Walkable Vienna vs. Walkable Falls Church City
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Anonymous
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What do you think is better in terms of location? Living within a 1-mile radius of 123 (main street) in downtown Vienna or living within a 1-mile radius of route 7 (Broad St) in Falls Church city?
Which area tends to have higher prices? |
Anonymous
| Neither - noisy and more air pollution from vehicles because you're on a major roadway with lots of intersections with stoplights which cause cars and trucks to idle often. What do you need to walk to so badly? I'd rather live with less noise and cleaner air, further from major roadways. |
Anonymous
| Falls Church, but it matters which side of 7 and there are parts that aren't nice. There is more flexibility / more options within 1 mile of 123 in Vienna. |
Anonymous
| Falls Church |
Anonymous
All of Falls Church City is nice. Even the less “nice” neighborhoods south of Broad are still full of 2.5-3M new homes. There is no bad place to live in FCC. I’d say go by your commute time. We live in FCC, but I really like Town of Vienna and would have lived there if it didn’t add another 10-20 minutes to my downtown commute. That does add up. |
Anonymous
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Voice of dissent here, I guess. I lived in FCC (walking distance from WFC metro) for over 15 years, and left about a year ago to move to Vienna (near Wolf Trap). I prefer Vienna. Hard to put my finger on why, but it is cultural. I love the restaurants and shopping, especially on Church St. And Vienna has more of a community feel to me. We know all of our neighbors, having lived here 11 months. We knew few of them in FCC even after being in a house for over a decade.
I do agree with the PP about the extra 20 mins on the commute adding up though (and that is what it has been for us -- an extra 20 mins one way, so 40 total). |
Anonymous
| We love FCC and walk just about everywhere. Very neighborly and relaxed with tons of amenities. We had to pay more than we initially wanted to but we've never regretted it |
Anonymous
| Vienna for a million reasons, unless you're commuting to DC. If you work in VA, it's no comparison |
Anonymous
| I've lived in both, having recently moved from FCC near the new Founders Row to Vienna, a short stroll from Maple Street. All the construction in Falls Church is adding traffic and chaos, while not really adding much to the character. Vienna feels much more relaxed. There are definitely places within Falls Church City I miss (Cherry Hill Park, Godfrey's, Four Provibces). But, Vienna has a a lot of wonderful places too, especially for foodies. |
Anonymous
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The walkability of both these places is vastly overhyped by people who have apparently never lived in a truly walkable town or city. In each case, there is a lot of retail concentrated along a single street (Route 123 in Vienna and Route 7 in Falls Church City). Vienna residents also overhype Church Street, which is parallel to Route 223 and has a very small amount of additional retail.
FCC is more expensive because it’s closer to DC, but not because it’s much more walkable. Notably, neither area has a Metro station in the core retail area. The Vienna Metro is off Route 66 outside the Town of Vienna and the two Falls Church Metro stations are in Arlington and Fairfax Counties, not Falls Church City. |
Anonymous
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I live in the Town of Vienna, less than half a mile from Maple Ave, and I can and do easily walk to the following locations:
Vienna Community Center W&OD Trail Waters Field Vienna Library Vienna Elementary School (and their fun playground in the back) Vienna Town Green Whole Foods Giant Michaels Tons of casual food places: Vienna Inn, Pure Pasty Co, Taco Bamba, Fosters, Panera, Call Your Mother deli, Crumble, Chipotle, Rita's Frozen Custard, The Sandwich Shop etc. etc. Tons of nicer restaurants: Evelyn Rose, Seray, Maple Ave Restaurant, Roberto's Ristorante Italiano, Cafe Renaissance, Bear Branch Tavern, etc. etc. The area is extremely walkable |
Anonymous
OP asked to compare two similar parts of the local area, not some secret third place that doesn't exist here. The fact is, in both Vienna and FC you can live in a nice house with a yard and walk to something - either transit, or restaurants/shopping, and in a few cases both. That's relatively rare in suburban Virginia. It's more possible to be near both transit and shopping in FC, but you have to make tradeoffs regardless. I would not get hung up on exactly where the town boundaries are, either. You can live across the street from WFC Metro (or a block back, for nicer houses) and walk to grocery and retail, even if the station isn't in FCC. I live outside TOV and can walk to the downtown core. |
Anonymous
No one wants to walk on Route 123 (you can call it Maple Avenue but it’s just Route 123 in Vienna) with all the cars constantly turning into the parking lots. And the retail is mostly all on 123, so you really have to have one destination in mind. Not to mention that most of the residences are more than a 1/2 mile from 123 anyway. |
Anonymous
Ummm, more than half of those locations are not on 123 |
Anonymous
| Ah, what could have been. If only the Old Timers running Falls Church in the 70's had insisted (like Arlington wisely did) that the future Metro stops need to be underground and entrances located on Broad Street (Rt 7). Now THAT would have meant a truly walkable city. Would have made sense for Vienna as well. |