Within the Ballston-to-Rosslyn corridor, you will not need a car. If you expect to be traveling by air or train (either for business or pleasure) the Metro now connects to both major airports and the main intercity train station. So connectivity is actually pretty good--it's hilariously easier to get to, say, Paris from Arlington than it is to get to Leesburg.

The problem is that public transport quality decays VERY quickly as you get away from that Ballston to Rosslyn corridor. Buses on some of the suburban routes are scheduled for every 30 minutes--and cannot be relied upon to arrive at any given stop on time. If your bus journey requires a transfer, you can just forget about it--you're not going to get where you're going in anything like a reasonable time period.

Along the Ballston-to-Rosslyn corridor, especially moving east/west, there are multiple overlapping bus lines that add up to pretty good frequency. Of course there is also the Metro, which runs underground in this stretch. Headways/frequencies are down from where they used to be, but they're at about every six minutes during the morning and afternoon rush and every 12 minutes or so off-peak. That's acceptable as far as public transport. On the extremely rare occasions where the region gets crippling snow (more than a foot of snow), the Metro will sometimes restrict its operations to only the underground lines, and all of the Arlington stations remain operational.

A lot of the corridor is easily walkable/cyclable too. I live nearest to Courthouse Metro; but I routinely walk down to Rosslyn or up to Clarendon to run errands or just hang out. If I'm feeling lazy and I happen to catch it, I'll grab the 38B bus or the ART 55.

Transport north or south of the main Fairfax Drive/Wilson Blvd/Clarendon Blvd. corridor gets a little less good. Metro's Blue Line runs south to Pentagon and down towards Alexandria. I haven't really tried the north/south bus lines in the area, so I'll defer to folks with more familiarity, especially along Glebe Road (which will connect Ballston Metro to points South).

I have a car here in Courthouse. It is very much a nice-to-have, but not a must-have; I could do without it if I really had to. So my total miles driven per year is really really low.

>Not for nothing, but I'd absolutely pick Europe over Arlington.

This isn't too far wrong, but it would depend on where in Europe.

(Although you're far more likely to get decent/functional public transport in Europe)

If and when you age out of that, it's still a nice place to be.

As others will say: public transportation is excellent along the orange/silver line corridor between Rosslyn and Ballston. It is very possible to live there without a car, as far as most of your normal needs.

Access to nature is...ok. Without a car, the closest you will get to nature will be Roosevelt Island, which is actually a nice park in the summer--a nice look into what the area would have been like before it was settled. A little bit of forest cover, a little bit of marsh, some nice places to sit and look out onto the river.

Living in Fairfax or Falls Church will put you outside the best public transport area. You'll need/want a car, there. Fairfax especially is extremely car-dependent, and what public transport exists (bus lines) is so infrequent as to be nearly unusable.

I work in DC and I moved from Fairfax into Arlington. The proximity and the ease of the commute has saved my sanity--at the cost of more expensive housing.

They need something to do with their time after they've NIMBY'd everything else away