Shame we can't get quality architecture like that in Boston... instead we mostly get Elkus offset window slop and alucobond.
The new development in the surrounding DC metro area is such a conundrum to me. Its very dense, its good quality, and it looks good, but the road networks its being built on is the normal suburban disconnected shitshow. So youre ending up with all of these random dense little clusters plopped all over the place that arent connected to eachother, and many only have one road in and out to the existing suburban road network. Its so weird. Theyre getting most of the pieces right, but then the road network is a complete disaster.
They really should have created an overarching masterplan first of how the road networks were going to be built and connected together, preferably some type of grid, and then filled it in with development from there. Instead theyre just doing it the normal piecemeal way its done in the suburbs and its creating the weirdest development patterns that look nice and are dense, but arent walkable, bikeable, or mixed use which ends up with basically all the same problems as normal sprawling single family suburban sub divisions.
Heres a new neighborhood in maryland right outside dc. Very dense, townhomes, should be good right?
Looks nice at street level.
Then you zoom out and its just like what in gods name?
Another one in maryland, very dense new development.
Lots of garages, but its a nice neighborhood and its very dense.
Zoom out and its just… record scratch.
Suburban virginia by dulles is a whole other nightmare. TONS of development going on out there. Very dense, theres even a local street grid they built out for this one.
The houses look good from street level.
And then zoom out and its just a spaghetti bowl shit show of who the hell knows whats going on. They even built a new heavy rail extension out this way, so theres so many things that should be making this very successful. The mishmash of suburban roads though is really doing a lot of damage though to the overall cohesion of the area.
Its definitely good that a huge amount of development is happening, but we should be able to do much better than this. This is the problem with doing piecemeal developments. Its ironic that its outside D.C. because D.C. is the perfect example of how laying down the street grid first is the most important step. In D.C., NYC, Philly, Savannah…etc the first thing they did was lay out the street grid. In many cases thats all they did. Then the developers filled in the rest over time.
The road network is soo important because its the arteries and circulatory system of a city, and once theyre laid down theyre almost impossible to change later when each house has its own property rights. Its so important to get it right the first time. They really need to find a way to have an overarching masterplan for the road network, or this is going to just continue forever. Now that all of these horrible road networks are laid out theyre going to be there for hundreds of years. If they could have build a real street grid its much easier to densify more and more as time goes on, but these suburban road layouts are built in place and very hard to densify later on. I’m not sure how they would be able to fix this, but they cant keep going about development this way because its making the road network an absolute disaster.