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Right now the Northwest Rectangle is by far the most suburban part of the monumental core. The main question facing planners is therefore how to take a neighborhood dominated by off-ramps, and reclaim it as a bona fide part of the central city. Success is hit or miss.

• Everybody knows the Kennedy Center is cut-off from the rest of the world. The proposed highway deck is the only solution short of taking out the highways altogether, so the deck has to be part of this plan. And it will help, but the specific deck proposed here needs work. The big triangle park in front of the center will have to be very carefully designed and/or made smaller, or the Kennedy Center will still feel cut-off. All the new development sites atop the deck are what will make the most difference, since they will bring people to the area day in and day out.
• Underused as it is, the narrow linear park along E Street (actually several adjacent parks) is a unique and potentially great feature, and should embraced and improved rather than turned into Washington's 12,847th tree-lined avenue. Not that tree-lined avenues aren't wonderful, but this is a spot where we have something different-but-still-good, so let's embrace that rather than tear it out. We'd like to see the whole corridor between 18th and 25th converted into Rawlins Park extended. Instead of moving the street to the middle and the trees to the sides, the E Street corridor should be turned into DC's version of Commonwealth Avenue.
• The plan suggests splitting I-66 and Constitution Avenue from each other, so that to get from one to the other drivers would have to exit rather than drive straight. The point is to run Constitution all the way to the riverfront, where its termination would be a natural place for a new monument. That idea would indeed improve the visual vista down Constitution, but the big problem is that with no occupied buildings between 23rd St and the river, the street as proposed would be visual only. Something that looks good from afar, but isn't used.
• Even with the changes in this plan, the Lincoln Memorial / Kennedy Center axis remains extremely underused and suburban. The plan calls it a "premier waterfront park", but with no activities other than driving going on nearby, and with precious few workers or residents using the spaces near it daily, it will end up a prettier version of what we already have: unused grassy areas sliced up by through highways. Instead, the "infill development envelope" should be extended south along both sides of the new diagonal avenue (presumably to be called Ohio Drive) all the way to Constitution.
• One of the reasons this part of town is more car-oriented than others is that it's too far from Metro. Although a new Metro line is probably not in the cards, the substantial width of the E street corridor presents an excellent opportunity to build (while keeping the park) a streetcar transitway that could run all the way from Union Station to the Kennedy Center. Actually, such a transitway could even cross the Roosevelt Bridge and run to Rosslyn Metro, not only connecting the Northwest Rectangle with the rail network, but providing a much-needed cross-town reliever to the overcrowded Orange Line.
• Where are the bikes? Gas is way up, transit is awesome but expensive to build, and the Mall is a major leisure resource. The Mall and the neighborhoods surrounding it are ripe to accommodate more biking, both as transportation and recreation. It would be nice if this plan noticed, especially considering DC's upcoming bike-sharing network. (This note copypasted to each chapter, since it applies to them all.)