Author: Elena Sorokina

Talking points: Arlington 2050 Comprehensive Plan update (VA)

Posted on by Elena Sorokina

Arlington 2050 is an initiative to update Arlington County’s Comprehensive Plan, which will guide the direction of the county’s long-term community and economic development. Updated every five years, this is an opportunity to share your vision for the future of Arlington. 

In Phase One of the update, the county is requesting feedback by Nov. 16 on six principles developed by the American Planning Association (APA) that will then be used to create the Guiding Principles in the introductory chapter of the Arlington 2050 Comprehensive Plan. Your feedback is vital to ensuring the resulting principles are reflective of the community’s shared values. 

If you would like to promote a vibrant, walkable Arlington that prioritizes opportunity, inclusion, and affordability, we have developed several talking points you can include in your feedback under each county principle: 

Livable Built Environment   

APA Principle: Livability refers to how well a place meets the needs and improves the quality of life for all its residents, workers, and visitors.

Our feedback: 

  • An unaffordable Arlington is not a livable one, especially as our teachers, nurses, and firefighters are pushed out of the county and subjected to long commutes to serve our communities. 
  • The demand to live in the most walkable and well-connected neighborhoods of Arlington, like Clarendon and Ballston, is extremely high. With a shortage of homes to meet this demand, prices for housing have continued to rise. 
  • We need a range of housing options distributed throughout the county, particularly along transit corridors, to foster vibrant, inclusive communities. 
  • We must also broaden sustainable transportation options that promote access to opportunities and meet a diversity of needs. 

Harmony with Nature

APA Principle: Harmony with nature means growing in a way that protects and maintains the natural systems, so people and the environment thrive together.

Our feedback: 

  • Maintaining and expanding the accessibility of our neighborhoods through walking, biking, and transit options is essential to fostering healthy environments, improving public health, and enhancing climate resilience. 
  • Providing more housing options along transit corridors enables residents to maximize the benefits of our world-class transportation system, which lowers household emissions and costs associated with car-dependent living. 
  • A key piece of this effort is to prioritize people over cars. Eliminating parking requirements would make way for more housing and allow for more greenspace. Converting on-street parking to bus, bike, and pedestrian areas would encourage transit ridership while improving our outdoor spaces. 
  • To increase our climate resilience, new construction should improve stormwater management systems, particularly in places that currently lack stormwater controls. 
  • Infill development should be flexible enough to ensure the preservation of mature trees, especially Champion Trees, while promoting the planting of new trees.
  • Housing and transit development should be used to further connect residents to parks and green spaces. 

Resilient Economy   

APA Principle: Economic resilience means building an economy that adapts to challenges and opportunities—whether from market shifts, climate change, or public health emergencies.

Our feedback: 

  • Increasing housing and transit options bolsters a resilient economy that fosters small business viability and growth. Businesses who can’t afford to rent spaces or retain talent in Arlington are being forced to relocate to areas where their employees and customers are able to afford housing. 
  • Enabling more households to settle in compact neighborhoods creates business opportunities and diversifies revenues. Redevelopment also creates construction and other related job opportunities that have net benefits for the county.

Interwoven Equity

APA Principle: Equity means ensuring that everyone—regardless of race, income, age, ability, or background—has fair access to opportunities, housing, jobs, transportation, and community resources, and a voice in shaping the future of the community.

Our feedback: 

  • Allowing a wider variety of housing options near transit and commercial corridors increases the amount of needed housing, helping lower housing prices and creating more equitable access for households of different incomes, ethnicities, ages, and family sizes. Providing these homes with access to multiple transit options allows people to go car-free or car-light, lowering household transportation costs. 
  • Ensuring equity requires further investments in county efforts that increase housing attainability, like the Affordable Housing Investment Fund (AHIF) and the Affordable Dwelling Unit (ADU) program.

Healthy and Safe Community

APA Principle: Health and safety in planning goes beyond access to healthcare, addressing crime, and emergency preparedness—it means reducing health disparities and supporting physical, mental, and social well-being as well as mitigating flood risks and other climate-related impacts through thoughtful design and services.

Our feedback: 

  • The social determinants of health have major impacts on health outcomes and health disparities. Access to safe housing, clean air, walkable streets, and parks for a diverse range of residents only comes with affordability. 
  • Increasing the number of homes near transit is essential to reducing costs and providing all residents the opportunity to thrive in one of the safest and healthiest jurisdictions in the country.
  • Maintaining safe streets and accessible transit also encourages walking, biking, and riding transit, which are safer and healthier modes of travel than driving. 

Responsible Regionalism

APA Principle: Responsible regionalism recognizes that our success depends on collaboration with neighboring jurisdictions in the region.

Our feedback: 

  • Arlington is a central regional hub with remarkable access to jobs and amenities. Only allowing for low-density development within blocks of major regional transit and commercial hubs does not enable the county to fully leverage its assets for economic or community vitality. 
  • Promoting transit-oriented development on all regional rail and bus lines by prioritizing high-capacity transit is vital to the county’s future and deepens our connections with our neighbors. 
  • Clear, objective zoning standards that provide flexibility for housing placement and types will decrease development costs and guide change that is equitable and inclusive. 

Be sure to submit your comments here. Thank you for all that you do!

Speak up for a walkable, housing-rich Duke Street 

Posted on by Elena Sorokina

Join us at the upcoming Sep 25th community meeting to support a more vibrant, inclusive Duke Street! Alexandria is updating its Duke Street corridor land use plan from west of Old Town to Landmark/West End. This plan will guide future redevelopment, housing, public spaces, and the general character of Duke Street. 

Duke Street Land Use Plan Community Meeting #2
Thursday, September 25, 2025
6:30-8:30 p.m.
Bishop Ireton High School, 201 Cambridge Rd, Alexandria

Meeting details

Please attend to support a more vibrant, walkable, inclusive Duke Street – including more housing options and more affordable housing. The land use plan will link to the “Duke Street in Motion” bus rapid transit (BRT) approved in 2023.

Duke Street can and should be transformed with more homes and with BRT stops as community hubs for housing, shopping and neighborhood amenities.

The meeting will summarize community poll results and discuss guiding principles for the plan. If you cannot attend in person, you can register to participate via zoom.

Attend the meeting!

CSG in the News: Moore plans to ‘supercharge’ affordable housing. The crisis will still take years to resolve.

Posted on by Elena Sorokina

September 15, 2025 | Sam Janesch | The Baltimore Sun

“What people need to understand, what our legislators and decisionmakers need to understand, is we’re already years behind on making these changes,” said Carrie Kisicki, the Maryland advocacy director for the Washington, D.C.-based Coalition for Smarter Growth. “As fast as they can go into effect, it doesn’t mean our housing market or our housing crisis is going to be fixed in a year or two.” […]

“The problem is actually probably even more acute than we see in the state-level numbers,” Kisicki said, adding that some adults like her who live in the Washington area might consider less expensive options in northern Virginia rather than Montgomery or Prince George’s counties.

Read the full story!

Fault Lines: Key takeaways and how to get involved

Fault Lines: Key takeaways and how to get involved

Posted on by Elena Sorokina

Thank you to all who could join us for our recent screening of the powerful Fault Lines film at the Angelika Film Center in Fairfax. Whether you were with us in the theater or couldn’t make it this time, we are grateful to have you as part of this growing conversation about housing affordability, livable communities, and the future of our region.

The evening began with Fault Lines, a documentary that brings to life the human stories behind the Bay Area’s housing crisis. Following the screening, our panel of regional leaders reflected on the challenges and opportunities closer to home for addressing our own serious housing affordability challenges.

Fairfax Chairman Jeff McKay stated, “We are not talking about the number of units. We are talking about humans here. We are talking about kids, we are talking about parents, we are talking about hardworking people, people with disabilities […] We need to humanize it as much as we can.”

Falls Church Mayor Letty Hardi emphasized that housing should be a central issue for communities that value the environment, health, equity, small businesses, and overall economic vitality of the region.

Key takeaways from the discussion:

  • Increasing and diversifying housing supply, including market-rate housing, is crucial.
  • Increasing the state housing trust fund, which today is only about $80 million per year.
  • Local and state collaboration is key to advancing housing solutions. State- and local-level regulations and processes need to be streamlined and predictable.  
  • Community engagement is important and needs to be done in a productive and results-oriented way. 

Thank you to our elected officials who sponsored and participated in this event, Senator Salim and Delegates Simon and Seibold, Fairfax Chair McKay and Supervisors Palchik and Alcorn, Mayor Hardi and Mayor Read! Thank you also to Carmen Romero of True Ground Housing, Keith Waters of GMU, and McLean Quinn of EYA for joining our panel discussion.

Lots of work ahead, but we know it can be done. Your voices and your energy are exactly what we need to continue advancing livable communities in our region. 

Here are more ways to get involved:

  • Follow CSG’s updates for your local upcoming site tours and public engagement opportunities, including hearings where you can join CSG in supporting local mixed-use, housing developments. 
  • Join us at the Homes for All VOICE Assembly on October 19th. CSG is a cosponsor.
  • Attend other Northern Virginia housing forums, including the NVRC Housing Symposium and the Regional Elected Leaders Institute (RELI) Webinar.
  • Reach out to your elected officials, both state and local, in support of policies that will provide more housing options and greater affordability.
  • Join CSG supporters on Thursday, October 30, at our annual Smart Growth Social to connect with fellow activists and be inspired! Our guest speaker this year is Alexandria Mayor Alyia Gaskins. RSVP now.

Thank you for all you do.

Testimony: SRA 25-02 — No more barriers to new homes on corridors (MoCo)

Posted on by Elena Sorokina

September 15, 2025
Montgomery County Council
100 Maryland Ave
Rockville, MD 20850

Re: Support for SRA 25-02

Dear Council President Stewart and Councilmembers:

Thank you for accepting this testimony on behalf of the Coalition for Smarter Growth. CSG advocates for walkable, bikeable, inclusive, and transit-oriented communities as the most sustainable and equitable way for the Washington, DC region to grow and provide opportunities for all.

I write to you to share our support for SRA 25-02, and to urge you not to further limit lot consolidation or add additional barriers to the review and approval of new homes under ZTA 25-02 and SRA 25-02.

The guidelines provided for in SRA 25-02 align with those put forward for public consideration during the passage of ZTA 25-02, and are thoughtfully informed by the Council’s discussions with and feedback from community members both for and against the More Housing N.O.W. package.

Lot consolidation can provide needed flexibility in site layout to preserve mature trees, meet stormwater requirements, and provide for more homes than may be possible if each lot were developed separately.

As Planning staff shared (see starting at page 220) during the Council’s worksessions on ZTA 25-02, limiting lot consolidation will severely limit the number of homes that can feasibly be built under this ZTA by making it impossible to meet stormwater management, parking, and site coverage requirements on certain sites. In the R-60 zone, for example, a single standard-sized lot can only feasibly accommodate a duplex, whereas two- and three-lot consolidation could allow for four to seven townhomes or eight apartments with significantly more greenspace and workforce income-restricted units.

Please do not create additional obstacles to building the new homes we need near transit, jobs, and amenities by further limiting lot consolidation or requiring additional layers of review above what was agreed upon during the Council’s consideration and passage of ZTA 25-02.

Sincerely,
Carrie Kisicki
Montgomery County Advocacy Manager, Coalition for Smarter Growth

CSG in the News: The W&OD Trail is a Northern Virginia treasure at risk

Posted on by Elena Sorokina

September 11, 2025 | Sonya Breehey, Kevin O’Brien | Greater Greater Washington

The W&OD is a popular 45-mile linear park and trail, providing communities from Arlington to Purcellville a vital connection to active transportation, recreation, and conservation. Yet Dominion’s clear-cutting and a potential long-shot commuter rail proposal could significantly change this important corridor.

As we enjoy and celebrate the W&OD, let’s not be complacent or take it for granted.

Together with the Washington Area Bicyclist Association, CSG co-authored an op-ed for Greater Greater Washington explaining why we must act now to protect the trail.

The op-ed has been supported by Fairfax Alliance for Better Bicycling, Friends of Holmes Run, FairfaxForward, Northern Virginia Families for Safe Streets, Northern Virginia Bird Alliance, Nature Forward, and Bike Loudoun.

Read the full story!

Get Involved: Sign the petition demanding that Dominion halt its clear-cutting plan and return to the negotiating table with NOVA Parks, and stay informed about the campaign.

Testimony: Support for University Boulevard Corridor Plan (MoCo)

Posted on by Elena Sorokina

September 10, 2025
Montgomery County Council
100 Maryland Ave
Rockville, MD 20850

University Boulevard Corridor Plan

Dear Council President Stewart and Councilmembers:

Thank you for the opportunity to testify. My name is Carrie Kisicki, and I am the Montgomery
County Advocacy Manager for the Coalition for Smarter Growth. CSG advocates for walkable, bikeable, inclusive, and transit-oriented communities as the most sustainable and equitable way for the metro D.C. region to grow and provide opportunities for all.

We ask for your support for the goals of safe streets, vibrant and inclusive communities, and transit-oriented homes and businesses laid out in the University Boulevard Corridor Plan and in our county’s 30-year general plan, Thrive 2050.

This plan is responsive to the leading concerns and goals that community members shared during extensive outreach conducted by Planning and county partners.

One pressing concern is the need for safer streets. You do not have to be a traffic engineer to understand that being a pedestrian on University Boulevard does not feel good. There is a wide gap between the experience of being a pedestrian or riding your bike in the plan area today, and the community that people want to see where anyone walking, biking, or rolling feels safe getting around.

Community members have also expressed a desire for thriving local retail, more gathering
spaces, and accommodates people at different ages, household sizes, and incomes.

How do we get from here to there? That is exactly what this plan is designed to do. It outlines clear steps that bridge the gaps between the challenges our communities have identified today, and what they would like to see in the future. Wider sidewalks, an expanded bike network, more frequent transit service, allowing more types of homes near transit, allowing more of the kinds of multi-family buildings that are small enough to fit with the scale of the community, but actually large enough to support space for local businesses and subsidized affordable housing—this is just a short list of the specific steps laid out in the University Boulevard Corridor Plan to achieve the goal of a welcoming, thriving, and sustainable community.

These recommendations did not spring from nowhere—they are a direct response to the needs that community members shared, and spring from our county’s core values of accessibility, equity, and sustainability. Each of these measures is how we get from here to there.

We urge you to support the recommendations of the University Boulevard Corridor Plan as drafted by the Planning Board, and to follow through on this vision for a safer, more accessible, and more sustainable community.

Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,
Carrie Kisicki
Montgomery Advocacy Manager

Event: Fault Lines. Screening of a housing documentary, followed by a panel discussion and a social hour

Posted on by Elena Sorokina
Image credit: Fault Lines

What: 

A screening of Fault Lines, a documentary exploring housing and policy, followed by a panel of regional leaders and a community social hour. The panel will examine Northern Virginia’s housing challenges and explore strategies to build more inclusive and livable communities in our region.

Why it matters:

Housing affordability remains a pressing issue across the region. This event brings together elected officials, advocates, and community leaders for an important discussion focused on finding solutions. 

Program: Sunday, September 7 

3:00 Doors Open
3:20 Opening Remarks
3:30 Film Screening
4:50 Panel Start
5:55 Happy Hour at Kirby Club
7:00 Event End

Where: Angelika Film Center at Mosaic District near Dunn Loring-Merrifield Metro

2911 District Ave, Fairfax, VA 22031

Panelists:

Click below to view bios:

Delegate Marcus Simon (VA District 13)
Fairfax County Chairman Jeff McKay
Fairfax County Supervisor Dalia Palchik
City of Falls Church Mayor Letty Hardi
McLean Quinn – EYA President and CEO
Carmen Romero – True Ground Housing Partners CEO
Keith Waters – GMU Fuller Institute
Stewart Schwartz – Coalition for Smarter Growth Executive Director

Important note: SOLD OUT. Members of the press are encouraged to contact Elena Sorokina at elena@smartergrowth.net to reserve press seating.

Opportunities to stay engaged and connected:

As we prepare for the upcoming General Assembly in Richmond, we are looking forward to supporting win-win state legislation that promotes housing development and connects communities. 

NVRC Housing Symposium – Oct. 6 (Additional information)

The Northern Virginia Regional Commission recently published a migration report highlighting the need for middle-income and first-time homebuyer housing. This symposium provides an opportunity for regional leaders, planners, and advocates to work together to find housing solutions that promote an economically resilient community. 

RELI Webinar: Housing: Is NOVA on the Road to Meeting our Region’s Housing Needs? – Oct. 10 (Register today)

RELI serves to connect and inform Northern Virginia’s regional leaders from both the public and private sectors. This webinar will explore the NoVA’s progress (and lack thereof) towards meeting the region’s housing needs. 

Homes for All VOICE Assembly – Oct. 19 (Register today)

New polling shows that housing is the #1 concern of Virginia voters. Join fellow advocates on Oct 19 in Herndon from 3:30pm-5pm for an assembly with elected leaders to demonstrate widespread support for housing reforms. 

CSG supports the multi-family developments in consideration across the NoVA region, including the Franconia Government Center Site and the 3033 Chain Bridge Road Site. 

Sponsors and partners:

The event has the generous support of our diverse partners and sponsors, including elected officials, non-profits organizations, and business:

Senator Saddam Salim, Fairfax Mayor Catherine Read, Delegate Holly Seibold

Greater Greater Washington, True Ground Housing Partners, Falls Church Forward, VOICE, YIMBYs of Northern Virginia, Sierra Club – Potomac River Group, Urban Land Institute – Washington, Wesley Housing

EYA, Northern Virginia Building Industry Association, Northern Virginia Association of Realtors

Contact: 

Stewart Schwartz, Executive Director
stewart@smartergrowth.net

Elena Sorokina, Communications Director
elena@smartergrowth.net

Image credits: Fault Lines, CSG.