Robert Warski
Sep 4, 2018 · 1 min read

Washington was invented for one reason only, to be the federal capital. The only significant business in Washington is the federal government. In view of this, the city, right from its inception, has been criticized for being artificial and boring. I’ve read criticisms of Washington written in the 19th century very much like the ones you express here. There’s something artificial about Washington that one doesn’t feel in a city that has grown organically. I read the same critique of Brasilia, Brazil’s custom-build capital, which is almost always compared unfavorably with its predecessor, Rio de Janeiro. Perhaps the Founding Father’s should have kept the federal capital in Philadelphia, where American independence and the federal constitution originated.