Is the Beltway our future?

Until several months ago I thought of Washington, D.C. as a great urban success. With its booming, diverse economy, urban core and globalizing culture – all tied together by enviable transit – it has so much to offer.

However every time I’m on the Beltway, experience the sprawl of Virginia and Maryland or travel on massive new highways built while transit stalls, I’m not so sure. Do most people consider this growth pattern progress?
 
I’ve spent a lot of my free time attending events on urbanism and reading about design, development and growth. I’ve seen that many ideas I promoted during my city council campaign are applicable all over, especially considering that 70% of the world’s population will live in cities within 30 years. Two recent events brought this into clear focus for me.
 
During a lecture here by Witold Rybczynski to promote his new book, How Architecture Works, he shared examples of exquisite stairways and spaces ranging from the new addition to Fort Worth’s Kimball Museum to houses in California. Good architecture is a miracle when it happens, he said, but it doesn't happen often. It’s a fair point, but seems too narrow.

How can we incentivize better design? Rybczynski, who served on a design commission in Washington, D.C. during a distinguished career of architecture criticism, said design review boards can help keep "really bad stuff" from happening but can't make good architecture. Architects need discipline and demanding clients to do their best work. Great design results from a strong community.

Is a strong community ultimately defined only as an enlightened benefactor? In Seattle, for example, there’s a fantastic new central public library, thanks to a determined owner. But mostly I saw neighbors object to building proposals and local media give voice to potential drawbacks, not to mention an imagined war on cars. More building is always "out of scale" rather than seen as a way to develop more affordable housing and create a more-urban critical mass of community. The result of neighborhood influence is often nearly lookalike five­-story, wood-on-concrete structures with fake brick and wood Craftsman trim. In the D.C. area a similar process drives faux-Georgian sprawl.

Unfortunately I didn’t hear answers from others in the audience. So many of them -- ­­ largely architects ­­ -- seem dispirited by the bottom-line pressure of their business. One asked what went wrong with architectural education, as if academic exercises are to blame for professional timidity.
 
Another key event was the great “LA Constructs the Future” exhibit currently at the National Building Museum. The show traces development of transportation, water, community and buildings in Los Angeles during the half century starting in 1940. It addresses plenty of the downsides to the development (I'm still haunted by the image of a woman being forcibly evicted from Chavez Ravine). But the key takeaway for me was how many of those freeways and building designs have been copied by everyone else (often while criticizing LA’s traffic, smog, sprawl, etc.).
 
The exhibit leaves off in 1990, which marked the beginning of extraordinary transit development and improved walkability in the LA area. Downtown flourishes and urban growth continues to transform the city beyond what appears in the exhibit. Meanwhile many changes in greater Washington, D.C. aren’t as positive. Metro has declined and there’s little traction to improve or expand the subway system. Big changes to urban design in the District are on hold while growth continues in suburbs, necessitating more roads and sprawl.
 
It seems clear that our collective future depends on making urban areas that can effectively sustain more people. That means combining strong design with transit, work and mechanisms to strengthen community with activated spaces -- all with a focus on preserving resources. I'm hopeful for examples where this is happening and elements that can be copied.