By Michael P. Kunkler

Representing the LPCA, I recently attended the Arlington 2050 “visioning” event held at Amazon HQ2 (a beautiful building and conference room).  County Board Chair Libby Garvey hosted the event, the crowd consisting of Arlington illuminati from civic and interest groups, scions of local businesses, and a lively group of high schoolers. The idea was not for the County to tell the audience what Arlington should be in 2050 (a welcome approach), but for the audience to consider what Arlington should be and to share udeas.  To stimulate discussion and reflection, four speakers presented their thoughts:  

Jason Samenow warned of “heat islands,” essentially the removal of trees and green space for any reason.  Heat islands can lead to temperature differences of up to 10 degrees Celcius between urban jungles, and well, regular jungles…  If you haven’t heard Bill Anhut say it enough, “go plant a tree!”  

Hamilton Lombard, a demographer from UVa, had some interesting comments.  He stated that “up to 50% of DC area jobs are now or will become remote” meaning much less demand for Arlington housing due simply to proximity to DC (not to say other reasons for demand will reduce, like governance, walkability, etc…).  He opined on the expectation gap created when apartment production far out-paced sufficient creation/retention of larger-sized housing units in the Orangeline building boom of the early-2000’s.  He even suggested rural VA is competing with Arlington for residents! 

Steve Hartell, representing Amazon, confirmed that the company (among others) plans to bring approximately 18,000 more high paying tech jobs to HQ2 (though the timeline is unspecified).  He believes Arlington would turn into a true tech hub like Silicon Valley, Austin, and others… 

Dr. Washington, President of George Mason University, stole the show, hyping Arlington as the “home of GMU.”  He took all liberties to cast GMU as Virginia’s premier university.  He focused on the importance of internships at these new tech jobs in Arlington.  

For anyone interested in providing their own personal “vision” for Arlington 2050, I can share with you one of the paper “postcards,” but recommend you visit the Arlington County website instead; electronic text is much easier to search…  https://publicinput.com/arlington2050