Letter: Smart Growth Forum Not That Smart

As Reston Patch has publicized, Jeff Speck, a noted Washington, DC, urban planner specializing in “smart growth,” will be the featured speaker at a “community forum” Monday evening on “Understanding Urbanization:  Building on Reston's Past to Create Its Future.”  

His presentation will be followed by a panel discussion that will include a County planner (who is coordinating the Reston task force effort), a transportation planner/engineer (behind the “road diet” for Lawyers Road—and a Reston bicyclist), and a developer (from the company that brought Reston the Fairways Apartments redevelopment fiasco).   

What’s missing from this “community forum” about Reston’s future?   People who practice what they preach about “smart growth,” transit-oriented development, public transit, walkable neighborhoods, etc.  Instead, we will be having people telling us how we should live while they live something else.

None live in a TOD area although two live within a half-mile of a Metrorail station.  None live in a high-rise condo or apartment.  None live in a “walkable neighborhood” where living essentials are within easy walking distance.  None uses public transit to commute, although one works from his home—part of the new wave of office work.  Two commute to work alone and one bicycles to the office, conditions permitting.

Although these people do not live the lifestyle they will articulate for Reston, I have no doubt that all of them are experts in urban development, transportation, and especially “smart growth” principles.  I also have no doubt that they will give an interesting, even glib, presentation and discussion.  I do doubt they will talk in depth about Reston, however, and the specific issues it confronts in urbanizing its core.  

So that they might be better able to do that, I offer these issues for them to consider:

Mobility.  Reston is a community divided by the Dulles Corridor with only two internal north-south crossings—Reston Parkway and Wiehle Avenue—that have massive congestion problems.  Some of the places we need to go—work, shopping, doctors, theater, recreation, restaurants, etc.—are on one side of the Corridor and often we are on the other.  We don’t put 7-year-olds on buses to go to soccer practice on the other side of town, nor do octogenarians ride bicycles to the doctor’s office.  With Reston’s population and employment planned to nearly double in two or three decades around Metro stations along these two corridors, what will the community need in transportation improvements to assure timely, appropriate mobility throughout the community, especially across the Dulles Corridor, and how and when will we get it?

Infrastructure location.  Aside from transportation infrastructure, the near doubling of population and employment in the station areas will require growth in other amenities and public infrastructure, including open space, parks and recreation, schools, public safety, a performing/fine arts center, and much more.  Each of these requires space.  In fact, the County has identified a need for more than 100 acres of added parks and recreation space, but has not proposed how to accommodate it.  How will the TOD areas absorb this necessary infrastructure without eroding the quality of life in the rest of the Reston suburban community?

Infrastructure costs.  Closely linked with the location of TOD-supporting infrastructure and amenities is the matter of who pays for them.  Needed transportation improvements alone will cost several billion dollars over the next two or three decades.  Restonians will not benefit financially from the prospective doubling of density in the transit station areas while a handful of developers stand to make millions of dollars annually from their investments.  It stands to reason that those who will gain financially should bear the infrastructure cost burden, not community or County taxpayers.  How should the cost of the infrastructure needed to support the new TOD development be paid for fairly and equitably?

Environmental sustainability is a vital community value in Reston, and one of its founding principles.  It is unclear how Reston’s environmental quality can be sustained, much less improved, with the proposed density, despite the alleged benefits of “smart growth.”  This is especially true:

• In the face of imbalances in planned TOD area development (an excessive jobs-to-housing ratio for this “regional employment center,” especially in Town Center),

• Unrealistic County planning assumptions (a planning assumption of 300 GSF per office employee while the nation is actually under 200 GSF per worker and dropping, meaning at least half-again as many workers in Reston’s TOD areas as planned density would allow), and

• Uncertain transportation improvement options (no decisions, no schedule, no funding), and more.   

What concrete steps must be taken to ensure that, at the minimum, there is no environmental degradation in Reston, including loss of open space, greater vehicle emissions, and more heat generated by a doubling of building density?

Reston has come a long ways in the last four years from fascination with “smart growth” to the practicalities of its effective and fair implementation.   If the forum is a success, it will give meaningful answers to these vital questions, not just allusions to the wonders of “smart growth” in an urbanizing community.  Otherwise, it is little more than a public relations gambit sponsored by those who expect to gain from Reston’s urbanization.

Terry Maynard

Reston Citizens Association Representative

Reston Master Plan Special Study Task Force