Amble Arlington

Words like ‘hip’, ‘dynamic’, and ‘vibrant’ describe the dazzling urban development success story that is Arlington, Virginia. Ten years ago, Wilson Boulevard, Arlington’s central thoroughfare, was a pedestrian-hostile, scruffy careen past used car lots and an abandoned Sears warehouse. But underneath, Arlington has always had good bones in its historically interesting architecture, rich cultural blend, and a quietly percolating arts scene. How did Arlington’s image go from scuffed to buffed? It walked.

Years of doggedly consistent ‘enlightened land use’ decisions have retooled the little county into a pedestrian-oriented, string of ‘urban villages’ where people - rather than their cars – are funneled from mixed-use, mixed-income neighborhoods, or straight down their condos’ elevators, safely and easily to metro hubs, schools, restaurants, trails, and shops. Today, a walk down Wilson both day and night, blends a neighborhood stroll with a city bustle past bistros and barbershops, farmers’ markets, and music venues.

Art-lington

Their art is in the right place

Arlington, Virginia that walkable, bikeable, breatheable Hub of Hip didn't get that way by chance, but by consistent, far-sighted urban planning that has created, like the public art that dots its median strips and gardens, an award winning, liveable space.

http://www.arlingtonva.us/departments/CountyManager/awards/page66500.aspx

Here Arlington artists festoon a traffic island in Rosslyn with over 600 solar-powered light-emitting diodes, secured to rods of varying heights, illuminated

What's Old is Green Again in Old Town, Alexandria

Up and down its lovely cobbled lanes and leafy historic streets, Alexandria is going green.

Excited, it seems to comply with this spring's unanimous City Council vote to adopt rather rigorous Green Building policy, new building and restorations in the city are feverishly incorporating sustainable materials like soapstone and bamboo into centuries-old townhouse redesigns; they're flooring old warehouse lofts with re-purposed wood from Shenandoah barns; they're devising futuristic passive-ventilation systems for delightful little carriage houses; and they're sluicing everything in healthy natural light and a southern exposure. It's the chic-green future of Virginia architecture with the grace of history's heft, and it's going on right now all over Alexandria.

So proud of their newly dubbed "EcoCity", Alexandria City Council has produced this map splashed with colors marking green building sites. http://alexandriava.gov/uploadedFiles/planning/info/MapGreenBuildingsJune2009.pdf

"Cromley Lofts: The Ease of Green"

Is it because they're gorgeous, or because they're green that Cromley Lofts in Old Town Alexandria have sold like hot cakes - like elegantly bamboo'd, green-roofed, low-VOC'd, rough-hewn-beamed, dual-flush hot cakes?

It's both, no doubt, but, undertaken as the project was, just at the moment the planet's economy began its downhill plummet - a moment that pioneer developer, Bill Cromley, candidly calls "a feat of spectacularly bad timing" - Virginia's first 'Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED)' - certified condominiums could have gone either way.

Cromley could have just taken the beautiful bones of the battered 1910 warehouse on Queen Street, and polished-up its 10-foot ceilings, exposed brick, sophisticated lines, and park views. Instead, he stayed true to a Green Building philosophy that nurtures both beauty and utility seeking features like heart-of-pine flooring salvaged from a Georgia textile mill, using rapidly renewing materials like cork and bamboo, sealing ductwork systems, finely crafting complex green design and then sluicing it all with natural light.