Population: 102,311 Central Reston: 60,000 Municipal Herndon: 16,311 Unincorporated Herndon: 26,000 Office Market: 22 msf Distance From DC: 20.4 miles Government: County

Built by and named after Robert E. Simon, Reston was master planned as a New Town in the 1960s and meant to function as a completely self-sustaining city from the surrounding areas. Since the opening of Dulles Airport in 1962, however, Reston has grown to instead become a major activity center for the Northern Virginia suburbs.

As though lifted directly from a textbook, Reston effectively illustrates application of what the planning field might consider best practice of two important movements: New Towns and New Urbanism. The majority of Reston, planned as a New Town, is a step above the sprawl characterizing surrounding suburbs. There are a mix of uses and housing types, extensive trails, open space and civic amenities, and frequent village centers. On the other hand, development patterns remain largely suburban and the planned density was never achieved, making if far more convenient to drive anywhere than walk. Essentially the older portion of Reston is an idealized suburb, but a suburb none the less. The New Urbanist town center is similar in that it’s an idealized version of downtown. The skyscrapers are magnificent, the sidewalk bustling with retail traffic, and public art adorns prominent plazas. In short, it’s a beautiful urban environment. Too bad it’s not real. There’s not enough residential to make it truly mixed use, meaning most workers in the millions of square feet of office must commute from other suburbs, transit is barely provided for, with no plans for improvement (a proposed Metro station in Reston would be located in the highway median - too far and hostile a walk for most pedestrians to connect with Town Center), and everything caters to the upper-middle class demographic, effectively excluding anyone who doesn’t fit that profile. Parking is more than abundant, almost reaching mall-like proportions in some places, and the surrounding parcels are mostly strip centers or tower-in-the-park office complexes. Specific criticisms aside, BeyondDC actually likes Reston Town Center. It’s certainly among Northern Virginia’s finest built environments outside the Beltway. At the very least it’s an interesting break in the sprawl of Fairfax County, and improvements are made every year. Medium density residential infill is beginning to be seen surrounding the commercial core, and new buildings replace parking lots on a nearly continual basis. If similar developments continue those patterns it’s not altogether unrealistic to think that, with age, Reston Town Center could evolve to become a genuinely great place - not just a pretty one.