Washington-Baltimore metropolitan statistical area qualifies as the Washington-Baltimore-Richmond MSA. They write:
With growth in the booming Washington region surging south to Richmond, it appears that D.C. may soon have a new metropolitan partner. Consider recent growth trends in Carolina [County], about halfway between D.C. and Richmond. In 2000, a quarter of its workers commuted north to the Washington region while a slightly larger percentage headed south to the Richmond metropolitan area. According to the Census, if metropolitan areas share a significant proportion of workers, they may form a combined metro area.
Land and Nelson say that this emerging “megalopolis,” which they refer to as the “Chesapeake metropolitan area,” now contains 10 million people and could surpass 15 million by 2040.
Egads. I grew up in northwestern Washington, D.C. After graduating from the University of Virginia, though, I never had the slightest temptation to go back. Settling in Richmond, where I’ve lived for 20 years now, I always considered Washington as a psychologically distant universe. But those days are over, it appears. It looks like Washington has caught up with me.
