Future

Tysons Corner serves as a "downtown" of Fairfax County, with one quarter of all office space and one eighth of all retail in the county. It is an auto-oriented edge city with severe traffic congestion, and it faces competition from the urban areas of Arlington and newer suburban edge cities such as Dulles.

"Tysons Corner, in many ways already the second city of the Washington metropolis, is poised to become much bigger... ...Height limits around Metro stops could allow [more] buildings up to 250 feet, which is lower than in Chicago but higher than in much of downtown Washington, where 160 feet is a typical maximum."^[1]

With the extension of Metro's Silver Line, Fairfax County plans to urbanize Tysons Corner by adding multiple modes of transit, pedestrian-friendly street design, and ground-level retail; however, recent decisions to build above-ground tracks and stations instead of underground tunnels have resulted in controversy.^{[citation needed]}

 

 Geography

To local residents, Tysons Corner is the area around the intersection of State Route 123 (Chain Bridge Road) and State Route 7 (Leesburg Pike), which, as recently as the 1950s, was a quiet rural intersection flanked by a few small stores. Tysons Corner Center, a large shopping mall, is located here, and is a main attraction for nonresidents. Tysons Corner also houses many smaller shopping centers and stores (including the Tysons Galleria mall), along with a significant number of car dealerships. In recent years, the influx of technology companies into Northern Virginia has brought many new office buildings and hotels to the landscape.

According to the United States Census Bureau, the community has a total area of 4.9 square miles (12.7 kmē), all of it land.