A city is defined by its skyline — especially by the parts that rise above the rest. New York has the Empire State Building, which stands at 1,454 feet. Chicago has the Willis Tower, at 1,729. Washington, D.C., on the other hand, has the Washington Monument, which towers over the rest of the city at … 555 feet.
In 1910, Congress passed the Heights of Buildings Act, which limits the height of buildings in the District to 130 feet. Nothing contributes more to the architectural feel of D.C., where landmarks like the Capitol Building and the Washington Monument are visible from nearly every elevated location in the city, even a number of classrooms here on campus. The most adamant supporters of the act cite the egalitarian feel of the squat buildings that dominate the downtown area, where citizens stand in the shadows of landmarks of American exceptionalism, not those of skyscrapers.
The legislation, however, hurts Washington, D.C. While the metropolitan area is the seventh-largest in the country, the city itself is ranked just 24th in size. Much of downtown is deserted by nightfall, and three of the city’s surrounding counties have higher populations than D.C. itself. The recent boom in federal contractors has more benefited the economy of the D.C.-Baltimore metropolitan area than that of Washington, D.C.; four of the country’s five wealthiest counties with populations of over 65,000 are located in the surrounding area, while nearly one-fifth of the city’s residents live in poverty.
While suburban wealth concentration is not unique to the D.C. area, one only has to look at the skyscrapers across the bridge in Rosslyn to see how the Height Act pushes businesses out of the city. And in terms of its residents, an ever-increasing population is finding it harder and harder to rent reasonably priced housing in the District — and finding it nearly impossible to find it in the historic,L’Enfant-designed areas — due to the lack of large apartment buildings in the urban core.
There is simply not enough space for the city to grow as it should. Fortunately, the District is looking to do something about it. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), one of the Capitol’s biggest supporters of D.C. autonomy, suggested the city look at relaxing the restrictions of the act. While the National Capital Planning Commission, a federal agency, recommended keeping the act largely as is, the D.C. Office of Planning came to a different conclusion: raise the building-height-to-street ratio to 1.25:1, which would allow 200-foot buildings to stand in areas such as Pennsylvania Avenue and the L’Enfant districts, and permit the city itself to determine height limits for the rest of D.C. (Remember that Congress, as per the Constitution, “exercises exclusive legislation” over the city.)
But both of these suggestions are misguided. In its current state, the Height Act is a burden to the District’s economy, pushing away the corporate and income tax dollars that could be spent on repairing crumbling infrastructure and improving social services. Those who cite how the horizontal nature of the city “was planned to symbolize our national aspirations” of equality and opportunity, as the Committee of 100 on the Federal City said in a press release, need to focus less on symbolic equality and more on reality: A city choking the residential and commercial real estate supply withdraconian height limitations will ensure that only the wealthiest of us will be able to live in an already racially and economically segregated city.
At the same time, it is unwise to relax the limitations of the city to the extent the Office of Planning has suggested. With much of the D.C. City Council influenced heavily by construction contractors — look at Councilmember Marion Barry’s (D-Ward 8) recent censure for taking thousands in cash from contractors — leaving the height limits up to the council and zoning boards could turn the outer areas of this unique city into the ugly, sterile sprawl of Rosslyn or Ballston.
As is usually the case, the solution lies somewhere in the middle. Loosening, but not eliminating, the restrictions only in outer areas near Metro stops, such as Friendship Heights, and slightly increasing the downtown limit to somewhere around 200 feet would allow for more real estate to be developed without ruining the city’s character. The District will never be New York, and it shouldn’t aim to be. But it doesn’t have to allow outdated legislation and unreasonable traditionalists to keep it from reaching its full potential.
Hunter Main is junior in the College. He is managing editor of The Hoya.
