Background Traffic congestion, pollution, loss of farms and forests, decline of the Chesapeake Bay, high taxes, and sprawl are related to each other and to the choices we make about how and where growth occurs. And we doom ourselves to more of the same if we continue to scatter ourselves across the landscape. Accommodating new residents and businesses in neighborhoods with existing streets, good transit, schools, and nearby stores will address these ills more effectively than continuing our current development patterns. Yet two recent transit-oriented development proposals demonstrate that we are a long way from a consensus on how to successfully guide growth in the region. In one case, neighbors of a proposed 26-unit condominium development 200 feet from the Tenleytown Metrorail station in northwest D.C. fear this will undermine their community and ruin a remnant stream segment.
Residents are right to be suspicious of development, which is often poorly planned and heavy-handed.
However, the new households and businesses won't disappear. They will simply locate somewhere else, most likely in a place where people have to drive more and use transit less, requiring higher tax subsidies for roads, transit and other public services. While neighborhood groups identify better shopping, less traffic, greater pedestrian and bicycle safety as priorities, they frequently oppose development that will help create the very kind of environment they say they seek. Downzoning by neighborhood groups is a pernicious problem. Concerns about traffic and loss of open space shouldn't be addressed by restricting development to low-density single family houses and acres of parking lots around Metro stations.