Streetcar Suburbs Show Density is Nothing to Fear

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Our garden apartment in Del Ray. Each building is three fourplexes joined together.

I wrote this unusual little op-ed for my journalism fellowship, and no publication accepted it. Its intended audience is a general one: reasonable folks who are skeptical of density but perhaps nostalgic for a community-oriented way of living. Please share the piece with someone you know as food for thought. And if someone shared this with you, thanks for giving me a chance to tell the story of what makes my former neighborhood great (hint: think small).

As he juggled court dates, Donald Trump recently found time to trot out an especially tired old war horse. “The woke left is waging full scale war on the suburbs,” he declared. “Their Marxist crusade is coming for your neighborhood, your tax dollars, your public safety, and your home.”

Trump’s repeated failure to make housing policy a polarized culture war issue is heartening. Yet many Americans are wary of residential density. They wonder whether having many more neighbors would reduce their quality of life.

I wish to put those fears to rest as a father of three and volunteer housing advocate who previously lived in a streetcar suburb. These peaceful, compact neighborhoods were built around commuter streetcar lines in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Streetcar suburbs unimpeachably demonstrate that density is nothing to be afraid of. And they offer Americans an opportunity to reclaim traditional community life.

We can see what makes streetcar suburbs tick by visiting my former neighborhood of Del Ray in Alexandria, Virginia, near DC. From Braddock Road Metrorail station we walk to Mount Vernon Avenue and head north. This main street bustles with families walking dogs and pushing strollers past thriving local shops and restaurants. Friends bump into each other and linger to chat.

We hang a left on East Custis Avenue, which like most other neighborhood side streets is shaded by trees and birdsong quiet. You might not believe that this western half of Del Ray has more than 10,000 residents per square mile. Parking is abundant, maybe because households can live so much of daily life on foot and need fewer cars. Lots are small, “substandard” according to later zoning. Yet small lots are Del Ray’s secret sauce. Many residents mean foot traffic to sustain Mount Vernon Avenue, “where main street still exists.”

East Custis shows off the neighborhood’s mix of housing types, including duplexes and single-family bungalows which were likely ordered from a Sears catalog a century ago. Separating different types of homes was a progressive era innovation — prejudice dressed up as reform. Del Ray’s small, drafty old houses have become expensive, because twentieth-century bureaucrats largely banned this traditional way of building neighborhoods and tight-knit communities.

Eventually we reach Commonwealth Avenue, where Del Ray’s streetcar used to run. Commonwealth boasts single-family homes, multiplexes, townhouses, and squat garden apartments. After exploring up and down the tree-lined promenade, we head south and turn left onto East Glendale Avenue.

We walk past duplexes and detached houses to a stretch of garden apartments. My wife and I welcomed our first child home to one of the single-bedroom units, built in 1925 and renovated in 1982. It was spacious but past its prime, starting with the antiquated wiring. Simultaneously running our microwave and toaster oven blew a fuse.

Del Ray had a tumultuous history across the 20th century. Even by the standards of the time, it was a stronghold of racism and exclusion. Late in the century it became a working class enclave and declined. City government neglected its infrastructure, as today’s flooded basements show. Kids were told to stay out of Del Ray after dark. Taxi drivers avoided it.

Then over the past two or three decades, Del Ray gentrified. Waves of yuppies moved in, seeking half-decent real estate. Today it is one of the DC region’s most desirable neighborhoods, particularly for young families.

Del Ray is also ground zero for Alexandria’s civic discourse about housing, zoning, density, and growth. Some residents want to set in amber the neighborhood they helped transform, by making it a historic district. They do not seem to understand that growth and density have been essential to Del Ray’s success, and will continue to be.

A healthy America arguably depends on a healthy middle class.¹ Yet even households with two high earners currently struggle to buy a home or simply afford rent near our high-opportunity cities. So Americans must build more homes, to remedy our massive shortage and replace old stock decades behind modern safety standards. Solving our housing crisis will arguably depend on all American neighborhoods finding ways to grow and welcome many new neighbors living in different types of homes.

From Del Ray’s serene, shade-dappled streets, that future looks bright.

Thanks to my 335 subscribers, especially my 9 paid subscribers. If you enjoy this blog or want to work together, especially on my concept for a real estate financing platform, please contact lucagattonicelli@substack.com. I would love to write about a reader-suggested topic. Check out YIMBYs of Northern Virginia, the grassroots pro-housing organization I founded.

1. This is the only sentence I modified from the original.