News and notes from Reston (tm).

Thursday, March 20, 2008

Meanwhile, in the other Anti-Reston: We don't cotton much to them tall buildings

Remember Columbia, that other planned community in Maryland with lots of earth tones and Satanic street names and a distaste for all things related to Christmas? Well, they're at it again. When that planned community was designed, in their infinite wisdom planners decided to reserve the absolute heart and soul of the town, its geographical and spiritual center, for a shopping mall. Yeah, that Orange Julius was awesome.

Anyhoo, they're planning to revitalize their "town center" and whatnot, and even though they brought in one of the people behind Reston's Fake Downtown, folks there know one thing: they don't want their awesome mall to look like Reston's Fake Downtown.

Resident Sal Cosentino said he didn't want to see a "high-density downtown area" in Columbia, like Ward designed in Reston Town Center. Cosentino, who has visited Reston, said he felt as though he were being "compressed by buildings." There was scattered applause.
Yeah, that's definitely how we feel when we wander around Reston's Fake Downtown, our necks wrenched into permanent kinks from looking up at all them tall buildings all the time as we wonder what in tarnation happened to the Ruby Tuesday's. Then we see the comforting glow of the Macaroni Grill across the street in its low-rise strip mall -- definitely built to scale for mere mortals like us, not the towering giants who feel at home in Pizzeria Unos -- and all's right in the world.

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