In DC this weekend, someone left a “New Homes Guide” in my hotel room. The map of sprawl shows commuter suburbs springing up not one, but two counties past the West Virginia line, in Spotsylvania County, five counties from DC, and across from Annapolis on the eastern shore of the Chesapeake Bay.

The beauty and functionality of Metrorail and the new National Airport leave me feeling jealous: I haven’t seen infrastructure this well-designed and well-kept since Paris. Train headways have been 2-3 minutes at rush hour, 10 minutes even on Sunday afternoons.