Green Line to Westphalia?
Map It:
Anacostia Branch Ave Congress Heights Naylor Road Southern Avenue Suitland
IF YOU'RE HAVING trouble keeping track of planned, future and proposed transit expansion in the region — the Dulles Metrorail extension, the Green Line expansion to BWI, the Purple Line linking Bethesda, Sliver Spring, College Park and New Carrollton — here's another potential project to throw into the mix: The Green Line to Westphalia near Andrews Air Force Base in Prince George's County.
Its all part of a plan to make the Andrews Air Force Base area the National Defense and Technology Corridor, a notion championed by the Prince George's County Business Roundtable. As The Post's Anita Huslin reports:
...[T]he Business Roundtable suggested that the county's planned town center just east of Andrews should be developed with an eye to serving the military community. Under the county's plan, 15,000 units of housing, 2 million square feet of retail, six new schools, and hotels and entertainment venues would be built. Eventually, according to the plan, a town about half the size of Columbia would rise on 7,000 acres bound by Ritchie Marlboro Road to the north and east, the Capital Beltway to the west, and Maryland Route 4 to the south.An Andrews Air Force Base-area terminus never came into serious consideration during the drawn-out battle in the 1970s and '80s over where the Green Line's southern stretch should end.
Around Town: Richard Florida's View of D.C.
Map It: Brookland Gallery Pl-Chinatown Pentagon U Street-Cardozo
RICHARD FLORIDA's book "The Rise of the Creative Class" is quoted so often in urban planning and development circles that many pessimists will gag at the first "creative class" reference. (Florida's Web site defines the creative class as the "nearly 38 million Americans in many diverse fields who create for a living," such as artists and scientists.) His theories are so central to defining what vibrant, diverse urban communities should be, however, that they're hard to ignore. But theories and reality can be very different things.
In April, D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams spoke at a town hall meeting about the future of D.C.'s central public library. When promoting his plan to abandon the Ludwig Mies van der Rohe-designed Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library to build a new central library as part of a mixed-used commercial development on the site of the old Washington Convention Center, the mayor cited the new library plan as a living, breathing proposal within the spirit of Florida's creative class ideals.
That's why Annys Shin's article in today's edition of The Post is such a good read. 
Florida, at right, has promoted the rise of Washington's creative class and says it has all the elements of a great global city. As Florida wrote in May in The Post's Outlook section:
No more a quaint government town with a reputation for Southern sleepiness, today's Washington is a booming, far-flung region that's a key node in what I call the Creative Economy. Now if it could just act like a grown-up metropolis.But what are the realities facing Washington's creative class? On a tour of Washington, Florida examined various neighborhoods, including some that were once considered hallmarks of the creative class mentality.
To summarize some of what Florida said in The Post ...
... Brookland is a "really lovely neighborhood" and "remarkable."
... Hogs on the Hill on Bladensburg Road in Northeast: "Boy, that place looks fabulous."
... Gallery Place is free of "urban development crimes" but Florida doesn't like CVS or Fuddruckers.
... Adams Morgan, at least on the weekends, "is Las Vegas or something" and has become less desirable for creativity.
... U Street NW has paid the price of success: "I can barely see the legacy of Duke Ellington."
Essentially, because of Washington's increasing unaffordable housing and homogeneity, Florida says, the city's creative class is at risk. Adrian Fenty, are you listening?
» IF YOU'RE INTERESTED in finding out more about D.C. urban planning and the area's creative economy, check out this online discussion going on at washingtonpost.com today at 1 p.m. The guest is Steven W. Pedigo, research manager for the Greater Washington Initiative.
Photo by Annys Shin/The Washington Post
» "The City as Modern Muse" [WaPo]
» "A Creative Crossroads" [WaPo]
» PENTAGON: The second spire of the U.S. Air Force Memorial, located off Columbia Pike at the Navy Annex, has reached completion, topping out at 230 feet. The memorial, to be dedicated next month, has one more spire to go. Once a final piece is in place, the third spire will rise 270 feet.
Photo courtesy the U.S. Air Force Mem'l Foundation
» CAPITOL HILL: A man crashed through a security barricade on the congressional campus this morning and ran into the Capitol, where he was promptly arrested. The complex was under lockdown for a short time while the situation was resolved. [AP via WJLA]
» SUITLAND: Last week, the Suitland Federal Center was put on alert after a shooting at a liquor store across the street. Blogger Looking 2 Live writes that it seems that the incident — in which the victim survived — didn't register a blip on the local news radar:
It must not have been deemed newsworthy, because Googling on "Shooting Suitland" nets about 36,000 hits, but none of them references this incident.[Looking2Live]
Addison Road