Last week I visited the Washington DC area for the first time. I might have some more comments about my experience in the future but I want to start out with some comments about Silver Spring, MD. I will be living near downtown Silver Spring, so I wanted to get a feel for the area. In recent years, Silver Spring has undergone an urban revival of sorts. Before this time, the area was a typical (somewhat rundown) suburb of DC but a large amount of residential and commercial development along with its access to the DC subway system has made it a very walkable area on paper. There are a number of grocery stores, shops, cafes, restaurants (though most of these are of a chain variety), so that one doesn’t really need a car in order to live in this area. Again, on paper, this seems like a very happy place for a pedestrian.
However, when one gets down into the streets it becomes obvious that this city is still controlled by the car. Several wide and busy streets (highways really) bisect the downtown area bringing with them a ton of through traffic. At cross walks, this means that a pedestrian must wait for an extremely long time to cross most streets; preference is obviously given to traffic flow along these corridors. There also seems to be very little thought (or enforcement) of coherent and contiguous sidewalks. You will be walking along a sidewalk (The east side of Eastern Ave. in front of the Blair’s apartment complex comes to mind) and the sidewalk will simply end for no reason. I can’t for the life of me understand why this is acceptable. This trend gets even worse in other locations; there were many instances where a sidewalk only exists on one side of the street and the ‘sidewalked’ side will change as the street progresses. This means that one has to continually cross a typically busy road simply to walk down the street. In another instance a sidewalk would degenerate into a curbless extension of a small parking lot, so that there was nothing between pedestrians (squeezing next to parked cars) and traffic than a small line on the pavement. That sucks.
and….Subdivisions!
As one emerges from the nature preserve adjacent to Middlton Hills, you are treated to an interesting sight. This part of the Middleton Hills (the north-east side) is full of new and large prairie homes. That was what impressed me the most; these are very expensive homes, and that lends a certain air to the experience. It is yuppie, ordered, and clean (to the point of almost being sterile); how you respond to those three adjectives will likely determine how you will feel about Middleton Hills.
All of the lawns are perfectly manicured (more so than I have every really seen) and every house looks to be in perfect condition. The little trees and bushes seem to be carefully placed in a very deliberate way; and in fact, their placement is defined in the building plans. All of this has been approved by the community design board; I didn’t like it; neighborhoods with a great deal of complexity and nature make me feel like there is something alive there. Large, rich suburbs make me feel a bit uneasy;if I actually lived in such a place, I might start drinking a lot more. However, we should remember that this is far newer than many of the neighborhoods that might seem more friendly or natural. The complexity of old neighborhoods takes time, so perhaps Middleton Hills will become less sterile as it ages. However, I wonder if the extensive controls of buildings and landscaping would allow for this development. Only time will tell, I suppose.
Above is the boulevard; perhaps when the trees grow up it will create a nice place to be but right now it just makes for a large expanse that is void of any life. It does function as an indication of the main road; it made it easy for us to find the path to the community center but didn’t do much else. One thing that started to bother me was the lack of people out and about; we had ridden through a good portion of the place without seeing a soul outside of their cars. This entire construction (higher density, with front porches very close to the sidewalk) is supposed to make more people walk around the community but on such a beautiful Sunday afternoon, the streets were vacant. That makes it seem like something is very wrong with the neighborhood.
The closer one gets to the community center, the higher the density becomes. Here you see duplexes (I think); I actually think these are pretty attractive and I like the idea of increasing density in this way. However, these are extremely expensive. I recently found 
Here is the “community center”; the supermarket is off to the left (outside of the picture); it is a prairie style strip mall, I suppose. The idea of having a shopping center close to ones home is that you might walk there. I got the impression that most people took their car, even if they were just going to get a cup of coffee (and remember this was a near perfect day to be outside).
