Reston Town Center is like a small center city before they declined via the malling of America. It reminds me of numerous small cities since destroyed . They had office buildings and vibrant street scapes with nice shops, restaurants, small non warehouse movie theatres. It is also like a miniature center city Philadelphia. All it needs is a nice department store. In Reston Town Center the major arteries are on the border not the interior. Tysons is highways and malls with no definition. The Board of Supervisors should not have allowed the mall to expand. Tysons could have been a larger version of RTC or a classic center city but Fairfax County messed up and continues to do so. You can cross streets in DC but nt in Fairfax. Ever try getting across 123 or Maple Ave in the town of Vienna? I have and it is a harrowing experience. Ever try driving on 123 ? FX is now allocating huge amounts of money into Merrifield and Lorton. Tysons is just a bunch of randomly placed office buildings near some mega-malls. The Saks mall could have been great with better placment of it's corrdinating offices but no one planned it ovrall. It should have ben on gridlines with a park or suare in the middle between the mall and the office buildings . RTC is an actual place with a core. It should have a town sguare or park with trees and grass to add a touch of elegance .

Yesterday I spent some more time in Tysons. There is a newer mall called Tysons ll Galeria with very upscale stores that is in the same quadrant as the Ritz Carlton. The area is boundaried by new office buildings surrounded by these roads International Drive, Westpark, and 123. I'm not sure of the acreage but it might be larger than Reston Town Center.

The bulk of the office buildings sprang up over the last few years and rather than make it into a nice urban streetscape with a square or park in the middle it gives on the effect of hodge podge. There is a massive parking complex in the middle and parking should have been on peripheries and underground. There are professional tenants and these people are quite familiar with urban streetscapes and Fairfax messed up on this one. There is a weird interior walkway around the parking and no cohesivness to the whole thing.

This area was done by Lerner and could have the core of an urban Tysons. Instead it is a mall with office buildings near the main roads and massive parking in the middle. Buildings should have had 2 fronts and been placed to open onto a square that would have been surrounded by a 2 lane road. It is not a question of density but of placement. People don't want to live at a mall but they do like living near high end walkable center cities. Some of the original Tyson tower buildings are in poor condition and I would rather see them converted to condos rather than new construction going up. Lerner built something nice but urban planning on the part of Fairfax County could have made it better. Ironically, the whole thing would be better if private citizens who have actually lived in walkable urban center cities worked on this rather than FX career suburbanites.

I used to work in the heart of Tysons on Pinnacle. We were only a few blocks from Tyson's II, yet walking there was difficult because of the road construction is built entirely for traffic flow and not pedestrian traffic. Has tyson's ever heard of "mixed use" and building on a human scale. When will FX realize they need to redo their roads so they don't isolate their business, shopping and residences from a nice walk. Arlington and Alexandria are getting the idea, though interestingly FX CTY just south of Alexandria is dead because FX allows the beltway to completely cut it off. They need to face the fact that even though we drive, having a "mixed use" community means a lot more business as people integrate the businesses next door into their lives.