Suburban sprawl is awful. The best setup is found in pre-car places such as old European towns, or Georgetown/Alexandria in the DC area: medium-density rowhouses and 2-3 story apartments. Each residential zone of roughly a quarter mile features a small commercial strip. Several such zones clustered around a larger commercial street/plaza and a train station make up a town, and several 'towns' surrounding still higher-density commercial zones constitute a city.
A place like Tysons Corner? Ghastly is the only way to describe it. But they toss up blocks of overpriced condos between the highway flyovers and parking garages, and people evidently buy them. Even by the standards of our insane society, one of the great mysteries to me is why everyone knows what a "nice neighborhood" looks and feels like in terms of architecture and urbanism, but nobody can manage to actually build a new one.
I lived for 24 years in Reston, Virginia -- the "new town" where the whole idea was to "trade some private, small green space, and maybe even a little bit of privacy, for more coherent, functioning open space and countryside closer to the population center." We didn't have to trade ALL our private, small green space, but private yards were small and common space, untouched trees, and paths through the woods were pervasive. It was good for my family, good for the community, and good for the soul. Areas of Reston have, as planned, subsequently given way to commercial development, but most of its residential greenery thankfully remains intact.
Happy to live near both Grelen Nursery and Montpelier, the place where much of our Constitution was written or conceived by James Madison. In the current Virginia re-districting saga, the beautiful Piedmont of Central Virginia, home to the Presidential Precinct and UVA, is considered 'trickle-down' from Loudon County or part of southside VA along the NC line. The special masters have no conception that this place, which has the largest acreage in the Commonwealth in permanent conservation easement, and ranks in the top counties in the US in the USDA ag census for horticulture production, is in fact a "community of interest".
Whether urban, suburban or rural dwellers in the Piedmont of Central VA, we seem to value open space and growing living things, and preserving history, farms and a way of life. Visitors, whether for weddings or gardens, hiking, wine or sports, seem to value open space as well. We are a community interested in conservation.
When I read the tree species that you spotted, it made me wonder what a conservative like you thinks about native vs. imported trees. Or maybe it has never crossed your mind! I didn't think about it much at all until I saw a presentation on native plants sometime within the past two years.
Suburban sprawl is awful. The best setup is found in pre-car places such as old European towns, or Georgetown/Alexandria in the DC area: medium-density rowhouses and 2-3 story apartments. Each residential zone of roughly a quarter mile features a small commercial strip. Several such zones clustered around a larger commercial street/plaza and a train station make up a town, and several 'towns' surrounding still higher-density commercial zones constitute a city.
A place like Tysons Corner? Ghastly is the only way to describe it. But they toss up blocks of overpriced condos between the highway flyovers and parking garages, and people evidently buy them. Even by the standards of our insane society, one of the great mysteries to me is why everyone knows what a "nice neighborhood" looks and feels like in terms of architecture and urbanism, but nobody can manage to actually build a new one.
I lived for 24 years in Reston, Virginia -- the "new town" where the whole idea was to "trade some private, small green space, and maybe even a little bit of privacy, for more coherent, functioning open space and countryside closer to the population center." We didn't have to trade ALL our private, small green space, but private yards were small and common space, untouched trees, and paths through the woods were pervasive. It was good for my family, good for the community, and good for the soul. Areas of Reston have, as planned, subsequently given way to commercial development, but most of its residential greenery thankfully remains intact.
Happy to live near both Grelen Nursery and Montpelier, the place where much of our Constitution was written or conceived by James Madison. In the current Virginia re-districting saga, the beautiful Piedmont of Central Virginia, home to the Presidential Precinct and UVA, is considered 'trickle-down' from Loudon County or part of southside VA along the NC line. The special masters have no conception that this place, which has the largest acreage in the Commonwealth in permanent conservation easement, and ranks in the top counties in the US in the USDA ag census for horticulture production, is in fact a "community of interest".
Whether urban, suburban or rural dwellers in the Piedmont of Central VA, we seem to value open space and growing living things, and preserving history, farms and a way of life. Visitors, whether for weddings or gardens, hiking, wine or sports, seem to value open space as well. We are a community interested in conservation.
When I read the tree species that you spotted, it made me wonder what a conservative like you thinks about native vs. imported trees. Or maybe it has never crossed your mind! I didn't think about it much at all until I saw a presentation on native plants sometime within the past two years.