Anonymous
Post 05/15/2025 18:07     Subject: Re:What’s the most horribly planned community in the dc area?

Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:There should be books about this. Ugh. “Planned.” HOAs. All so scary and terrible. N


HOAs are a necessary annoyance. They protect your neighborhood quality of life by preventing people from opening a strip club, smoke shop, or bar next to your house. It zoning rules change and your don’t have HOAs, or covenants your neighborhood can be completely ruined by a handful of inconsiderate people.


Zoning and HOA are completely different things. Don’t conflate the two. Zoning is what prevents clubs and shops opening next to your house, not HOA. HOA controls different aspects of your neighborhood within zoning rules, mostly appearances.


I am not conflating these things at all. The point I’m making is that zoning is no longer an adequate guardrail to protect quality of life in your neighborhood. States are passing laws that preempt local zoning rules and elected officials are increasingly ignoring the preferences of residents when they pass zoning ordinances. Unless your community has an HOA or Covenants, your neighborhood is increasingly at risk of transformational changes that will significantly impact quality of life (oftentimes in a negative way).
Anonymous
Post 05/15/2025 16:38     Subject: What’s the most horribly planned community in the dc area?

I’m on the Tyson’s sucks bandwagon.

Pretty sure you need to have a full tank of gas just to get out of the mall. You could be there for hours.
Anonymous
Post 05/15/2025 13:11     Subject: What’s the most horribly planned community in the dc area?

Anonymous wrote:All of NoVa

ITA. It is the area that’s certainly going through “growing pains” . I don’t spend much time in Moco to determine if it’s the same, but it sound like it’s also true. The entire metro area is trying to catch up on increasing density without adequate transit and infrastructure and spread out “town centers”
Anonymous
Post 05/15/2025 13:08     Subject: What’s the most horribly planned community in the dc area?

Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Tyson’s is the one place in the city that has so much potential in terms of having 1)infinite shopping, 2)offices for work, 3)housing, 4)metro to both airports. It’s all squandered in a weird unwalkable mix of car sewers

Tysons could be DC’s little Manhattan if it wanted to


Ick! Tysons is not in the city. It is where people who are scared of cities go to be boring.


It’s a mall that acquired a good number of office towers to warrant construction of residential towers and support a certain number of restaurants and daily routine errand businesses, medical offices, etc. In other words, it’s becoming a self sufficient town, not just one with one specific purpose, and definitely not just a weekend hangout place like many suburban town centers. It’s not up to human scale yet, but further development of residential towers will likely introduce more pedestrian overpasses and expanding little town streets like the Boro and area around Cap One, Wegmans. It’s not a city, but it’s a town, it’s no longer just a mall or a large office park.
Anonymous
Post 05/15/2025 12:41     Subject: What’s the most horribly planned community in the dc area?

All of NoVa
Anonymous
Post 05/15/2025 12:38     Subject: What’s the most horribly planned community in the dc area?

Anonymous wrote:Tyson’s is the one place in the city that has so much potential in terms of having 1)infinite shopping, 2)offices for work, 3)housing, 4)metro to both airports. It’s all squandered in a weird unwalkable mix of car sewers

Tysons could be DC’s little Manhattan if it wanted to


Ick! Tysons is not in the city. It is where people who are scared of cities go to be boring.
Anonymous
Post 05/15/2025 12:36     Subject: Re:What’s the most horribly planned community in the dc area?

Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:There should be books about this. Ugh. “Planned.” HOAs. All so scary and terrible. N


HOAs are a necessary annoyance. They protect your neighborhood quality of life by preventing people from opening a strip club, smoke shop, or bar next to your house. It zoning rules change and your don’t have HOAs, or covenants your neighborhood can be completely ruined by a handful of inconsiderate people.


Not needed in my neighborhood.
Anonymous
Post 05/15/2025 10:55     Subject: What’s the most horribly planned community in the dc area?

Anonymous wrote:Tyson’s is the one place in the city that has so much potential in terms of having 1)infinite shopping, 2)offices for work, 3)housing, 4)metro to both airports. It’s all squandered in a weird unwalkable mix of car sewers

Tysons could be DC’s little Manhattan if it wanted to


There is not enough density and population in the entire DC metro to make Manhattan. Tysons is still trying to aspire to be something at least like Buckhead in Atlanta. A satellite highrise town with luxury shopping, restaurants, offices and condos where bored nearby suburbanites can take their teenage daughters to the mall and spend a night out
Anonymous
Post 05/15/2025 10:45     Subject: Re:What’s the most horribly planned community in the dc area?

Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:There should be books about this. Ugh. “Planned.” HOAs. All so scary and terrible. N


HOAs are a necessary annoyance. They protect your neighborhood quality of life by preventing people from opening a strip club, smoke shop, or bar next to your house. It zoning rules change and your don’t have HOAs, or covenants your neighborhood can be completely ruined by a handful of inconsiderate people.


Zoning and HOA are completely different things. Don’t conflate the two. Zoning is what prevents clubs and shops opening next to your house, not HOA. HOA controls different aspects of your neighborhood within zoning rules, mostly appearances.
Anonymous
Post 05/15/2025 09:48     Subject: What’s the most horribly planned community in the dc area?

Anonymous wrote:Tyson’s is the one place in the city that has so much potential in terms of having 1)infinite shopping, 2)offices for work, 3)housing, 4)metro to both airports. It’s all squandered in a weird unwalkable mix of car sewers

Tysons could be DC’s little Manhattan if it wanted to


Well when you have Mike Tyson design a city you are not exactly hiring a Genius.
Anonymous
Post 05/15/2025 08:17     Subject: Re:What’s the most horribly planned community in the dc area?

Anonymous wrote:There should be books about this. Ugh. “Planned.” HOAs. All so scary and terrible. N


HOAs are a necessary annoyance. They protect your neighborhood quality of life by preventing people from opening a strip club, smoke shop, or bar next to your house. It zoning rules change and your don’t have HOAs, or covenants your neighborhood can be completely ruined by a handful of inconsiderate people.
Anonymous
Post 05/15/2025 07:39     Subject: What’s the most horribly planned community in the dc area?

Anonymous wrote:Pretty sure most of these are not planned communities. "A planned community is a residential area that is developed with a specific plan in mind, encompassing not just the layout of homes but also the design of streets, infrastructure, and shared amenities." Reston is a planned community. Brambleton in Loudon County is another one. https://brambleton.com/


Yeah, most of these are unplanned communities!
Anonymous
Post 05/15/2025 07:14     Subject: Re:What’s the most horribly planned community in the dc area?

Anonymous wrote:Pretty much the entirety of the DMV postwar suburbs.


This is the correct answer.
Anonymous
Post 05/15/2025 07:05     Subject: What’s the most horribly planned community in the dc area?

Tyson’s is the one place in the city that has so much potential in terms of having 1)infinite shopping, 2)offices for work, 3)housing, 4)metro to both airports. It’s all squandered in a weird unwalkable mix of car sewers

Tysons could be DC’s little Manhattan if it wanted to
Anonymous
Post 05/14/2025 22:02     Subject: What’s the most horribly planned community in the dc area?

Anonymous wrote:Tysons


This is 100% the right answer.