by James A. Bacon
A development group is asking for approval to build up to 2,900 homes and 1.8 million square feet of commercial space off Interstate 95 in Stafford County. The proposed “George Washington Village” calls for a 1,100-acre town-center development with a mix of single-family detached houses, town houses and apartments to be built over 20 years. The plan includes more than 400 acres of open space, $50 million in new infrastructure and amenities such as parks, athletic fields and swimming pools, according to the Free Lance-Star.
I have long argued that the momentum of growth and development is shifting back toward the urban core. There’s only so much added population that built-up neighborhoods can absorb, however. Getting municipal approval to tear down old buildings and erect new ones in their place tends to be more drawn out than building in empty fields. Therefore, in fast-growth MSAs like Washington, new development will continue to take place on the metropolitan periphery — just at a slower pace than before.
The George Washington Village is anecdotal, to be sure, and it may not be typical of most development taking place on the far southern fringe of the Washington metropolitan area. But I wonder if it is indicative of a broader trend to building more clustered, village-style development in exurbia instead of the traditional pattern of scattered cul-de-sac subdivisions and shopping centers .
I don’t know Stafford County well but most of what I’ve seen strikes me as a featureless wasteland. There is nothing resembling an urban form — just subdivisions smeared across a vast expanse of land, with low-value commercial development strung along state highways like Route 1 and Route 17. The arterials are hideously congested, and it must be extremely expensive providing public services to such scattered, low-density settlement patterns. Any departure from the norm has got to be an improvement.
I haven’t seen any sketches or plans for the George Washington Village but the bare details provided by the Free Lance-Star suggests that housing will be compact by exurban standards — averaging more than four houses to the developed acre. There will be a “town center,” presumably mostly retail, allowing locals to conduct much of their daily business with short car trips without the necessity of overloading the already-congested road network. Who knows, the “village” even may have a walkable component.
By any normal person’s definition, George Washington Village is still sprawl. The location next to I-95 suggests that the village will be a bedroom community, with most people commuting to employment destinations in Northern Virginia. But based on the little evidence we have, it’s a less deleterious kind of sprawl. In an ideal smart-growth world, it would never get built. But Washington, D.C., Arlington, Fairfax County and Prince William County cannot build compact, walkable communities served by mass transit fast enough to serve the region’s growing population. We can wish all we want for smart growth in the urban core but in a growing region, people have to live somewhere. If they’re going to move to exurbia in search of affordable housing, it makes more sense for them to live in clustered “villages” than subdivisions built helter-skelter across the countryside.
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