How different will Arlington County look in 2050 compared to today? For one thing, it appears that more people – both residents and workers – will be squeezed into the county’s 26 cozy square miles.
That’s the expectation of the Arlington County government’s demographers, who, in collaboration with many partners including the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (COG), have forecast healthy jumps in a number of key categories.
COG’s latest round in its Cooperative Forecasting Program looks at where things stood in 2020 and where they likely will be in 2050. For Arlington, here are the figures:
• Housing units: The 119,085 of 2020 are expected to grow to 164,600, a 38.2 percent increase.
• Population: Total county population of 238,643 is expected to grow to 311,200, a 30.4 percent increase.
• Employment: Total employment within the county is expected to grow from 221,600 to 283,700, up 28 percent.
How these figures will play out remains to be seen. Projecting out several decades is a guesstimate, for sure. But in past forecasts, county officials say they have done well. (See a full discussion on county demographic trends at https://www.arlingtonva.us/Government/Projects/Data-Research/About-Arlington-County’s-Forecast.)
From the 1960s through nearly the present day, Arlington elected officials followed a policy of concentrating urban-scale development along specific corridors that by the 1970s and ‘80s had Metro service. This allowed for the growth of significant commercial sectors – Rosslyn, Ballston, Route 1 – where tax revenue from commercial properties flowed in and allowed the county government to expand services while keeping costs (relatively) low for those in the residential sector.
In more recent days, elected officials have reduced and in some ways effectively eliminated single-family zoning in the community, allowing for more intense development in areas of the county that previously had been off-limits to it.
How this plays out remains open to interpretation, particularly when coupled with challenges that hit the commercial sector even before the pandemic upended things.
As the data above suggest, demographers are expecting to see higher growth in the residential population than in the workforce. That may amplify the ongoing shift of tax burden from the commercial to residential segment of the community, particularly if those new residents come with school-age children in tow.
