Tysons Corner is the classic Edge City, and perhaps the original inspiration for the term. They’re the cities created entirely around the automobile, the mall, and the suburban office park style of architecture—what Christopher Leinberger calls the “Futurama vision” of the shiny new America that looked so exciting in the 1950s. Now that we’ve seen that world and decided those old cities aren’t so bad after all, Tysons is trying to follow in Arlington’s footsteps and become a walkable place. And they have some plans.

The Tysons Corner Land Use Task Force has spent some time figuring out how to turn a huge area full of big box stores, office towers, two malls, and innumerable parking lots into a walkable place.

The urban design presentation looks good, with a dense grid of streets and mixed-use TOD around Metro stations. This is pretty standard stuff nowadays in jurisdictions that understand modern urban design ideas, like DC and Arlington. It’s also the same kind of somewhat generic big buildings that take up most of the block that’s common to contemporary urban redevelopment, and probably unavoidable in a real estate industry that turns everything into nineteen standard product types. The two alternatives presented differ little, except for a circulator that would enable other higher-density corridors away from the Metro station.

The transportation presentation provides a clearer choice, between transportation decisions that facilitate driving or those geared toward pedestrians. The specific diagrams are subtle in their differences, but the pedestrian-friendly improvements would transfer 4% more trips to transit with no loss in job growth, according to the consultants’ model.

Ultimately, these presentations suggest minor variations on a central theme: Tysons, America’s “Futurama” model edge city, is committed to becoming a walkable urban place. If we could convince Maryland’s more recalcitrant areas like Prince George’s County to embrace walkable urbanism, Greater Washington truly would become greater.

Continue the conversation about urbanism in the Washington region and support GGWash’s news and advocacy when you join the GGWash Neighborhood!

Tagged: development, smart growth, tysons, virginia

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.