Is Paul Waldman the worst journalist on Earth?

Before I get too far into this, I should be up front about a couple of things. Yes, this is a blog ostensibly about the North Bethesda/Rockville area of Montgomery County, Maryland. It's not about DC, although being just outside of DC the two are of course very closely related. Also, the foci of this blog are to inform people about what is happening in this pocket of Montgomery County, and to occasionally advocate for thoughtful and sensible policies and development that will (hopefully) make this area a more enjoyable place to live.

With that said, having lived in (and maintained a blog in) DC for a number of years, I remain one of its most ardent defenders. There's a lot about the city that rubs me the wrong way, and a lot of things I'd like to see changed. But I remain a fiercely loyal advocate of the city and its residents, and if you come at DC, you'd better come armed with more than a bunch of lazy maxims and outdated and disproved cliches.

Which brings me to Paul Waldman.

Mr. Waldman is a contributor to, among other outlets, The American Prospect, for whom he recently penned an article called "Is Washington the Worst Place on Earth?" You could argue that with such a blatantly inflammatory headline, the piece is designed to be an over-the-top dollop of absurdity not meant to be taken seriously. And perhaps that is the case. But, having wasted several valuable minutes of my life reading it, two things struck me about the piece.

For one, his framing of the piece not as a straight-up argument based upon a thesis, but rather as a gosh-I-don't-know question, is irksome. Is Washington the worst place on Earth? "I'm not saying this is the case," Mr. Waldman seems to imply. "I'm just asking the question." He's not saying Washington is the worst place on Earth, don't you see? He's only repeating what he's heard others say, and approaching the question with a golly-gosh naivete as he kicks around some possible reasons people might say that. Shucky darn.

Secondly, and the reason I'm even bothering to write this, the reasons he puts forth as to to why Washington might be considered by some (but not necessarily by him!) the worst place on Earth are ridden with the worst, most insulting and misdirected attacks against the city and its residents. They are tired cliches, long-since debunked or out-of-date, and some are just bizarre. He begins the piece by noting, correctly, that "obviously, there's "Washington," an actual city where people live and work, and "Washington," a rhetorical construct that embodies the things people don't like about government and politics." After making this helpful distinction, he then proceeds to conflate the two, assigning the perceived dysfunctions of our nation's government as faults of Washington the "actual city where people live and work."

Thus, I thought that I might take a few minutes and examine the reasons put forth by Mr. Waldman for why DC is such a horrible place, so we can see just how strong a case he actually manages to build.

Washington is small.

"Part of the reason D.C. has no representation in Congress is that when it was established, it was thought that while the work of government would be carried out in the District, no one would live here. With a little over 600,000 people, Washington ranks number 25 in population among U.S. cities. [And] because D.C. is so small, it's more dominated by its dominant industry than anywhere else."

There are several arguments here, and all of them are bogus. To begin, it was never "thought that no one would live" in Washington. Quite the opposite; soon after the city was laid out by French architect Pierre L'Enfant, George Washington commenced an ambitious effort to encourage people to relocate to the nation's newly created capital. Lots were auctioned off at next-to-nothing prices, and politicians and federal workers relocating to the federal district were strongly encouraged to make it their permanent home. Even in L'Enfant's original plans for the city, he designed 13 "state squares," around which L'Enfant envisioned states competing with one another for who could attract the most residents and development. True, such development was very slow in coming--it was not until after the Civil War and the reign of Alexander "Boss" Shepherd that many of the city's streets became paved and critical public infrastructure was built. But to state that it was never anticipated that people would live here is flatly wrong.

Further, it's worth noting that DC's current population exceeds that of two states--Vermont and Wyoming--and is within spitting distance of Alaska and North Dakota. When considered as a percentage of the nation's population, DC today has a greater percentage than states such as Nevada and Wyoming upon their admittance to the Union.

As to the argument that DC's perceived existence as a "one industry town" somehow prevents it from attaining congressional representation, as soon as Mr. Waldman points to the constitutional amendment stating that only jurisdictions with sufficiently diversified economies warrant representation in Congress, I'll accept this argument. Ultimately, the constitutional argument against DC representation has always rested upon its requirement that representation in Congress is the province solely of "the people of the several states," and since DC is a District and not a state, it therefore does not warrant congressional representation. Anything else is, well, nonsense.

What Washington does affects everyone, and not always in a good way.

"Despite the fact that Washington has produced some terrific things like Medicare and the Clean Air Act, it's also the fount of a steady stream of misbegotten policies and political nastiness. And D.C.'s most horrible people can have an impact on all of our lives...[t]hat disgusting congressman is making the laws we all live under."

Of all of Waldman's purported reasons for why DC is awful, this one is the worst. Basically, it boils down to the belief that since the politicians here are doing things that Mr. Waldman finds disagreeable, the city of Washington is terrible. Putting aside for a moment the argument one could make that the behavior of Wall Street bankers had at least as much of a negative impact on the country as anything to come out of the federal government in the last 20 years, who Mr. Waldman is actually indicting here are the residents of the 50 states that send to DC those disgusting politicians whom Waldman despises so much. This is where equating the district of Washington--fully functioning city of over 600,000 residents--with "official Washington" is most maddening. The residents of Washington have no say in whom the citizens of the rest of the country send here to conduct the nation's business, and the decisions those individuals make have nothing whatsoever to do with Washington the city.

If you want to find fault here, perhaps direct your ire towards the people of the state who continually send to Washington a representative who thinks taxes are preventing a cure for Alzheimer's.

Washington gets more scrutiny.

The fact that politics gets the deserved attention it does means that ordinary people hear a lot not only about the consequences of policy but the ugly process of making it...[t]hat means that most of the ugliness is on full display.

Here again we have the conflation of the politicians sent here by the rest of the country as an indictment of the city of Washington. So the White House and Capitol Hill press corps reporting on the absurdity of our nation's government makes Washington an awful place? See the response above, and perhaps have a word with those fine people in east Texas who keep sending Washington a representative who warns us of the dire threat of terror babies.

Nowhere else do more people fail upward.

The fact that connections matter more than merit in getting ahead is true to some degree everywhere, but not to an identical extent, and nowhere is it more true than in Washington. That doesn't mean Washington isn't brimming with extraordinarily talented people, because it is. But based on my unscientific survey, it has more hacks enjoying undeserved career advancement than anywhere else.

At least Mr. Waldman admits that his survey used to arrive at this conclusion was "unscientific." This is the argument that grates on me the most, because it paints an entire city as a caricature: a metropolis filled with empty suits who have no tangible skills other than glad-handing, the ability to talk a good game and having the right connections to the right people. And even though that description also seems like a good fit for failed CEOs such as J.C. Penney's Ron Johnson (to say nothing of numerous executives at well-known Wall Street institutions), it's true that there are people here who rightly fall into that category. But therein lies the problem with stereotypes and generalizations. For every high-ranking empty suit Hill staffer, there are dozens of passionate people doing extraordinary work.

Among my own circle of friends and acquaintances, there are people working on cures for AIDS and other terrible diseases, people working fervently to identify solutions to endemic poverty, people advocating for models of better and smarter growth in our nation's cities, journalists who are informing the public about crucial issues that impact our society, and on and on. There are musicians and painters, entrepreneurs and nonprofit executives, transit geeks and planning nerds. *My* admittedly unscientific study shows DC to be a city full of passionate, hard-working, smart, friendly people. House of Cards may be lauded for its accurate portrayal of the seediness and corruption of political Capitol Hill, but never mistake the denizens of Official Washington with the hundreds of thousands of people here doing exceptional things.

Washington has more short-timers.

OK, I'm not sure this is true, and I don't know if anyone has the data to establish it. But it does seem that a huge number of people come to Washington, spend a few years working in the politics industry, and then leave to go somewhere else...[That] transient population keeps D.C.'s character defined by politics, which is the part that never changes.

More anecdotal evidence put forward as solid reasoning to support his thesis. First, I would point Mr. Waldman to the U.S. census figures, which shows that compared to the other 50 states, two--Nevada and Florida--rank behind DC in terms of native-born residents. But that only tells part of the story (after all, claiming that 48 states have more native-born residents than you isn't exactly an ideal argument for non-transiency.) The key here is that DC is compared with other states; jurisdictions that are significantly larger, sometimes exponentially so, than DC. Someone could be born in Montgomery County or Arlington County, move to DC, and would be considered among the many Washington "transplants." Likewise, one could move from DC to Prince George's or Fairfax counties and be considered to have emigrated from the nation's capital. That's not exactly a 1:1 comparison.

Several years back, the good folks at We Love DC did a piece on this topic, where they examined the question of whether DC is truly as transient a city as is commonly thought. The answer, as one might expect, was more nuanced than many believe. The data they studied found that DC compares quite favorably to other major U.S. cities both in terms of the percentage of residents who were born in that city, and the percentage of the population that were residents of that city one year prior. DC had slightly fewer native-born residents than Boston, and slightly more than San Francisco, for instance. Taken in context with the aforementioned problems of comparing DC with states, there is little evidence to support the contention that DC falls outside of the normal range of native vs. non-native population compared with other large cities.

Further, there is another question raised here, which is: does a higher percentage of native-born residents inherently make a city "better"? Better is, of course, a subjective trait. There is something to be said for the stability one finds in neighborhoods with a great percentage of residents who have lived there for generations. But what of "magnet cities" like New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Las Vegas, Miami, Boston and others that attract residents for reasons such as job opportunities or quality-of-life reasons? My hometown of Columbus, Ohio, a fine city in many respects, has a greater percentage of "native-born" residents than does DC or Boston, for instance. Does that make Columbus a better (or "less awful") city than DC or Boston? By what metrics?

I realize that this is likely giving far too much credibility to an argument that doesn't merit very much. And I am not even venturing into the subtle racism that exists in statements that say that DC does not have a legitimately homegrown or native culture (many longtime African-American residents would vehemently disagree with that; as would the family of my wife, a fourth-generation Washingtonian).

Ultimately, my point here is to correct what I feel are absurd generalizations about the city of Washington, DC that do a tremendous disservice to the multitude of its residents. Pieces like Mr. Waldman's perpetuate a stereotype that is both unfair and harmful: unfair to its citizens, and harmful to the city's reputation both domestically and abroad. Washington, the city, is certainly fraught with its own problems, including its increasingly stratospheric cost of living, a problematic education system and the continued struggles endemic to its most vulnerable residents. And its function as the seat of government for the nation positions it in a unique place in the public consciousness, thus giving it a degree of scrutiny (such as that of Mr. Waldman) that many other cities do not receive. (Can anyone locate the last piece of journalism purporting to ask whether Tulsa, Oklahoma is the worst place on Earth?) But the city of Washington is, in many respects, also a fantastic place to live, something I have observed firsthand both as a resident and as someone living just beyond its borders. (Ironically, my wife and I contributed to DC's supposed transiency problem with our decampment to the suburbs a year-and-a-half ago.)

Waldman ends his piece with the following: "So is Washington worse than anyplace else? Does it really have a higher concentration of dreadful people doing dreadful things? I can't say for sure. But maybe."

Perhaps, as the journalist that he purports to be, Mr. Waldman might spend a bit of time determining whether he *could* say for sure. After all, it would not be tremendously difficult to turn the tables around here and ask: Is Paul Waldman the worst journalist on Earth? Does he really write a greater number of dreadful pieces putting forth dreadful things? I can't say for sure. But maybe.

Strathmore music venue coming to Pike & Rose

It's a jumbled mess of cranes, dirt and skeletal structures now, but by next year the first phase of Federal Realty's Pike & Rose, arguably the centerpiece project of efforts to transform the White Flint area into a dense, quasi-urban neighborhood, will be open for business. And the list of businesses and amenities on the way continues to be very exciting.

As reported on the Friends of White Flint blog, Phase One will include both 18 story and four story residential buildings with street-level retail, a green/performance space, an 80,000 SF office building, and an iPic movie replete with a Tanzy Restaurant, Salt Bar and--perhaps most enticing--a music club situated above the theater that will be built to host both indoor and open-air performances.

Earlier this week, we received some additional details about what that music club will be like when it was announced that the Strathmore music hall would be opening the performance space above the theater. According to the Washington Business Journal, the space will include a 250 seat concert venue, an 1,100 SF "function space," a green room, and doors that can be opened during performances in warmer months.

Image courtesy of Federal Realty Trust

According to a press release issued by Strathmore, the venue will feature "intimate jazz, rock, folk and contemporary performances, as well as a variety of well established, trend-setting touring acts.”

This will be the first expansion for Strathmore beyond their original campus, approximately 1.5 miles south of the Pike & Rose development off of Rockville Pike.

Other businesses currently slated to arrive as part of the Phase One development include a 2 Amy's-style pizzeria and a cafe/wine bar. Phase Two is set to kick off in February 2014, when ground will be broken on four additional buildings.

Um, you can't do that

I'm not under any sort of delusion about the relative beauty of Rockville Pike, particularly as it runs through North FlintVille. Parking lots, strip malls, car dealerships, gas stations, few trees and a crummy sidewalk don't exactly make for an aesthetically pleasing experience.

But do we have to make it worse?

You've probably seen these signs all up and down Rockville Pike (and other thoroughfares): signs advertising cheap massages, rug stores that are perpetually going out of business, cash 4 gold, you name it--it's a veritable Yellow Pages out there. And it's also illegal.

It may not occur to some people, but those signs are all in the public space, and they have no right to be there. Aside from making the streetscape of the Pike that much more unattractive, they're an illegal use of public space for private advertising purposes. Sometimes the County sends out a team to clear them out; this spring when some heartless individual put up a bunch of them in the median strip on the Montrose Bridge that was full of blooming daffodils. But most of the time they remain there for weeks, or months, on end, cluttering up sidewalks and intersections.

So, take this as a PSA: if you're out walking around the neighborhood and you see one (or 20) of these signs, contribute a bit towards cleaning up the area and put the signs where I put them last weekend:

So...what do you call this place?

While we continue to prep more stories for posting here (they're coming--honest), head on over to the Friends of White Flint blog for an interesting piece from Dan Reed about the potential renaming of the White Flint neighborhood:

The White Flint Partnership, a coalition of property owners working to transform White Flint from a suburban strip to an urban hub, wants to change that. They’re looking for a marketing firm to develop a new “brand” for the White Flint Sector Plan area.

Partnership member Lerner Enterprises will fund the project. They own White Flint Mall, which will be partially demolished and redeveloped as an urban neighborhood. Francine Waters, managing director of Lerner Enterprises, hopes to “identify what would resonate the best not only locally, but regionally, nationally and internationally,” she says. “It’s not only a name but, frankly, telling the story of our journey from where we were to where we hope to achieve.”

It's an interesting question to ponder, particularly for an area such as White Flint/North Bethesda/South Rockville that suffers from something of an identity crisis. White Flint seems the most common and preferred term, but is also based on an indoor shopping mall (located, ironically, in Kensington) that is preparing to go the way of the dodo. North Bethesda is the designated census name for the area, but conjures up images of contrived realtor lingo. South Rockville is probably the most geographically accurate and was once a term used to identify the area, but that has fallen out of use and is unknown to most people. The name of this blog is meant to reflect the uncertainty/confusion regarding the name of the neighborhood in which we live.

Names are important for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is because it provides people--residents and visitors alike--a point of reference for a place. When people hear the words "Dupont," "Clarendon" or "Old Town," most people have a certain mental image associated with those words. So, particularly as Montgomery County embarks on a rigorous initiative to redevelop the White Flint area into a "destination" for the region, deciding upon a single name as an identifier for the neighborhood is a crucial step.

Perhaps that name will be "White Flint," "North Bethesda," "South Rockville" or something else. We'll know in due time, but it might just end up being one of the most important decisions made about the future of the neighborhood, rivaling the size and scale of new development, transit initiatives and infrastructure enhancements. Because while everyone's attention is turned towards the various mega-developments that are set to remake the neighborhood, it will be the name of the neighborhood that will singularly garner the most attention.

Head on over to FoWF and weigh in for yourselves on the various options being bandied about. And, yes, NorthFlintVille is among them.

Montgomery County creates White Flint Downtown Advisory Committee

It's no great secret that the White Flint North Flintville area of Montgomery County is booming. With several massive mixed use developments currently under development and several more in the near-term pipeline, the area is going to change immensely over the next five to ten years. A drastic uptick in density and commercial activity means that north Flintville is changing, and in this blogger's meager opinion, that change is undoubtedly for the better.

However, how that change occurs, and ensuring that the changes are truly beneficial to nearby residents, is an ongoing concern for the County. After all, you don't want such drastically evolutionary change occuring without also ensuring that area residents, businesses and stakeholders have provided appropriate input that has been received and responded to.

it is with this in mind that the County recently announced the formation of the White Flint Downtown Advisory Committee. According to the Bethesda-Chevy Chase Regional Services Center:

The Committee will advise County departments on public services in the White Flint Sector Plan Area; and coordinate community activities that promote and advance business interests, and a sense of place, community, maintenance and walkability within the Area. The Committee will also advise and make recommendations to the County Executive and County Council on the feasibility and timing for the establishment of the Urban District in White Flint no later than September 2017. The Committee will provide an annual report to the County Executive and County Council.

County Commissioner Ike Leggett (D) is seeking to fill eight vacancies on the Commission: three representatives of commercial property owners in the Sector Plan Area; two representatives of businesses that employ fewer than 25 employees; two representatives of residential communities in the Sector Plan Area, and one representative in or outside of the Sector Plan Area. In addition, according to the Regional Services Center, the Committee "will also include two members nominated by the Greater Bethesda-Chevy Chase Chamber of Commerce; one representative who is a member of the Western Montgomery County Citizens Advisory Board; and three ex-officio, non-voting members representing the County Executive, County Council, and North Bethesda Transportation Management District."

The White Flint Sector Plan was created in March 2010 following years of diligent, difficult work on teh part of amny in the community. According to the Montgomery County Planning Commission's website, the Sector Plan was designed and implemented with the following aims in mind:

• Create thriving, diverse mixed use center with highest intensity closest to Metro and along Rockville Pike
• Create new parks and open spaces
• Transform Rockville Pike into a boulevard with street trees and improved crosswalks
• Develop a transportation network that includes a grid of new public streets
• Improve the pedestrian and bicycling environment
• Promote sustainable development

The full plan can be downloaded and accessed here.

Members of the Advisory Committee will serve staggered three year terms. Those interested in being considered for positions on the Board can find more information on the County's website.

White Flint is "walkable"--but by how much?

A story in the Washington Post over the weekend highlighted the fact that the so-called "walkability" of a community is increasingly becoming a prized asset in the real estate world. The ability to walk to one's place of employment, to the grocery store, to restaurants, coffee shops and bars, and so forth is a highly desirable asset. From the Post's article:

“Walkable” is a feature sparking sales and energizing future development and redevelopment, according to a recent report by a George Washington University professor that calls the Washington area a national model for compact urban areas where residents can live and work without cars.

“The strongest housing market is in walkable urban areas,” says Christopher B. Leinberger, author of the report, “DC: The WalkUP Wake-Up Call.” “That’s where the demand is.” 

...Regionally significant walkable urban areas — referred to in the report as “WalkUPs” — have cultural amenities such as museums and libraries, offices, shopping, restaurants and different types of housing. There are 43 such neighborhoods in the Washington area, spanning seven counties. 

One of those 43 neighborhoods is the North Bethesda/White Flint area. The neighborhood rates pretty highly on the walkability index, scoring an 89 out of a possible 100 points. (The index rates the portion of day-to-day activities that can be accomplished within a ten minute walk--approximately 1/2 a mile--of one's home.) It's hard not to argue that, as far as suburban neighborhoods go, the White Flint area is indeed more walkable than many.

The sheer number of commercial centers lining Rockville Pike, coupled with the presence of the White Flint Metro station (and, a bit further north, of Twinbrook) coupled with access to numerous bus routes and sidewalk-accessible streets make it quite convenient to live one's life without the absolute need for a car. In fact, one might plausibly argue that we actually live within closer walking distance to a number of services and retailers than we did when we lived in Logan Circle in DC.

And yet, by and large, we both find ourselves driving more here than we did in DC. Why is that?

Part of the answer is sheer convenience. Parking is plentiful and free around nearly all of the commercial strip malls dotting the Pike, taking away a significant negative factor in trying to drive to destinations in dense urban environments. But part of it lies in how desirable it actually is is to walk around the North Bethesda area.

The picture above is the eastern side of Rockville Pike facing south, in front of the Mid-Pike Plaza, which is currently being redeveloped into a massive mixed-use development. Pedestrians walking along this part of the PIke find themselves encountering obstacles both physical (narrow sidewalks, horribly designed intersections and crosswalks, physical barriers, etc.) and mental (aesthetically unpleasing, and the unease that comes with walking immediately adjacent to an urban highway with cars flying past you at upwards of 50 mph). It all contributes to a feeling on the part of the pedestrian that maybe I'm not really supposed to be here.

Thus, the truly important question is not "can you walk somewhere?" Rather, it is "do you want to walk somewhere?" The Post article touches on this a bit towards the end:

But it’s not just about distance. Success depends on how appealing a walking environment is — whether there are trees and short blocks, for example — Goldman and other experts agree. If traffic is whipping past, if the sidewalks are adjacent to empty parking lots (or nonexistent), people won’t walk, they say.

Take Dan Hoffman, a government project manager, who could walk from his Randolph Hills neighborhood to the White Flint Metro station in 20 minutes but doesn’t because of physical obstacles (a fence) and traffic.

When the projects are complete, says Hoffman, chairman of the White Flint Implementation Advisory Committee, “Our neighborhood will be able to walk to dining, shopping, offices.”

And the walk to the Metro will become much safer and more appealing, Hoffman says.

I completely sympathize with Dan Hoffman, and I don't even have a fence blocking my efforts to walk. Most mornings and evenings, I walk to and from my home to the White Flint Metro station, and it is a trip wrought with obstacles. First, there is no simple way to access Rockville Pike from our home just off of Montrose Rd.--the most convenient way to do it involves cutting through the ill-planned commuter lot at Montrose and Hoya, then walking across an unpaved, muddy "desire path" to reach the sidewalk on the Pike (see below).

Once I've reached the Pike, I walk parallel to a street that basically acts as an urban highway, with cars, trucks, buses and utility vehicles flying by within feet of me at speeds regularly in excess of 50 mph. When I reach the intersection of Rockville Pike and Old Georgetown Road, I feel at times as if I am taking my life into my hands attempting to cross that intersection, as cars turning right onto Old Georgetown from the Pike are given a softly arcing turn that can easily be made at 30 mph--and that cuts directly through a crosswalk. More times than I can count, I have either had to dart quickly across the road, or relied upon the braking system of the car driven by the distracted driver who did not see the pedestrian crossing until it was almost too late.

Upon reaching Marinelli (where the Metro station is located), I must wait upwards of two minutes to cross the six-lane thoroughfare, whereupon I have to be particularly vigilant for left-turning vehicles who don't see or ignore pedestrians in the crosswalk. All the while, I can't shake the nagging feeling that I'm an outlier here, that I really shouldn't be out here walking around, even though the sidewalks and crosswalks say otherwise. I don't feel welcome. And all of that is to accomplish a walk that, by distance, is barely 1/2 a mile. Is it any wonder more people don't walk around here?

This is one of the greatest problems that the ongoing redevelopment of North Bethesda is attempting to solve. It's not simply the physical barriers and engineering, some of which is being addressed as new projects come online and changes or made to street grids and functionality in anticipation of an influx of new residents. Rather, it's also creating an environment where walking isn't simply legally permissible, but actually welcomed and encouraged.

This means building wider sidewalks, designing intersections that are friendly to both pedestrians and vehicles, creating a greater barrier between pedestrians and cars along the Pike and--yes--lowering the speed limit along the Pike.

Montgomery County is trumpeting the onslaught of new development surrounding the White Flint Metro as the beginning of the transformation of White Flint into a dense, walkable truly urban environment. And they're banking on a lot of people taking the Metro once they're here. I hope that they are successful in this endeavor, because it's going to take more than simply tall buildings and ground level retail to make White Flint a neighborhood that one wants to traverse using something other than an automobile.

Restaurant news: Rockville Ale House opens, Vegetable Garden closes

Following on the September opening in Rockville of popular DC restaurant Chef Geoffs in the former Houston's/Againn space, another new dining spot has hit the Rockville/North Bethesda scene. Rockville Pike became home to the nation's 57th Miller's Ale House, which opened recently at 1471 Rockville Pike, just north of the Congressional shopping plaza.

Miller's doesn't purport to offer anything particularly groundbreaking in either its food offerings or its drink menu. Its website boasts: "Can’t decide between a steak, fresh seafood or Buffalo wings? Our restaurant menu has it all," while the beer offerings won't be giving the always fantastic Gilly's a run for its money anytime soon. Still, it's an option to kick back with some drinks and pub fare in front of a bunch of TVs in a part of suburbia surprisingly lacking in such options. So I guess the people at Miller's did their research. The Ale House will be open till 2 AM Monday through Saturday, and until midnight on Sundays.

A bit farther down the Pike (and a bit late in delivering this news), a longtime Asian staple has closed its doors. The Vegetable Garden, which had a devoted following among those who crave good vegetarian Chinese cooking, shut down after a lengthy run in the strip mall across the street from the White Flint Metro station. Apparently the inevitable "lease issues" were to blame, with the strip mall owner in search of new tenants and having no qualms about losing old ones. (Witness the opening of the sex shop, La Tache, at the end of the strip mall.)

According to those who spoke with the owners, there are no plans to reopen. Another restaurant in the strip mall, Mediterranean House of Kabob, closed briefly earlier this year also following a dispute with the landlord. It has subsequently reopened.

For those still looking to get their vegetarian Chinese fix in Rockville, well, there remains no shortage of options. Chief among them is Yuan Fu, a bit farther north up the Pike.

North Flintville Perspectives: One North Bethesda

Snapped this photo of the recently opened One North Bethesda tower, located directly behind the entrance to the White Flint Metro station. ONB is one of the homes of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and is part of LCOR's larger North Bethesda Center project. Phase two of the project, including a second residential tower near the intersection of Marinelli and Chapman, is currently under construction.

White Flint Metro platform retiling almost complete

If you're growing weary of walking around metal barricades and along wooden planking while you race to catch your train at Metro's White Flint station, your commute is about to become just a little bit easier. Metro is wrapping up a retiling of the platform of the outdoor station, transitioning from the glazed terra cotta tile to precast concrete pavers.

It is an upgrade Metro announced they would be making to all outdoor stations following successful testing of the concrete tiles at the Takoma station in 2009.

The replacement of the hexagonal tiles, an iconic part of the Metrorail system, is being done both for cost and safety reasons. According to Metro, the terra cotta tiles were not particularly durable at the outdoor stations, with many cracking and falling apart. Additionally, the glazed tiles could become slippery when wet, a problem that is also addressed by the new concrete pavers.

According to a statement made in Metro's press release on this issue from June 2009 from David Couch, Metro’s Managing Director of Engineering and Capital Projects,  “These new tiles also provide a safer and durable walking surface and will significantly reduce the life-cycle repair costs to Metrorail station platforms.”

Symphony Park nears completion: Georgetown, Back Bay, or...something else?

When it was announced in June of 2010, Symphony Park, the residential development from Streetscape Partners located at the southeast corner of Strathmore Ave and Rockville Pike, was described by Streetscape's Ron Kaplan as being inspired by Georgetown, Boston's Back Bay and other "sophisticated communities." (Side point: If you've been to Smith Point on a Saturday night, "sophistication" is not the word that springs immediately to mind, but no matter.) The development consists of turn-of-the-(19th) century-inspired townhomes built at the base of a hill sloping up towards the Strathmore Mansion and Performing Arts Center. In addition to the "bucolic environment," a hallmark of the development will be several acres of reforested land they are dubbing "Symphony Park Forest."

With the development nearing completion, I paid it a visit recently and took a quick stroll around. The takeaway form my brief visit was that if neighborhoods such as Georgetown and Back Bat were the inspirations, it would be a stretch to consider Symphony Park aspirational; realistically, it fails in practically every conceivable way.

Let's establish something here at the outset: the homes look pleasant, but they are the kind of pseudo-Victorian style townhomes that are all the rage at moment in developments such as this and nearby Park Potomac: attractive enough, but nothing people are mistaking for the true Victorian mansions that line boulevards like East Capitol Street. Also like Park Potomac, they are grossly at odds with the nearby ramblers and colonials that line Strathmore Avenue--or anything else, for that matter.

And that is, unfortunately, where the similarities to neighborhoods such as Georgetown end.

It's farcical to see neighborhoods such as Back Bay brought up as comparisons to this, if for no other reason than the fact that the overall layout of the community--from its completely suburban cul-de-sac-esque street grid, to the inward-focused positioning of the houses away from Rockville Pike, to its complete refusal to integrate with the otherwise lovely Strathmore grounds, or to make any effort whatsoever to mesh with its surroundings--smacks of so many thoughtless, meandering suburban planned communities.

Which may be the point, really. Symphony Park is but the latest in a seemingly endlessly regurgitated stream of suburban developments promising to bring current and future residents a taste of the city life right there in the suburbs. Enjoy the Georgetown urban lifestyle without any of the negative externalities of urban living, it purports to say. Except you can't separate one from the other. You can't have density and all of the positives it brings without also getting a little scruffy and dirty, bumping into some people on the sidewalk, and occasionally encountering difficulties finding a places to park your Benz. Cities are inherently imperfect creatures, which is part of the reason why they hold such appeal. By attempting to sell a development as "urban" while lacking the unpredictable, imperfect, non-uniform-yet-cohesive structure of urban environments is to miss the point completely.

I keep returning to the idea of "authenticity" when writing about these nouveau suburban developments; considering why we view a neighborhood like Georgetown, which is populated largely by chain retail stores and mediocre dining, as "authentic" while a place like Rockville Town Center is viewed as inauthentic and contrived despite holding many similar characteristics. Part of it is simply age, part of it is density, but part of it also is the idea of organic development that is itself a small part of a greater whole. Neighborhoods like Back Bay fit comfortably into place within the larger puzzles that are the cities they inhabit. Places like Symphony Park do not, and its design virtually guarantees that it never will.

It borders on patronizing that a developer such as Streetscape, who utilized the same architectural firm, Lessard Group, that designed the equally atrocious Park Potomac development, would think that a few "historically inspired" townhouses built around a completely disconnected street grid and far removed from any commercial activity of any kind would compare itself to some of the country's most well-known urban neighborhoods. But there you go.

So these million-dollar homes will go up, they will be sold, people will move in and park their cars in the two-car garages located in the backs of each unit, and they will receive the occasional compliment from people who will remark that their home vaguely reminds them of some century-old ornate mansion in a neighborhood like Capitol Hill or Park Slope, and the residents will grin and nod. But they'll wonder why their day-to-day lives don't quite feel like they imagined they would if they were living in Georgetown, even as they get in their cars and drive north up the street a few blocks to the CVS and White Flint Mall.

Meanwhile, Strathmore and Montgomery County will have missed out on a tremendous opportunity to begin piecing together some semblance of a dense, cohesive urban neighborhood along the Pike, electing instead to go with a developer who gives the middle finger to context and environemtn, and mistakes faux-Victorian inspiration for the creation of a legitimate urban environment.

It bears mentioning that comparisons to Georgetown are wrong in one other aspect as well. With its location on the Strathmore grounds, Symphony Park residents will have access to something Georgetown residents do not: a Metro station.