Did you know that the Pentagon is not located in Washington D.C. itself, but in Arlington County? Did you know that there is a smartphoneapp for Arlington with which the community is getting more involved in the planning process and did you know that our Professor Heike Mayer likes to go to secret bars? ;-)
Arlington Economic Development
Arlington used to be a dozy bedroom suburb in the 1930’s and is nowadays a flourishing county which is not only home to many departments and agencies of the federal government of the United States but also a multitude of private contractors. One main reason for this successful development is the location of the Pentagon in Arlington and the huge expenditures of the government in the defense industry. Therefore Arlington started to focus its economic development efforts on the federal sector, in particular the defense industry and associated research activities: The Department of Defense, the United States Drug Enforcement Agency and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) are all located within Arlington.
This dynamic development is largely supported by the metro line which leads directly to Washington DC. As a consequence, the cityscape of Arlington changed a lot over the past years. It used to be a widespread town marked by low density development and many empty parking lots. Today the development is now focused around the metro stations and the County has successfully created high density mixed used development. Arlington became a very attractive place to live with an interesting and diversified housing market.
Great view of Arlington (Foto: Georg Tobler)
Terry Holzheimer, Director of Arlington Economic Development (AED), emphasized that bringing the government, the industry and the universities together is very important for the local economy. It supports the establishment of private sector spin-offs and knowledge spillovers. Therefore planners and policymakers at Arlington Economic Development have been able to develop “deep relationships” with the three most important actors, federal government, private sector and universities. AED staff organizes business lunches to foster networking between local businesses, or they hold a monthly “café scientifique” to make science more accessible for the public.
An innovative way to get the community more involved in public affairs is the development of a smartphone app, which has information about traffic, but is also interactive in the way that people can tell Arlington County if something is not working properly in their community.
Alexandria Economic Development
Strolling through the historic downtown of Alexandria, we already realized that this city in Northern Virginia must have a different strategy. The city center of Alexandria is landmarked and therefore not many structural changes (high buildings etc.) can be done like in Arlington. The signs on the houses indicate, that many associations and nonprofit organizations are located there. Reasons for this are the much lower land prices and the lower tax compared to Washington D.C.. Alexandria Economic Development encouraged this development by lowering the taxes for associations as the first city in the area. In addition, Alexandria has also become an attractive location for arts and culture with many festivals and events that take place throughout its historic Old Town.
Alexandria`s Old Town (Foto: Heike Mayer)
Supper with Profs from Virginia Tech
After all our meetings during this day in Arlington and Alexandria we enjoyed a drink at the waterfront of Alexandria and later on supper with professors from the Virginia Tech University – the University where Heike worked as a professor before she joined the University of Bern. Of course we shared the latest academic as well as “pub-news”. Of course Heike wanted to show us, how people in Virgina like to party: In one of those secret bars, which don’t even have a sign. There is just a blue light beaming, if it is open ;-)
Great Thai Kitchen at Alexandria`s Port (Foto: Heike Mayer)
Janina Keller
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