Here's our roundup of must-read posts from the week:
It's the weekend, folks! We breathed a sigh of relief when Inauguration Day went down smoothly and quietly — but there are still questions around public space and security that we'll be grappling with in the days ahead. Interim Executive Director Caitlin Rogger writes about the threats to public space that we face in this uncertain era.
Tysons is laying down the foundation for more public space as it slowly develops into a more urban area. One interim public space Tysons could soon see: a pop-up reading-themed park.
In Richmond, a budget amendment in the works in the Virginia General Assembly could make way for a new public space: a rail trail in the Shenandoah Valley.
What do we call the places we live? In unincorporated communities, the Census Bureau tries to answer that question by naming Census-Designated Places — and our region has some new ones.
Finally, in 2020, one DC resident found something to be thankful for: Capital Bikeshare. After that nightmare of a year, we'll take all the light we can get.
By Caitlin Rogger (Interim Executive Director) • January 19, 2021
By most accounts, DC and federal authorities responded with the gravity needed to stop further pre-inauguration violence after Jan. 6. But the problem of political violence will not go away that quickly. How do we prevent political violence in the long term while preserving our access to public space?
By Wyatt Gordon (The Virginia Mercury) • January 19, 2021
When Del. Tony Wilt, R-Rockingham, introduced a budget amendment funding a study on creating a new 43-mile long rail trail in the Shenandoah Valley, the odds of the proposal making it into the final budget for the governor to sign looked slim. However, thanks to the efforts of his regional ally, Sen. Emmet Hanger, R-Augusta, the measure made it into the Senate’s budget to be adopted by the two bodies’ conference committee last week. Now, a longshot proposal with broad popularity is set to take its first official step towards becoming a reality.
With data collection for the 2020 Census now finished, the Census Bureau is starting to release some of the products from this once-every-ten-years project. One recent new release that is particularly significant in our region is the new Census-Designated Place (CDP) boundaries.
