Review: A Better Way to Zone

I have mixed feelings about zoning, which may explain my thoughts about Donald Elliott’s new book about it, A Better Way to Zone. A land use law consultant in Colorado, Elliott’s book is dedicated to making “simplicity and understandability not just an aspiration but a guiding principle in zoning.” While I agree with much of the sentiment of the book, I’m not sure he’s struck upon the new way to zone he seeks.

Organized around the goal of making zoning “better, more efficient, and more understandable,” the book contains a brief history of zoning, a critique of the current system as used by most big cities, a discussion the legal framework and values of good governance, and finally a discussion of “ten principles” to improve zoning. Filled with lists of reasons, lessons, principles, and cross-references, this book is obviously the work of an order-oriented legal mind.

Elliott’s concise accounts of the origins and logic of most cities’ “Euclidean Hybrid Zoning” would serve as a good primer on the subject for students or citizens new to the field. Convinced that “almost no one outside of city government, zoning lawyers, and very committed citizen activists can explain how the system works” Elliott passionately argues “zoning ordinances should not be understandable only to lawyers or zoning staff; they should be understandable to average homeowners.” I think the mantra about simplicity is the most important part of the book, and completely agree with Elliott that “the more the public knows, the better they can participate at the policy- and rule-making level.” Let’s hope his call for simplicity and transparency is heeded.

The book’s “10 principles for more livable cities” will come as no surprise to informed readers: 1. more flexible uses (simplifying the number and type of uses regulated), 2. the mixed-use middle (simplify number of zones, create mixed-use zones at the heart of the code), 3. attainable housing (reduce regulatory barriers to affordable housing), 4. mature area standards, 5. living with nonconformities (legalize some nonconforming uses), 6. dynamic development standards, 7. negotiated large developments, 8. depoliticized final approvals, 9. Better use of the internet (he oddly uses the word “webbing” for this section, which I’ve never heard used this way), 10. scheduled maintenance.

While most of the topics discussed under these headings are sensible and needed reforms, all together they don’t add up to anything close to a “new” way to zone. In fact, Elliott is convinced our strange combination of conventional Euclidian zoning, planned unit development regulation, and form-based zoning, will continue. While some communities have implemented the form-based SmartCode, I agree with Elliott it doesn’t appear likely it will totally replace the existing tools in most communities.

This brings us to my mixed feelings about zoning in general.

On the one hand, zoning has caused lots of problems. Its separation of uses has encouraged driving and low-density development. Its parking requirements cover the land with impervious parking lots. It has been used as a tool of racial and economic exclusion in communities across the country. When used to require low density development, it consumes land and worsens global warming. Worst of all, it has often failed to achieve one of its original impetus: to separate polluting industries from residences.

On the other hand, just because a tool has been used poorly doesn’t mean the tool itself is flawed. It is the most important source of power for urban planners, and it can be used to sculpt the public realm, create affordable housing, and genuinely improve cities.

The problem with A Better Way to Zone is the book is mostly unaware of such nuance. In a discussion about an alternative to conventional zoning, the author observes that there may be parts of the city suitable for experimentation, but “in and around stable middle- and high-income neighborhoods, there will still be a demand for zones that produce more predictable development.” The reasons or implications for this go undiscussed. There exists an intellectual chasm between historians who observe zoning has been a highly effective tool of exclusion to the detriment of our cities and types like Elliott who are generally sanguine on its basic foundations. The book’s central strength — its focus on making zoning with simple, efficient, and understandable — is also its central flaw. After all, a simple, efficient, and understandable zoning code may not necessarily achieve a desirable, just, or sustainable outcome. For those we must turn elsewhere.

> A Better Way to Zone: official website, purchase from publisher
> Amazon.com: A Better Way to Zone: Ten Principles to Create More Livable Cities

Rosslyn Redevelopment

Last Saturday I competed in second annual Real Estate Case Competition hosted by George Washington University’s Real Estate Investment & Development Organization. Sixteen universities created interdisciplinary teams to create detailed redevelopment proposals for a site in Rosslyn, Virginia slated for redevelopment. The property owners, Vornado/Charles E. Smith, participated in the judging of the entries and contributed funds to host the competition and award the winning team a cash prize of $15,000. On Saturday, six of the top teams gave 40 minute presentations to a panel of judges from the real estate and planning community. Although every team had impressive presentations, our team took first place, the University of Virginia second, and Columbia University third.

Our University of Maryland team included Peter Mellen, Tyler Abrams, Eric Raasch, Tiffany Williams, and Malav Patel. Group members represented the Masters in Real Estate Development, Masters in Community Planning, and Masters in Business Administration Programs. Peter was the team leader and Tyler was responsible for the architectural renderings. The team is pictured to the right with one of our advisors, UMD Real Estate Development Program Director Dr. Margaret McFarland.

The site was located in Rosslyn, adjacent I-66.

We proposed a $1.5 billion development that would replace an aging collection of 1960s buildings with four new buildings, containing office, residential, retail, and a hotel.

Our proposal was not only profitable, but also contained an allowance for LEED Gold certification, a $19.6 million contribution to affordable housing, and other community amenities. We also proposed establishing a “Friends of Roosevelt Island Trust” to oversee the restoration of Roosevelt Island, which would be connected to the project via a new bike and pedestrian bridge over I-66.

A representative from the sponsor said they were preparing a real-life redevelopment proposal to present to county officials. After studying the site so intensively, I’ll be interested to see their proposal and what similarities it has with our design.

> UMD: “Real Estate Development Team Wins $15,000 First Prize“

Fixing America’s Federal Transportation Policy

Over the past 50 years, the U.S. has been transformed thanks to massive investment in the interstate highway system. Funded in large part by the federal gas tax, the federal government has set policies and allocated funds to states to construct the national network under a series of bills starting with the 1956 National Interstate and Defense Highway Act. However, the country stands at a crossroads. Although the originally planned system is complete, congestion in our metropolitan areas have reached epidemic levels. Planners in many parts of the country have found that new roads don’t alleviate congestion but generate new traffic and urban sprawl, and for the first time cities are pouring billions into modern public transportation systems.

Every five years the U.S. Congress passes a bill defining the federal government’s transportation policy. The most recent bill, the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users (or SAFETEA-LU) will expire on September 30, 2009, so the next Congress will tackle the task of creating a new bill. Despite containing record amounts for mass transit projects and alternative transportation like biking, the $286.4 billion bill left many dissatisfied. A boom in mass transit projects has far outstripped the allocated funds, and the bill contained thousands of earmarks for specific projects that don’t necessarily alleviate congestion or contribute to an overall plan. The collapse of the I-35W interstate bridge last summer underscored the need to rethink federal transportation policy, to emphasize maintenance of the existing infrastructure and new approaches addressing congestion.

Due to the growing transportation problems and dissatisfaction with the existing programs, the SAFETEA-LU bill created a commission to study the issue and provide recommendations to Congress for the bill’s successor. I plan to follow the debate over the law to follow SAFETEA-LU closely over the next year, and I thought a good way to start would be to review the commission’s recommendations. In a remarkable report published in December, the commission suggested nothing less than a radical overhaul of virtually all of the federal government’s transportation programs. However, given the specter of global warming and the country’s dependence on oil, do they go far enough? Let’s take a look.

The commission made three major policy recommendations: accelerate the length of time it takes to complete transportation projects, re-organize all federal transportation programs into 10 topical programs, and create a new independent public commission to oversee a national transportation plan and make funding recommendations to Congress.

The report observes that it takes the average highway project 13 years to move from project initiation to completion (I’d guess it’s even longer for major transit projects) the committee offered suggestions to speed the process, mostly through modest reforms of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) process. They suggest Congress create a streamlined NEPA process for projects with “few significant impacts,” set time limits for review, narrow the definition of reasonable alternatives, among others. It’s not clear to me if these changes will be adequate or politically feasible, given the importance of the NEPA process to environmentalists to slow or stop damaging projects.

The second reform would reorganize over 100 federal transportation programs into just ten: infrastructure maintenance, freight, metropolitan congestion, transportation safety, rural transportation, intercity passenger rail, environmental programs, alternative fuels, federal lands access, and research and development. From the report:

My only quibble with the re-organization regards lumping all metropolitan issues together under the topic of “congestion relief.” Urban transportation policy isn’t just about addressing congestion but creating efficient, complex, multi-modal systems that drive urban economies. While it’s good to plan multi-modal systems, I’m also concerned lumping mass transit initiatives together with highways will de-emphasize their importance.

The last suggestion is the creation of a new, independent federal commission to oversee transportation planning at a federal level similar to the Postal Regulatory Commission or the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission. This National Surface Transportation Commission (NASTRAC) would have ten presidentially-appointed members serving staggered six year terms. The commission would make revenue recommendations directly to congress, on which congress could exercise a 2/3 veto.

The programs generally fund projects at significantly higher levels than under existing programs, for example, metropolitan programs at 80%. To pay the tab the commission suggests raising the federal gas tax from $.59 to $1.03 per gallon. They suggest boosting it $.05-$.08 for five years, and then indexing the tax to inflation. While there is some discussion of the problem of alternative fuels cutting into this gas tax revenue, the report has few specific ideas for major new revenue sources. The current federal U.S. gas tax of 18.4 cents per gallon, hasn’t changed since 1993, and the Washington Post characterized increasing it to be a political “improbability.”

Up next will be posts about the commission’s funding level proposals, a discussion of the equity of congestion taxes, the politics of transit funding, and any other topics I come across. Suggestions?

The Relevance and Irrelevance of Richard Sennett

Last week, author Richard Sennett visited the University of Maryland to give the Urban Studies and Planning Program’s annual LeFrak Lecture. I had previously posted a review of one of his previous works, The Uses of Disorder. I wrote the following in response to his lecture.

I recently read an economist’s definition of a city as “an absence of distance between people and firms.” Such a definition will seem odd to anyone who cares about cities, because it defines the city by what it lacks instead of what it has. Most of us who live in or visit cities define them by what they are. Cities are places where visitors are confronted with strangers, a place of cultural and economic innovation, where the latest technology and styles are created and take root. It is in this vein we encounter Richard Sennett, who insists on thinking of the city in terms of its unique attributes. For Sennett, a city is a place of strangers, interaction, and ultimately conflict. To Sennett, the city should be understood as a psychological experience, not an economic or historical phenomenon.

An Urbanism of Disorder

From his perspective, the shape of the physical city should be understood as a “symptom” of a particular mindset, not a cause. In his 1970 classic The Uses of Disorder: Personal Identity and City Life, he specifically rejects economic arguments explaining the origin of suburbs, casually tossing aside the forces contemporary historians point to in order to explain suburbanization: zoning, mortgages, highways, and automobiles. He argues instead that the suburbs are the product of American’s psychological desires to minimize conflict and create ideal places.

In some ways, he’s right. If they seek long-term success, American city advocates can’t simply shoe-horn people in more urban environments with technology (light rail) or policies (smart growth), but must cultivate an urban sensibility that demands such policies and tools because they demand a certain type of lifestyle. In Sennett’s view the key to cultivating this sensibility is reinforcing what makes the city unique, including those things that many planners have long thought undesirable: complexity, disorder, and conflict. Thus the rationalizing impulse of planning to order the city—with highways, zoning, and “centers” of all types directly conflicts with what we should be encouraging in our cities. Only planning that encourages urban disorder and conflict will create dynamic, healthy cities that will attract people.

Sennett’s ‘Architecture of Justice’

During the lecture last week, Sennett described the city that results from this kind of modern obsession with order as a “city as closed system,” saying the art of designing cities has declined precisely because the picture of the city became more total. The result of the bureaucrat’s “horror” of change has been a “brittle city,” that is static, rigid, and ultimately disposable and not adaptable to change. The closed city stifles the interactions and conflict that define and drive the city forward. He then argues the contemporary ideology of sustainability comes from this way of thinking. He argued we’ll never get to where we want to go in terms or environmental sustainability if we only seek to mimic nature and simply “get things in balance” (as William McDonough would have us believe).

What is needed is quite different than a carefully ordered system, but instead a radical destabilization that convinces us to desire less. In fact, truly great cities already do this by convincing people to live in smaller and lower quality housing, restricting their mobility, and sometimes giving up automobiles, with precisely the lures Sennett says we should celebrate: diversity, interaction, and perhaps conflict.

In an “open city,” rupture, discontinuity, and even conflict would be encouraged. Such an “architecture of justice” would hold jarring contradictions and surprises for its residents (perhaps like parking day). He suggests planning that deliberately seeks to bring various groups into close contact by placing an immigrant market near wealthy homes and one that jars its citizens by inserting an AIDS hospice into a shopping mall. I would argue it would also be a planning focused on efficiency and minimums catering to fine-scale variety, rather than ideal end states and onerous rules benefiting large-scale development. In some ways it might be similar to the “agile planning” advocated by participants in the UCLA PropX competition whose proposals often have as much to do with questioning or reducing existing regulations as they do with creating new ones.

The Uses of Sennett

There are, I think, several points to be raised here. First, modern order-obsessed planning from the modern era seems forever gone. Municipal fragmentation, powerful advocacy groups, and ideological diversity within the profession have introduced inconsistency and diversity into both our plans and our cities. While perhaps still overly controlling and bureaucratic, it is not hegemonic. Second, his casual disregard for the very real economic and legal forces determining the character and form of the city undermines his argument. Once suburban subsidies were instituted, it left practical urban residents few choices. Even if they desired conflict and disorder, bland suburban homes may just have been more practical. Here we are left with a chicken or egg problem about which came first: cultural values or the policies that embody them. Ultimately his approach does not appreciate the very real inertia of public policy. Like previous urban critics including Louis Mumford and Jane Jacobs, Sennett is advancing a cultural critique based in urban ecology, not one based in political economy. (To use categories described by Becky Nicolaides in a recent article)

Lastly, at first glance, recent trends in American urbanism celebrating diversity and contrast seem to challenge Sennett’s view of closed cities locked down by order-obsessed zoning and planning. However, most of the new urban innovations—mixed use and form based zoning, New Urbanism, and even ratings systems for sustainability—are in fact deeply regulatory and bureaucratic. As an example, in College Park the Route One Sector Plan that seeks to create a dense, mixed-use corridor contains hundreds of pages of minutiae about setbacks and allowed uses. Most of the neighborhoods it seeks to replicate evolved under no zoning and minimal regulation. While there are some notable exceptions of plans that are thankfully minimalist on paper, in practice almost all are overly controlling and heavy-handed in implementation.

There are a few themes I could develop further, not the lease of which is how all of this relates to the type of justice I am most concerned with: social justice. One writer who has considered how conventional regulatory planning and our urban policies redistributes urban wealth to middle and upper classes to the detriment of the poor is David Harvey, in his classic work Social Justice in the City, a type of analysis only carried forward only by a small group of contrary and little-known academics. One of the continued problems with the field of contemporary planning is its lack of a critical self-awareness about how conventional local government planning deepens divides between rich and poor.

Finally, in some ways Sennett’s arguments are largely irrelevant to much of the contemporary urban debate, dominated as it is by analysis based in political economy. Sennett helps us appreciate how reductionist this approach can be, largely missing the qualitative attributes that define and explain the value of urban life. This is the relevance of Sennett: to question whether regulatory approaches to sustainability and urbanism are sufficient to create the cities we desire.

The illustrations of the works of Julie Mehretu, whose works contain references to public spaces like buildings and stadiums, inscribed with personal narratives. A show of her work titled City Sitings recently opened at the Detroit Institute of Arts, where she questions the “truthfulness” of maps (and, by extension, cartographic plans) and, the DIA believes, “demonstrate her fervent preoccupation with multiple, often conflicting, viewpoints.”

Does Washington Need a Planning Commission?

Planners from other cities are often surprised when I tell them that Washington, D.C. does not have a planning commission. Thanks to the city’s unique legacy as the home to the federal government, it boasts a convoluted system for regulating new building in the city that lacks a central planning body. The system is so complex that at times the city government itself forgets to enforce existing laws, and major new buildings on the National Mall can “take most Washingtonians and most Americans by surprise.”

Let’s take a quick look at who’s involved. Starting at the federal level, the National Capital Planning Commission oversees all federal construction in the capital region, as well as creating long-term comprehensive plans focusing heavily on the location of the federal government. However the limited authority of the agency means the plan has little direct influence over private development in the city. For example, NCPC plans have proposed far-ranging ideas including a new mall along South Capitol Street that one blogger has even dedicated his site to discussing. I previously compared the NCPC’s hazy vision of the future with science fiction visions for our city.

While NCPC does not review private construction, another federal agency does review the aesthetics of some private construction. Private buildings in certain sections of the city (mostly abutting or facing federal property like Rock Creek Park and Pennsylvania Avenue) are subject to review by the U.S. Commission on Fine Arts under the Shipstead-Luce Act. It was a mix-up over this act that forced the District to purchase and tear down a private home last year.

For their part, the city’s Office of Planning (organized in the city government’s executive branch) creates a wide range of neighborhood and citywide plans including the recently completed 2006 Comprehensive Plan of the National Capital. The Mayor’s Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development oversees redevelopment plans and other special programs. The District Department of Transportation creates special transportation plans and oversees the planning of transportation infrastructure. Construction in any of the city’s many historic districts is regulated by the Historic Preservation Review Board.

Construction not subject to the specific bodies above is regulated by the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs that can issue a building permit for by-right construction conforming to the city’s zoning. Any planned unit developments or nonconforming projects must come before the quasi-autonomous Zoning Commission, and can be appealed to the Board of Zoning Adjustment.

Given this backdrop, the Washington Business Journal recently published two columns in their OnSite magazine arguing for and against creating a new planning commission. Dorn C. McGrath Jr., a professor emeritus from George Washington University, argues explaining this convoluted structure could be a primary task for the commission. He also thinks such a commission would help oversee the maintenance and development of city facilities, arguing, “It seems that ’smart growth’ now extends only to the low-hanging fruit of new condo and shopping center development, rather than the untidy business of planning for needed parks, recreation facilities, vehicle storage and maintenance and schools.”

Arguing against is Ellen McCarthy, who served as director under the Office of Planning for Mayor Anthony Williams. She boasts the city already has a “high-functioning planning structure” and questions the benefit of adding a new commission to the mix.

While I don’t think it is likely a commission will be created anytime soon, the debate is important because it sheds light on advantages and drawbacks of the existing system. The two viewpoints are shown below.

Does D.C. need a planning commission?

Yes by Dorn C. McGrath Jr.

D.C. urgently needs what a planning commission might one day provide, but now is not the time. A planning commission needs the political support of the mayor, and recent events tell us a planning commission is on the mayor’s back burner, if on the stove at all.

Why does the District need a planning commission? It would help educate the city government, developers and citizens in every neighborhood about the planning process, which currently is not well understood. Yes, we have a comprehensive plan, but it is, in effect, a triumph of good graphics and ballyhoo over substance. A planning commission could help citizens and public officials understand this and set their sights higher. The D.C. Council vacuously cites the comprehensive plan, but always manages to find a way to defer final action on anything the plan suggests. Then, in haste, it adopts whatever has emerged. This amounts to political flatulence, rather than legislating as the law requires.

A planning commission for the District would provide some parity with the National Capital Planning Commission, a heavily funded agency interested primarily in the federal government’s holdings. The NCPC also calls the shots, ultimately, on whatever the local planning and development office produces in the way of a comprehensive plan.

There is no legal barrier to the city establishing a planning commission. The power of the mayor to do exactly this was confirmed in a 2003 legal opinion by Covington & Burling. Copies of that memorandum of law written for the Committee of 100 were furnished to members of the Council, then-Mayor Tony Williams and Office of Planning officials. They ignored it. The same memorandum was given to the current mayor and his director of planning. They, too, have ignored it. A planning commission might, after all, provide some sort of check on the mayor’s and deputy mayor’s adventures in development.

The city will probably continue to function as it does today without a planning commission. Emergency repairs to failing infrastructure, expensive (mostly speculative) development schemes, an unplanned baseball stadium, and sporadic treatment of selected sites along New York Avenue have become the city’s modus operandi. Meanwhile, the city continues to tolerate the nuisance of an illegally operated trash-transfer facility on Brentwood Road, just opposite the Israel Baptist Church.

The city also has chosen to put aside the messy problem of Department of Motor Vehicle operations, many of which are now crowded into an obsolete, ill-paved shopping center beside the trash-transfer facility. DMV inspectors are reduced to authorizing illegal parking in the shopping center and to conducting their driving tests on overloaded public streets. It is noteworthy that the original testing facility was much larger and located across Brentwood Road, but was compressed and relocated to make room for new development on the Rhode Island Avenue/Brentwood Road site in Northeast.

It seems that “smart growth” now extends only to the low-hanging fruit of new condo and shopping center development, rather than the untidy business of planning for needed parks, recreation facilities, vehicle storage and maintenance and schools.

Mayor Fenty is to be applauded for his valiant effort to take over the embarrassing public school system, but the citizens are still holding their breath to see if he and his new chancellor succeed. In the meantime, many wonder what types of schools will serve whatever types of occupants there may be in the vast number of condominiums that have been built in various locations throughout the city.

Washington is, and will remain, a fragmented city. It is divided between the federal city, which is governed mainly by Congress and the securicrats, and the rest — which is about half — governed to a certain extent by the city government. The city’s budget, never a certainty, is still subject to approval by Congress. A planning commission would be of some help in assuring Congress that there is some relationship between the proposed budget and actual capital improvements, many of which are badly needed. The planning commission would bring a degree of professionalism to the process of government, and begin, at last, the long task of educating officials and the public all across the city about planning per se as a basic obligation of government. The present lineup at OP can’t, and won’t, do this.

When he first came to town from Oakland, Calif., to fill the post of city administrator, Robert Bobb inquired of a group of citizens, “Why doesn’t Washington have a planning commission — nearly every other big city has one?” By now he understands, I’m sure.

Dorn C. McGrath Jr. is professor emeritus at George Washington University. He is a fellow of the American Institute of Certified Planners.

No by Ellen McCarthy

Proponents tout a planning commission for Washington as a cure for all perceived planning ills. Indeed, such commissions are part of the planning process in many, though by no means all, large American cities. D.C., however, already has a high-functioning planning structure, so in order to justify change, we must be clear about what a planning commission can — and cannot — do for Washington.

Many of the arguments for the commission relate more to policy disagreements with the Office of Planning than to identifying holes in the present system that could be fixed by a volunteer planning advisory group.

The District already has a good system of planning checks and balances. The Home Rule Charter designates the mayor as chief planner; the mayor has delegated that power to the Office of Planning, which currently has more than 70 staff positions. OP prepares plans for neighborhoods, maintains a state-of-the art geographic information system and Census data, does long-range planning and prepares a report on every case that goes before the Zoning Commission or Board of Zoning Adjustment.

The charter provides for a Zoning Commission that adopts amendments to zoning regulations, changes to the existing zoning classifications and new overlay districts and also reviews campus plans and proposed planned unit developments. D.C. is unlike most jurisdictions in that its Zoning Commission’s decisions do not go before the council for a vote. They are final, except for appeals to the courts. The Board of Zoning Adjustment grants variances or special exceptions when circumstances make it difficult to abide by the zoning regs.

The touchstone of the entire system is the comprehensive plan, which is prepared by OP, proposed by the mayor, adopted by the Council, and reviewed by National Capital Planning Commission and Congress. In addition to policy goals covering transportation, economic development, urban design, etc., the comp plan includes a map specifying land use and intensity for every parcel in the District. Legally, zoning “may not be inconsistent” with the plan.

One of the major benefits of planning commissions in some cities is to provide objective input on development proposals, frequently as a counterpoint to elected bodies subject to pressure from campaign contributors or small but vocal groups of neighbors. In our case, the Zoning Commission plays this role, largely insulated from political pressures, but still accountable. The mayoral appointees serve specified terms, and can be blocked by the mayor or the Council. The federal representatives are ex officio, and are not beholden to campaign contributors or NIMBYs.

The only major areas left out of ZC review are the comp plan and small neighborhood plans. After extensive public input, these go directly to the Council for review and adoption. Although the Council holds public hearings on these, some planning commission advocates consider this to be insufficient opportunity for public input. It’s a hard argument to make — on the comp plan, for example, there were a Citizen Advisory Commission, three multihour public hearings, two Council votes, dozens of meetings with citizens and local Advisory Neighborhood Commissions and a Web site that received more than 2 million hits.

Some advocates of a planning commission even envision it making recommendations to the Zoning Commission on individual projects. Adding yet another review level to a project that may already be undergoing review by the local Advisory Neighborhood Commission, the neighborhood association, the Office of Planning, the Historic Preservation Review Board and the Zoning Commission or BZA would not serve to encourage investment in our neighborhoods.

Finding qualified members would also be difficult. The number most often suggested is nine. Those members would need some expertise in planning issues and would have to be broadly representative of the city. As it is, there is difficulty in getting the right appointees for the ZC, BZA and HPRB.

And if the planning commission’s staff were to number more than a handful, there would be the possibility of competing planning agencies, creating an unnecessary expense and replicating existing capabilities.

The District is blessed with a professional planning staff and a system of checks and balances. A planning commission might provide for additional public input and objective recommendations to the Council for small-area plans and the comprehensive plan — if sufficient qualified people could be persuaded to serve and if the scope and staffing were carefully managed to avoid unproductive bureaucratic in-fighting. And those are big ifs.

Ellen McCarthy is director of planning and land use in the real estate section at Nixon Peabody. McCarthy served as director of the Office of Planning under then-Mayor Tony Williams.

National Security Sprawl in … Spotsylvania?

Founded as the seat of the federal government, the form of Washington, D.C. has always reflected security concerns. Since the sacking of the capital during the War of 1812, the government has taken increasingly extensive measures to ensure its self-protection, including 68 defensive forts during the Civil War, a beltway beyond the blast radius of an atomic bomb during the Cold War, and bollards and checkpoints today. Defense has often meant distance, and today geographer Deborah Natsios has observed the vast metropolitan region is embedded with “artifacts of the national security infrastructure” including communications equipment, defense contractors offices, and military facilities.

Now distant Spotsylvania County hopes to benefit from what Natsios terms ‘national security sprawl,’ boasting in a recent advertisement in the Washington Business Journal their county is the first jurisdiction along I-95 south of Washington, D.C.’s 50-mile Homeland Security Zone, near several military installations, and boasting offices meeting anti-terrorism requirements. Is the federal government pushing agencies and contractors to locate beyond 50 miles from Washington, or does the distance simply come as an added bonus to an exurban location? For now the issue is unclear. Information about the security zone on the web is scant, but the Washington Post reported a year ago about federal agencies quietly snapping up offices in Winchester, Virginia, which local boosters quickly noted was 75 miles from Washington, well outside the nuclear “strike zone.” The newspaper even helpfully printed a diagram illustrating just where such a boundary falls. Regardless of the precise nature of the cause, it seems security concerns are pushing government facilities into a new frontier far beyond the existing metropolitan area. Needless to say, the trend runs counter to local government efforts to cultivate smart growth in existing urban areas in order to economize on infrastructure and protect environmental quality.

There is some evidence Spotsylvania’s hopes to capitalize on security sprawl is coming true: the Census estimates the county has added some 30,000 residents since 2000, bringing their population to some 120,000. Capital Region urban observers may want to begin to study the names of a new ring of suburban counties.

> Previously: D.C.’s National Security Sprawl
> Washington Post: “New Rural Sales Pitch: Work Outside D.C.’s Fallout Zone”

O Street Market Redevelopment

Although some Shaw blogs have already posted some of these images, I thought readers would be interested to see the first architectural renderings of the redevelopment planned by Roadside Development for the site currently occupied by the Shaw Giant Supermarket, and the ruins of the 1881 O Street Market (more). The company has dubbed the project “CityMarket.”

The project is planned to contain 601 apartments and condos, a 200-room hotel, and a 56,000 square foot supermarket. It will also, in the developer’s words, “will spark the redevelopment of the historic Shaw community by providing two and one half levels of underground parking … The required parking under District zoning would be approximately 300 spaces while 700 spaces will be provided.”