A loyal reader in McLean sent me a link to this article by Alec MacGillis in last Thursday’s Washington Post. It begins:
To hear some activists and local officials in Virginia tell it, the key to slowing rampant growth is to follow the lead of many Maryland counties: Ban development where roads and schools are crowded.
But here is what that method has accomplished in Anne Arundel County: More than one-third of its school districts are closed to new subdivisions, even in areas intended to absorb construction under the state’s much-touted “slow-growth” laws. As a result, development is being pushed to more rural parts of the state less suited to handle it.
It’s enough to make northern Virginia’s Til Hazel, who spent decades thwarting the slow-growth types in his neighborhood, look like some kind of environmental hero.
