FALLS CHURCH, Virginia — The midday scene at Rare Bird Coffee Roasters in Falls Church on a summer Thursday is bustling. There’s a line of people waiting to buy coffee, tea or a baked good. Young professionals sit in front of their laptops with headphones on, while other patrons are grouped together at tables, deep in conversation. Workout wear and business attire alike are easily spotted.
It’s perhaps a microcosm of the type of active, engaged community that lives in Northern Virginia’s aptly nicknamed “Little City,” which is less than 10 miles from Washington, D.C., and only about 2 square miles in size. Falls Church’s friendly people and the various ways the city provides its citizens opportunities to live a well-rounded life are at least part of what makes one resident, Andrew Olesen, happy he relocated his family there from the nation’s capital in 2020.
“In a way that’s not practical in many places in Northern Virginia or even in big cities, I’ve run into a lot of neighbors that I’ve met through the course of that journey – at coffee shops, or at restaurants, the farmers market,” says Olesen, 39, who’s the founder of Bike Falls Church, a community organization that advocates for safer streets and better bike infrastructure in the city. “The community feeling has really exceeded expectations.”
Those expectations now may grow, with Falls Church rising to No. 1 in the 2024 Healthiest Communities rankings by U.S. News, unseating the reigning three-peat winner, Los Alamos County, New Mexico. The latest edition of the project, released Tuesday, assessed close to 3,000 counties and county equivalents nationwide across more than 90 metrics, exploring the important role location plays in the health and well-being of America’s more than 330 million residents.
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