Alec McGillis reported on the status of jobs in today’s WaPo.
Here is a note we sent Alec:
Nice story on jobs!
Two additions to the coverage would put these facts in geographic context:
1. A map with radial distances out to R=50 miles from the Centroid of the Core graphically showing the location of jobs in 1990 and the growth in jobs from 1990 to 2005.
2. A scaled summary quantification of the total land necessary to support those jobs (Jobs / Housing / Services / Recreation / Amenity Balance) at 10 persons per acre at the Community scale.
Hint: There is room in Fairfax County for all the development necessary to support all these jobs within the County if they were distributed in Balanced Communities, and there still would be 50 percent open space in the County. All that is necessary is to let the market work down the vast vacant and underutilized land.
Fairfax has played the hand that was dealt to them by federal and state programs, regulations and laws so it is not all their fault. However, the County has taken advantage of its location to generate employment “tax base” but has failed to evolve the Balanced Communities necessary to curb traffic congestion, energy consumption and other results of dysfunctional settlement patterns.
A lot of folks will read the coverage on job growth and Subregional job distribution and assume that the jobs are scattering to the fringe of the National Capital Subregion. They well also assume that there is no alternative to scattering urban dwellings by the unit, Dooryard, cluster and neighborhood across the Countryside via orphan subdivisions.
There is an alternative.
Keep up the good work…
EMR