Crime Scene & Biohazard Cleanup Near Sunset Hills Reston, VA

Reston is a census-designated place in Fairfax County, Virginia, and one of the most famous planned communities in America — it is an unincorporated community with no city government of its own, governed largely through the Reston Association.

Reston was founded in 1964 by developer Robert E. Simon Jr., who formed its name from his own initials — R.E.S. plus 'ton' — after buying 6,750 acres of Virginia countryside in 1961 for about $13.15 million.

Reston was influenced by the Garden City movement, deliberately mixing housing of many types and incomes with green space, village centers and jobs rather than following the standard postwar suburban model.

The 2020 census counted 63,226 people in Reston, and Census Bureau QuickFacts counts about 28,701 households in 2020-2024, averaging about 2.24 people each.

Lake Anne Village Center, built first in 1964, was Reston's pilot village center, and its plaza and surrounding mid-century modern buildings are now listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Reston has four man-made lakes — Lake Anne, Lake Thoreau, Lake Audubon and Lake Newport — with Thoreau named for Henry David Thoreau and Audubon for naturalist John James Audubon.

The Reston Association maintains about 55 miles of paved pathways and natural trails, and both the 45-mile Washington & Old Dominion Trail and the Fairfax Cross County Trail run through the community.

Reston Town Center, opened in the 1990s, gave the planned community a dense, walkable downtown of offices, shops, restaurants and an ice-skating pavilion, a sharp contrast to indoor-mall suburbs of the same era.

Reston's students attend Fairfax County Public Schools, including South Lakes High School, whose campus sits beside the Lake Thoreau and Lake Audubon trail loops.

Reston sits about 20 miles west of Washington, D.C. and about 6 miles east of Washington Dulles International Airport, placing it in the heart of Northern Virginia's technology corridor.