Ballston, Virginia in the context of "Court House, Virginia"

Ballston Quarter is one of the first major suburban shopping centers built in the Washington metropolitan area. It opened in 1951 as Parkington Shopping Center and was the nation's first shopping center built around a multi-story parking garage. It is located at the intersection of Glebe Road and Wilson Boulevard in the Ballston neighborhood of Arlington County, Virginia, two blocks from Ballston–MU station on the Washington Metro's Orange and Silver lines. It was remodeled as Ballston Common Mall in 1986 and again in 2019 as Ballston Quarter.

An edge city is a concentration of business, shopping, and entertainment outside a traditional downtown or central business district, in what had previously been a suburban, residential or rural area. The term was popularized by the 1991 book Edge City: Life on the New Frontier by Joel Garreau, who established its current meaning while working as a reporter for The Washington Post. Garreau argues that the edge city has become the standard form of urban growth worldwide, representing a 20th-century urban form unlike that of the 19th-century central downtown. Other terms for these areas include suburban activity centers, megacenters, and suburban business districts. These districts have now developed in many countries.

State Route 120 (SR 120) is a primary state highway in the U.S. state of Virginia. Known as Glebe Road, the state highway runs 9.10 miles (14.65 km) from U.S. Route 1 (US 1) in Crystal City north to SR 123 at the Chain Bridge. SR 120 is a partial circumferential highway in Arlington County that connects the southeastern and northwestern corners of the county with several urban villages along its crescent-shaped path, including Ballston. The state highway also connects all of the major highways in Virginia that radiate from Washington, including Interstate 395, I-66, US 50, and US 29. SR 120 is a part of the National Highway System for its entire length.

Ballston–MU station is a side-platformed Washington Metro station in the Ballston section of Arlington County, Virginia. The station opened on December 1, 1979, and is operated by the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA). The station is part of the Orange and Silver Lines and serves the transit-oriented community of Ballston, Ballston Quarter, and Marymount University (MU).

Ballston–MU is also a central Metrobus transfer station. The station entrance is at North Fairfax Drive and North Stuart Street, near Wilson Boulevard and North Glebe Road. West of this station, the tracks rise above the ground inside the median of Interstate 66.