Flashback Monday: Six out of Seven Ain't Bad

Lookit, here's the fancy cake from last weekend's Founders Day activities! While it didn't include an edible representation of Lake Anne Plaza this year, please to be noticing the fancy Bob Simon-inspired beret at the top.

Urban planner Alexander Garvin gave a speech during the Founders Day festivities, saying Reston has met six out of seven of Simon's original goals.

AS A MEASURE of Reston’s success, Garvin said he had looked up Simon’s original seven goals for the community and determined that at least six of them had been achieved. For example, he said, the proportion of single-family, detached homes was considerably lower than average. "That’s a good deal greater variety of housing types than you would find in a conventional suburb of the United States." As for the opportunity to live and work in the same community, he said 42 percent of the jobs in Reston were held by Reston residents. "That’s an enormous number," he said.

The one goal whose achievement was in question, Gavin said, was the community’s financial success. He noted that the Tall Oaks supermarket was again vacant, businesses were foundering at Lake Anne Plaza and the community center where he was speaking had once been a supermarket. Garvin said the business of retail had changed since Reston’s formation, with supermarkets looking for larger spaces and businesses able to sell online.

The only solution, he said, was to bring more people, "because without more customers, these stores are not going to survive." He urged the community to find sites that could be developed and to make it simple for developers to build there. "Second growth in suburban areas is something we’ve done little of in the United States because we’re a young country. But we’re going to have to," Garvin said.

With the Metro coming, there's no doubt that's going to happen. The question, as always, is whether it will be done well, and Garvin makes a good point -- except for spotty infill development in close-in neighborhoods, which generally looks awful and doesn't match the character of the existing community, there are few examples of "second growth," meaning serious, well-planned suburban redevelopment. That's why what happens in Reston in the coming years could be as important as what happened in its first 46 years.