Livability Initiative

Recognizing that the pace of development in the 22202 area is expected to surge from mid-2019 onwards, and that recent community forums have shown that livability is a primary concern in our neighborhoods, the Crystal City, Aurora Highlands and Arlington Ridge Civic Associations have come together in an effort to help guide changes in a much more integrated and holistic approach.

Livability Framework

The Livability Framework is the first step in this collaboration that will guide upcoming work.

The Framework articulates a vision for an integrated, holistic approach to achieving a highly livable community across our diverse neighborhoods and defines a set of livability themes and specific elements. The high-level themes include:

• Diverse and Affordable Housing
• Environmental Sustainability
• Community and Social Engagement
• Transportation
• Essential Services
• Art and Cultural Amenities
• Monitoring and Assessment

This concise framework is put forward as a means to identify our common priorities, to drive discussion and studies, and to provide inputs to county plans and to developers. We expect that both the County and landowners with development plans in the works will find it useful to have the community’s set of priorities now, so these can be considered in their planning for new projects. The framework is a living document and will be updated as required.

The Livability Framework is the first step to encourage a collaborative engagement among residents, the County, developers, property owners and businesses and other organizations to develop and implement an integrated holistic approach to achieving livability across our community.

This is a “living document” and we welcome feedback.

From Themes to Specifics (In Progress)

Work is continuing over the next few months to expand on this framework with more specific community benefits, studies to help guide decisions, and metrics to measure success.

So far, a small set of representatives from each of the civic associations have participated in two brainstorming charettes in August. These focused on general organization and tackling the first set of four livability areas: Environmental Sustainability, Essential Services, Community and Social Engagement/Arts and Cultural Amenities, and Transportation.

Terrific ideas and a great amount of input was captured in these first sessions that is still being worked through. The group is shooting to have content ready for review and public commenting by the end of September.

Discussions are also underway on the possibility of future charettes and community engagement events.

• The Aurora Highlands Civic Association will provide an update and solicit comments during the September 11 monthly meeting.
• The Crystal City Civic Association will have a conversation on “Livability in Crystal City” with Arlington County Board Chair Christian Dorsey and Vice Chair (and Crystal City liaison) Libby Garvey.

Supporters

This impressive grass-roots planning initiative is one of the first of its kind in Arlington and would not be possible without the generous time and energy put forth from our neighborhood volunteers.

The hard work of creating the initiative and kick-starting the input has been taken up residents with experience as officers in their civic associations, representatives on county commissions, and long-time participants in county review processes.

We welcome feedback from anyone and look forward to expanding broad participation in the process!

We have been extremely fortunate to have assistance from independent experts at LAB to make this a productive and collaborative community-building process where residents can focus free from outside county and developer influences.