Sequel to Suburbia by Nicholas A. Phelps

Author:Nicholas A. Phelps [Phelps, Nicolas A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: 2016-11-03T00:00:00+00:00

The proximate origin of the initial speculation in greenfield land beginning in the 1960s and its conversion into urban land soon after can be found in two rather different tributaries, one from without the community, in the form of significant federal and state expenditures, and one within the community, in the form of the early acquiescence of residents to a post-suburban politics of local sufficiency in place of the local liabilities associated with a purely residential community. One curiosity is that it is the private residential and commercial growth of Tysons Corner, unleashed by major public investment for the private use of the automobile, that now stands to be reworked again through public investment for the collective consumption represented by mass transit.

Tysons Corner and the Systematic Distortion of Regional Patterns of Accessibility

The regional accessibility of the location that is now Tysons Corner was massively enhanced by major expenditures by federal and state governments devoted to road infrastructure improvements. Notable among these improvements were the building of the Washington Dulles International Airport, an associated access road, and the Capital Beltway, but also expansions of state roads.

The handful of “growth entrepreneurs” that set development in motion realized, for different reasons, the locational attractions of Tysons Corner.10 As the former chief executive of Fairfax County observed, it was not developers per se who developed Tysons but individuals who had acquired land and held on to it for a long time.11 Prior to the construction of the Capital Beltway, roughly two-thirds of the primarily dairy farming and quarry land at Tysons Corner was in the hands of just six owners, who also began to acquire adjacent land once the route of the Beltway became apparent.12 However, the nature of development at Tysons Corner and in much of Fairfax County is closely associated with the tenacity of the likes of John “Til” Hazel and Gerry Halpin, who, aside from having direct interests in development, also were instrumental in shaping and defending the county’s aggressive pro-development stance since the mid-1970s.13 Tysons is the product of the specific differential locational advantages partly set in motion by these state interventions.14 Such investments ensured that “a new ‘Americanism’ even entered the language—‘beltway’—to describe the broad expressways that encircled every important city by 1975 and that attracted employers of every description.”15 Tysons would be a perfect example of this phenomenon as it became the home to many “Beltway bandits,” the moniker given to the many Pentagon defense contractors that congregated there from the 1960s on.

An interviewee recalled that the original growth entrepreneurs associated with Tysons Corner “were people who deal with maps and they don’t deal with site plans. They look at regions and they say okay here are the pieces and where do you want to be in twenty years from now? I think they got this one right and they have been proven right by the success that Tysons Corner has had.”16 It is a description that resonates with Harvey Molotch’s reference to the power of maps for the development community.

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