Reston: Apparently Only Semi-Super

Well, well, well. The Washington Post ran a fancy article over the weekend about "Super Zips" -- neighborhoods with high incomes and outsize numbers of college degree holders. Turns out that of Reston's three Zip codes, only two are sufficiently super to make the list. With a paltry median income of only $92,830, poor old 20190 -- which includes our purportedly tony fake downtown gritty urban core -- along with Herndon, Chantilly, and (shudder) Sterling, Just Won't Do, according to Census data. "The 20194," as the kids today certainly don't call it, with its median income of $133,549, does get the Super Zip tag, though it pales in comparison to the Zip code to the north, "Great" Falls, where the median income is nearly $200,000. South Reston's median income of $105,540 also nudges it over the Super Zip threshold, though only 63 percent of its denizens hold college degrees, compared to 66 percent in poor-intensive 20190 and 72 percent in 20194.

Give us some good blockquote, BFFs at the Post:

A Washington Post analysis of the latest census data shows that more than a third of Zip codes in the D.C. metro area rank in the top 5 percent nationally for income and education. But what makes the region truly unusual is that so many of the high-end Zip codes are contiguous. They form a vast land mass that bounds across 717 square miles. It stretches 60 miles from its northern tip in Woodstock, Md., to the southern end in Fairfax Station, and runs 30 miles wide from Haymarket in Prince William County to the heart of the District up to Rock Creek Parkway.

One in four households in the region are in a Super Zip, according to the Post analysis. Since the 2000 Census on which Murray based his analysis, Washington’s Super Zips have grown to encompass 100,000 more residents. Only the New York City area has more Super Zips, but they are a much smaller share of the total of that region’s Zip codes and are more scattered.

Suck on that, Manhattan! Plus, we have better parking for our midscale chain retail.

Not all is sunshine and light, even for the privileged residents of the 20191 and the 20194. For a community that was predicated on the idea that folks from many different backgrounds and income levels would live together, it sure looks like were moving away from that piece of the Reston ideal:

Zip codes are large swaths of territory, and people from many different walks of life live in them. But many Washington neighborhoods are becoming more economically homogenous as longtime homeowners move out and increasing housing prices prevent the less affluent from moving in. The eventual result, in many cases, is a Super Zip. And because the contiguous Super Zips are surrounded by areas that are almost as well-off, it’s possible to live in a Super Zip and rarely encounter others without college degrees or professional jobs.

It's not just Reston where this is happening, but if you consider Reston not just another DC suburb, it's something to think about.