TooManyTaxes (aka, TMT) posted a number of comments on the Jim Bacons “The Transportation Debate and the Unreported Land Use Revolution” submission below.
TMT is right about the Dillon Rule, wrong about Greater-Warrenton Fauquier and the future of the 9 Beta Communities that fall all or partly in Fairfax County.
Greater-Warrenton Fauquier already has planned urban enclaves with more space than there is a foreseeable market in the next 50 years.
Citizens and the leadership of Greater-Warrenton Fauquier, when presented with the options in an intelligent manner, would like to have Jobs and Services to Balance the population now living in the Beta Community.
Moreover, they would love to have new Jobs and Services to create a real Balance within the Clear Edges around the urban enclaves aka “Service Districts” that are planned.
What they have been getting over the past 50 years is an increasing flood of scattered urban dwellings and orphan subdivisions. Most of these new urban residents with jobs in the Core are here because of the programs, projects, policies and controls of federal and Commonwealth Agencies and especially the municipal Agencies inside the logical location of the Clear Edge around the Core of the Subregion. Fairfax County is a poster child for the causes of Community, Subregional and Regional dysfunction.
In recent times the wrong sized houses in the wrong locations of Greater Warrenton-Fauquier have been joined by a tide of Business-As-Usual chain stores with more on the way. Not to worry. Some of those under construction in the US Route 29 Corridor will never open and / or soon close. They were “planned” based on a continuing flow of “commuting” residents. That will stop for the reasons we spell out in today’s column. “Three Little Words.”
What has happened in Greater Warrenton-Fauquier has happened across the National Capital Subregion. Especially in the Virginia part of the Subregion there are grossly dysfunctional settlement patterns. These patterns and densities of land use are exacerbated by the least-common-denominator actions TMT points out vis a vis The Rule in Dillon’s Case.
If TMT wants to help he could organize his friends to push for the evolution of a Balance of J / H / S / R / A in each METRO station area and most VRE station areas.
He and his friends could push for much higher parking fees for METRO parking lots. They could support the movement from flat rates and general taxes to fee for services.
What most citizens of Fairfax County call “Quality of Life” is based on an inequitable distribution of the costs of location variable goods and services and reflect the policies, programs, projects and controls noted above.
Not to worry, life as TMT and his cohorts have known it is going away for the reasons noted in “Three Little words.”
Instead of suggesting the further spread of dysfunctional human settlement patterns, TMT needs to lead the charge for a Fundamental Transformation in Fairfax County settlement patterns before it is too late.
We will be happy to send along the 11 Strategies for shaping a functional and sustainable future in Greater Warrenton-Fauquier. They are not that much different from the ones needed in Fairfax County and the rest of the Washington-Baltimore New Urban Region.
Good luck.
EMR
PS: Getting rid of the Rule in Dillon’s Case will do no more to improve human settlement patterns in Virginia than doing that has done in other states. It takes Fundamental Transformation in governace structure to achieve Fundamental Transformation in human settlement patterns.