NOVA

Dan and I just booked our plane tickets home to Northern Virginia for the Christmas holidays, and I am already super excited. We’ll be back December 24th to January 3rd, so we would love to see friends and family who will be in the area around the same time.

Northern Virginia, especially my hometown of Vienna, holds a really special place in my heart and I think it may be the only place I may ever really consider “home” after growing up there and living there for twenty years. Unfortunately, my hometown pride has been bruised countless times since moving over here to California two years ago. Many Californians — several of which don’t seem to have stepped one foot out of their beloved state — regard the rest of the 49 states that comprise the country as only an afterthought. When I first tell people where I’m from, whether they be neighbors or coworkers or new friends, the most common response is that of pity or disbelief. At first they are aghast at the fact that I’m from such an unfamiliar, “remote” place, and then what usually follows is a reassuring “Oh honey, well… aren’t you glad you’re in a much better place now” type of comment. Apparently when the majority of Californians hear “Virginia,” the images that immediately spring to their mind are those of farms, cows, plantations, fried chicken, rednecks… basically what characterizes “the boonies” and “Dirty South.” After a while, I just started to tell people I was from DC (as Northern Virginia’s in the Washington, DC metropolitan area), simply because I was sick of the ignorant negative reactions I kept having to deal with. When I mention that I really miss my hometown, the response is usually along the lines of “But why would you want to go back there?” I’m all for state pride and being loyal to your roots, but also think it’s unfair and rude to trash-talk on other regions and locations when you’ve never even visited them to know what they are really like.

So I wanted to take an opportunity here to provide a geography lesson and introduce those who are unfamiliar with Northern Virginia to the area, complete with supporting facts and statistics. (I’d like to thank Wikipedia in advance.) Hopefully this will help enlighten some of the more ignorant minds out there.

Welcome to the 703.

Tyson’s Corner
Originally uploaded by eschn3am

Northern Virginia (often referred to as “NOVA” by the local community) consists of the several counties and independent cities in Virginia, a large area that stretches southerly and westward from the nation’s capitol. It is the most populated region of both the state of Virginia and the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area.

Affluence:
Northern Virginia is the most diverse (in terms of both the number of ethnic groups and nationalities represented) and highest-income region of Virginia, having six of the twenty highest-income counties in the nation, including the two highest as of 2007. The region is known in Virginia and the Washington, D.C. area for its relative affluence. Of the large cities or counties in the nation that have a median household income in excess of $100,000, the top two are in Northern Virginia, and these counties have over half of the region’s population.

The Tysons Corner Center located in my hometown of Vienna is the Washington area’s most popular upscale shopping destination and in 2002 National Geographic described it as “the Rodeo Drive of the East Coast”. People travel miles to shop there and it is a popular tourist attraction it itself. The area surrounding Tysons Corner’s shopping center sprawls with several prominent companies that appear in the Fortune 1000 list, including Freddie Mac, Booz Allen Hamilton and BearingPoint, among others.

Crime Rate:
Crime? What crime? Fairfax County has the lowest crime rate in the Washington metropolitan area, and the lowest crime rate amongst the 50 largest jurisdictions of the United States. A 2009 report by the Northern Virginia Regional Gang Task Force suggests that anti-gang measures and crackdowns on illegal immigrants by local jurisdictions are driving gang members out of Northern Virginia and into more immigrant-friendly locales in Maryland, Washington, D.C., and the rest of Virginia. The violent crime rate in Northern Virginia fell 17% from 2003 to 2008. Sorry, you won’t find any homicide maps here. (WTF. I’d never even heard of homicide maps until moving out near Oakland.)

Education:
Fairfax County’s most notable commitment is to education, with an allocation of 52.2% of its fiscal budget to the public school system. Including state and federal government contributions, along with citizen and corporate contributions, this brings the 2009 fiscal budget for the school system to $2.2 billion. The school system has estimated that, based on the 2006 fiscal budget, the county invested $13,340 in each student in 2009. With over 170,000 students enrolled, Fairfax County Public Schools is the largest public school system in the Baltimore-Washington Metropolitan Area and in Virginia. The school division is the 12th largest school system in the nation and maintains the largest school bus fleet of any school system in the United States. It’s hard to imagine myself sending my future children to school anywhere else after coming from such a successful, safe and prestigious public school system. It’s been among the top public school systems in the nation for decades now, one of the reasons why my parents (along with so many others) were dying to enroll their children in FCPS.

As for higher education, the population of Northern Virginia is highly educated, with 55.5% of its population 25 years or older holding a bachelor’s degree or higher. This is comparable to Seattle, the most educated large city in the U.S., with 53.4% of residents having at least a bachelor’s degree. The number of graduate/professional degree holders in Arlington is relatively high at 34.3%, nearly quadruple the rate of the U.S. population as a whole.

Speaking of Arlington, here is a rap about the town that went viral this summer on YouTube, which showcases the feel of the area.

But I digress.

The federal government is a major employer in Northern Virginia, which is home to numerous government agencies, including the CIA headquarters (right over in the neighboring town of McLean) and the Pentagon. Government contracting is an important part of the region’s economy. Arlington alone is home to over 600 federal contractors, and has the highest weekly wages of any major jurisdiction in the Washington metropolitan area.

Due to high income families and the excellence of the public school system, real estate in Northern Virginia is some of the most expensive you’ll find in the entire country. Real estate is comparable to (if not pricier than) the more affluent parts of the Bay Area and Southern California.

Vienna, Virginia
Some tidbits about my own hometown of Vienna, nestled in the heart of Northern Virginia: In July 2005, CNN/Money and Money magazine ranked Vienna fourth on its list of the 100 best places to live in the United States. In addition to excellent public schools, its assets include a downtown with many small businesses, a Washington Metrorail station with large parking garages just south of the town, and a portion of the Washington & Old Dominion Railroad Regional Park hiker/biker trail cutting through the center of the town. It is home to the aforementioned Tysons Corner and the famous Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts.

I feel like this post has ended up sounding pretty pretentious, but please keep in mind that it’s been difficult for me to put up with the offensive stereotypes that people have been slapping onto my old stomping grounds the past couple years since I’ve relocated out here. My university, Virginia Tech, was indeed in the middle of nowhere in southwest Virginia, but it was four hours away from my more metropolitan home. (And it still had many endearing qualities of its own… but I’ll save that for another day.) Yes, a good portion of the rest of the state is rural and less metropolitan, but the differences in the political and economic climate between Northern Virginia and the rest of the commonwealth are so stark that some secessionist sentiments have emerged, with hopes for a separate state of “North Virginia.” I personally think that that is a little ridiculous, but it is a good illustration of how urban and distinct NOVA is from the rest of the state.

So next time you’re about to pass judgment on a city, region or state that you’re unfamiliar with, please do your research first. Or better yet, step out of your comfort zone and pay it a visit before you open your mouth to throw in your two cents.