Here’s a particularly egregious example of street-deadening architecture, via DC Metrocentric. This drawing shows a proposed building at 11th and U, one block from Metro. The silver lining: this project is “on hold” at the moment and not actively moving forward. With luck, the developers or regulators will come to their senses in time.

Drawing from the architects.

Not only does this building have no cafes or shops in an area that’s very full of pedestrian traffic. Not only does it contain only a single entrance, leaving the rest of the block blank. Not only does it put the garage entrance in the front of the building. Not only does it put the building behind a landscaped buffer zone (like the apartment buildings on Mass Ave), making it impossible to add ground-floor retail in the future.

All these transgressions against good design pale next to one: it also raises the landscaped buffer up a few feet, creating a wall along the sidewalk that further isolates pedestrians. And then, along the building’s edge, the buffer drops back down in front of the windows.

This would be awful for the neighborhood. But there’s actually a reason the architects did this. Can you guess what? Answer tomorrow.

David Alpert created Greater Greater Washington in 2008 and was its executive director until 2020. He formerly worked in tech and has lived in the Boston, San Francisco Bay, and New York metro areas in addition to Washington, DC. He lives with his wife and two children in Dupont Circle.