Last Sunday, Michael Grunwald took to the pages of the Post to discuss, and malign, the District’s building height restrictions. His piece is an interesting read, but Grunwald’s analysis of how the restriction has affected the city is fairly spotty, as Mark Jenkins notes in a City Desk post from yesterday. For one thing, it’s difficult to say that height restrictions have created a space crunch in the city, when for so long so much space in and around downtown has been empty or occupied by rundown and underused buildings. Perhaps once the current building boom has exhausted office space possibilities in Northwest and Near Southeast we’ll see agitation for relaxation of the rule, but until then, the commercial centers of the city have plenty of room to grow.
Setting aside the very interesting economic and urban development issues, however, the height restriction is an enjoyable topic to speculate about, because it has such potential to shape the appearance of our town. Honestly, it’s fun to think about what D.C. would look like if developers could build tall, and how that height might change the city’s scenery. I’ve always felt that, for aesthetic reasons, the downtown and monumental core of the District should be left as is, to protect the vistas and scale of the Capital City. Outside that, however, I’m game for height. Specifically, I think the relatively dense residential corridors along Wisconsin and Connecticut Avenues could handle a few towers, and the industrial areas along the Red Line’s eastern branch, particularly around New York Avenue and Florida Avenue, might make an excellent home for skyscrapers. With the higher growth that’s appeared across the Potomac in Virginia, it’s not hard to imagine a low-slung downtown D.C. encircled by a ring of taller structures, with the Washington Monument poking up in the middle.
Of course, it seems much more likely that the Washington area will follow a model more similar to that seen in London or Paris, with Tyson’s or parts of Arlington County playing the role of Canary Wharf or La Defense. But it’s Friday, and we feel like discussing possibility, rather than probability. So what do you think, readers? Would a little more height be better or worse for Washington, and where would you get taller if you could reshape our town?
Picture taken by Grundlepuck.
