Supporting increased density on U Street NW

It’s nearly time for DC Council to vote to pass the Comprehensive Plan, so it was time to write in again and ask again for the Future Land Use Map to allow greater density on several soon-to-be-redeveloped public sites along the short but critical transit corridor where I live…. If you’d like to submit your own testimony in favor of greater density in the U Street Corridor, send it to COW@DCCouncil.us (as in Committee Of (the) Whole, the Council body working on the Comp Plan bill), preferably with a copy to your council member and, if you like, your ANC commissioner.

Chair Mendelson et al.,

I am writing as a Ward 1 resident—and, particularly, as a resident of the U Street corridor less than a block away from Engine 9/MPD District 3—to say again that I strongly support increasing the FLUM density designations on the public sites in the corridor, including the Engine 9/D3 site, Garnet-Patterson School, and the Housing Finance Agency HQ site.

DC desperately needs more housing, and DC especially desperately needs more affordable housing. Public sites provide our greatest opportunity not only to build more housing, but to ensure that as much as possible of the housing that gets built is affordable. As I wrote in my previous testimony on the Comp Plan bill B23-736 in December, I support higher density designations for most of Ward 1, and I strongly support CM Nadeau’s amendment to increase the FLUM designations for the public sites in the U Street Corridor.

Again, as the National Capital Region continues to grow, not only does DC as the core of the region need most of the people moving here to actually locate within the District for economic and tax reasons, we need most of the people moving here to live as close as manageable to work, their groceries and shopping areas, and so forth for climate reasons. We are in an emergency, the world is burning, and we cannot keep driving hour after hour, day after day to work and school and errands and home again. As our traffic violence statistics spiral out of control—as of May 1st, we’re on track to lose 48 people on DC streets this year, the most since Adrian Fenty’s first year as Mayor a decade and a half ago—they again reinforce the critical need to reduce DC’s reliance on private automobiles and enable people to live where they do not feel the need to use or even own cars. Sites like these, which are close to schools, grocery stores and shopping areas, and high-frequency, high-capacity transit lines, are especially critical to make accessible to as many potential future residents as possible. Please enable this accessibility and allow more density, especially on the public sites in the U Street Corridor.

Thank you,

Citation

BibTeX citation:

@online{swiderski2021,
  author = {Swiderski, J. I.},
  title = {Supporting Increased Density on {U} {Street} {NW}},
  date = {2021-05-03},
  url = {https://jski.net/posts/supporting-increased-density-on-u-street-nw.html},
  langid = {en}
}

For attribution, please cite this work as:

Swiderski, J. I. 2021. “Supporting Increased Density on U Street NW.” May 3, 2021. https://jski.net/posts/supporting-increased-density-on-u-street-nw.html.