Virtual Adjacency® » Woodmont Triangle, Bethesda, MD

Woodmont Triangle, Bethesda, MD

This is how to grow an old urban area in a Smart Growth TOD
(Transit Oriented Development) manner without destroying it at the same time.

In the age of virtual adjacency, the experience of place is the top priority.
Unless we make “being there” worth the effort of “getting there”, it will die.

Think of the web-page below as a 53+ tab three-ring binder. Tabs 1 through 13 relate primarily to Fairmont Avenue in the Woodmont Triangle in Bethesda, MD as a specific example applying my creative thinking to solve this critically important problem (please start with the Front Cover and then Tab 9 then Tab 8.)

Tabs 14 through 48 are the intellectual foundation supporting the vision, insights and governmental repair enabled by the new Maryland State Law proposed in Tab 48a-2 (then Tab 51a; then Tab 53c.)

Tab 28a sets out the big ideas on just one page — it took seven years of thinking to write. Tab 48a-1a is a two page bullet point summary of the public benefits that the proposed new State Law — SRSOD Maryland State Rail Station Overlay Districts — will produce. The proposed SRSOD will make developing TOD Buildings on land within walking distance of rail stations so attractive, rational and efficient that green, smart growth will thrive, the public will become healthier, both enabling government itself to become sustainable — deficits are deadly.

How the money moves is a very important part of the “magic” of the SRSOD.
Please look at Tabs 10b and 10c and then 10a.

Tabs 49a through 49k are substantive letters of support from smart, experienced people — please start by reading Tab 49e3.

Tabs 50a through 50m and 52e and 52e2 are letters of support from the “politically correct” people — please start by reading Tabs 50d and 52e.

There are four big ideas:

1) The ‘project’ is the neighborhood. Individual buildings are pieces of the larger jigsaw puzzle. Once the “skeleton” (the public realm) is properly developed by local government (with state assistance as provided by the SRSOD) approving buildings (the “muscles”) becomes one-public-hearing easy. How the money moves is so logical and fair it will seem like magic (Tabs 10b and 10c.)

2) Metro-rail is a horizontal elevator. Land within walking distance of every station (Tab 28a) is “another floor in the same building.” An elevator is a vertical metro-rail — neither makes sense without the other (i.e. land-use and transportation MUST be addressed together — N.B. subject to the SRSOD’s Design Review Guidelines and sale of increased density at 50% of actual value (NOT TDR’s! see Tab 48a-3a,) height limits and FAR limits as absolute fixed numbers are not legal);

3) Land surrounding rail stations in the suburbs today has an automobile-fabric public realm. Buildings sit in the middle of parking lots. TOD buildings sit on sidewalks. It makes no sense to construct a building on a sidewalk if everything surrounding it is parking lots and roads. This problem CANNOT be solved one project at a time yet that is exactly what we have been trying to do for 3 decades! The public realm is the context within which the private sector exists. It is government’s job to address this in the most efficient (cost and time) manner possible (please see Tabs 41a-1 through 42b-2.) The SRSOD enables this to happen powerfully and efficiently; and

4) Almost every number in zoning is arbitrary — DO NOT give them divine significance. The land-use regulatory goal should be to maximize sources and destinations of pedestrians within walking distance (Tab 28a) of rail stations. This is a design issue requiring flexibility — NOT rigid linear mathematical formulas that presume every site is identical. Context matters.