The real story here isn’t that Northern Virginia suddenly became cool. It’s that DC’s government has spent years making it unnecessarily difficult to build, invest, start a business and create jobs in the city.
Virginia didn’t steal DC’s momentum. DC’s government handed it to them.
The West Village is more dense than approximately 98% of *urban* land in the United States—to say nothing of suburbs—and it still catches so much flak.
Hatred of historic, naturally-dense urban neighborhoods is such an unnecessary fight for YIMBYs. There's so little upside.