In all that has been said about the wisdom of erecting a 42-story, 480-foot building far from downtown, one of the most prescient may have come from a reader who noted in a letter to the editor printed Wednesday that the proposed TTA rail system "goes nowhere near Crabtree."

That got me thinking about Tysons Corner. Tysons Corner is an area in Fairfax County, outside of Washington, D.C., that is what Crabtree Valley might be when it's all grown up -- a major suburban mall surrounded by office buildings and other development.

As built-up as Washington is, Tysons Corner seems inevitable -- it is quite hard to imagine forests and rolling hills covering that area just outside the bustling nation's capital.

Crabtree Valley is almost rural compared to Tysons Corner. It has a mall, Tysons Corner Center, that is similar in scale to Crabtree Valley Mall, with more than 290 stores, including Nordstrom, Hecht's and Lord & Taylor. But the surrounding area has a lot more tall buildings in the area -- three or four over 20 stories and one recently approved for 30 stories.

And like Crabtree Valley, Washington's subway goes nowhere near Tysons Corner. But here's the thing -- Washington as least has Metrorail. Buses run regularly between Tysons Corner and Metrorail. (In the morning rush hour, for instance, the 28T runs every 20 minutes from the West Falls Church station of Metrorail.)

And, according to Greg Licamele, a public information officer for Fairfax County, planners think Tysons Corner needs better mass transit and want to extend Metrorail to it.

Tysons Corner shows that a project like Glen-Tree is inevitable as a city urbanizes. But it also shows that Raleigh is not nearly Washington.

We can't keep all the tall buildings downtown. But we'd better be ready for them -- truly ready -- in North Raleigh.

---

One mop-up item from all the changes we put into effect last month: The response to our new feature, "So you want to be a photographer?" has been quite strong. It has become clear that we'll get too many photos to use every one so, unfortunately, we cannot guarantee that we will use your photo.

Also, we can use both color and black and white photos -- but nothing altered. And, please, no professionals.