Ryan Avent has been writing about local neighborhood opposition to development in his neighborhood of Brookland. As in Takoma, Metro and DC’s Office of Planning want to develop poorly utilized, unattractive land that’s mostly parking lots and unusable open space into residences and public plazas.

And as in Takoma, neighbors are up in arms about preserving the small-town feel of their neighborhoods. As Ryan writes,

Brookland is a 15 minute Metro ride away from the second most expensive central business district in the country. It’s a 5 minute Metro ride away from the New York Avenue Metro station, which will soon be the center of one of the densest office and residential areas in the city. Brookland is primarily made up of single-family, detached, bungalow style housing.

I appreciate that people moved to a sleepy neighborhood and now they want to keep it the way it was. But with the limited public transit we have, we should be building higher density next to rail stations to take advantage of the service that exists today (especially since it’s so expensive to build more).

The Brookland proposal doesn’t aim to raze the neighborhood and put in high rises, just to build a few higher density buildings right at the station. I’d rather something a little more interesting than the standard donut-shaped blocks, but it’s at least an urban form more suitable to a transit stop in a major city, unlike the suburban parking lots and voids we have today.

David Alpert created Greater Greater Washington in 2008 and was its executive director until 2020. He formerly worked in tech and has lived in the Boston, San Francisco Bay, and New York metro areas in addition to Washington, DC. He lives with his wife and two children in Dupont Circle.