The future of Tysons Corner remains one of the greatest uncertainties facing Fairfax county, with Metrorail and a flurry of redevelopment projects expected to profoundly reshape the area in coming years.
One pre-eminent expert in city planning believes Tysons, if done right, could “mimic much of the success” of Arlington’s Rosslyn-Ballston corridor, where walkable neighborhoods, mixed-use development and manageable traffic have won accolades across the country as a victory of smart planning.
Robert Cervero, who chairs the Department of City & Regional Planning at the University of California, Berkeley and serves as a consultant for a firm planning the future of Tysons, estimates such a transformation could take place in 10 to 20 years.
“Since Tysons is a product of several decades of car-oriented development patterns … it won’t look like Arlington County in any compressed time frame,” he wrote in an e-mail to The Examiner this week.
The entire plan hinges on the four Metrorail stations slated to cut east to west through the area as part of the first phase of the Dulles Corridor Metrorail Project.
Enormous growth is expected around the new rail stops, which planners in Fairfax County are now mulling how to guide.
Cervero said Arlington was shaped by its proximity to D.C., “with government jobs spilling outward in the building-height restricted District” and mandates to keep federal offices near rail.
Also important was the decision not to run Metro’s Orange Line down the median of Interstate 66, but to instead incur higher costs of land-purchasing and tunneling to “maximize the city-shaping impact” of the track.
Tysons, however, is set apart by major obstacles. It does not share the same proximity to the District, nor is it likely to see a Metrorail tunnel of the sort that links Arlington’s stations.
VirginiaGov. Tim Kaine has held firm in his plans for an aerial track.
Development in the area has created a sprawling, spread-out landscape of retail and office buildings cut through with busy highways.
“I don’t think it will ever be as walkable as Arlington,” said Stephen Fuller, director of George Mason University’s Center for Regional Analysis. “It’s a much bigger piece of geography and they have more roads penetrating it that weren’t designed to be pedestrian-friendly.”
