About Virginia Beach

Virginia Beach is located in the South Hampton Roads area of Virginia, on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean.  It is the most populous city in Virginia and the 37th largest city in the United States, with an estimated population of 438,415 in 2005.

 

Virginia Beach is one of Seven Cities of Hampton Roads that are part of the Virginia Beach-Norfolk-Newport News, VA-NC MSA, which also includes the independent cities of Chesapeake, Hampton, Newport News, Norfolk, Portsmouth, and Suffolk, as well as other smaller cities, counties and towns of Hampton Roads, known as "America's First Region."

 

Virginia Beach is best known as a resort, with miles of beaches and hundreds of hotels, motels, and restaurants along its oceanfront. It is also home to several state parks, several long protected beach areas, three military bases, a number of large corporations, and two universities. It was the site of the first landing of English colonists bound for Jamestown.

 

Real estate, defense, and tourism are major sectors of the Virginia Beach economy, but the city has begun to run out of clear land available for new construction above the Green Line, an urban growth boundary dividing the urban northern and rural southern sections of the city.

 

As such, while Virginia Beach does not have a redevelopment authority, local public and private groups have maintained a vested interest in real-estate redevelopment, resulting in a number of joint public-private projects such as commercial parks.