Geography of Nowhere

Time to switch topics! Let's talk urban design.

So, the weekend before this past one, I was spending a couple of days in Virginia with my sister following a business meeting in DC. In a departure from most of Northern Virginia, my sister happens to live in a place where you can actually walk to do errands. There's a whole shopping plaza just a couple of short blocks away, and its even one of those New Urbanism-inspired ones where they try to make it look like a little village and include sidewalks around the seas of parking so you can in fact walk from store to store, even the Home Depot. Sarcasm about the architectural results aside, it is a much better amenity that what I see just about anywhere else in the region. (Excepting places, of course, that have actual town or neighborhood centers still standing, like traditional Reston. Oh, and don't get me started on Reston "Town Center".)

Anyway, so I was walking home from the grocery store with my nephew, and came upon this little intersection:



This is actually a view back the way I came, walking along the sidewalk pictured here. The building to the right-hand side of the picture is the library, I think; there's also some sort of public building and a church on that side, so I tend to forget what order they go in. On the left-hand side of the picture you can see the shopping center from which we recently departed. Again, not the best architecture or the friendliest street, but it's nice to have all of these things so close by.

In a different direction across the intersection, you can see that this is also one of the denser reidential developments you'll find in the area; while most places are single-family house on lots ranging from a postage stamp to an envelope, here, we have a mix of town-homes, apartments, and a little hotel across the way.

In these two views, you can see the housing and another view of the shopping center. You can also see the sidewalks, which are very important to note in light of the next image:

Now, I spent a lot of my growing up time in Northern Virginia; ten years. I'm incredibly familiar with the disappearing sidewalk problem, where you're walking on one side of the street, and then the sidewalk on that side disappears, and you have to cross to the other side of the street. LEED-ND (a new "green" rating system for neighborhood development from the US Green Building Council) even has a point - possibly a required one - for having sidewalks on both sides of a street, in order to reward people for having basic common sense about pedestrians moving around a neighborhood. I'm also familiar with the suddenly stopping sidewalk, where in the middle of your walk you just abruptly come to the end of pavement. Both of these are common features of the Northern Virginia landscape.

But I was stopped short (literally and figuratively) but this curb cut. Far more than Palin's Bridge to Nowhere, this is really incomprehensible; I mean, once you roll up on this curb cut, where exactly are you supposed to go? Did they just want to give you a little safe haven where you could observe the intersection from all four corners, just for a sense of completeness? Are they hoping for sidewalk funding to come later? Are they trying to facilitate a smooth transition from on-road to off-road for off-road wheelchair adventurers?

Faced with this boondoggle, I found myself with a limited number of unattractive options: cross the street to get to the remaining sidewalk, then cross back a block later to get back on the side where my sister's development is located; muddle my way through the grass for the next block; go diagonally to my left across a charming asphalt parking lot, then take a short but steep grassy incline to end up in my sister's neighborhood. I choose option (c), thankfully not twisting my ankle in heels as I ran down the parking lot edge to the street. I forgot to take a photo of that; also, interestingly, no stairs to descend that incline, nor a sidewalk at the bottom on that side of the road that the incline leads down to ... just hill, curb, slip between parked cars into roadway, cross quickly to the sidewalk that goes around my sister's street.

Ah, the suburban adventure. Nothing makes you appreciate home like going somewhere else for a while, and then realizing just how good you have it. :-)