[lisardo]

Brazil undertook a similar project and moved the capital from Rio de Janeiro to Brasilia in 1960. This was a big mistake. Brasilia is like giant robot very far away from the people and with no connection with society. Brasilia has the highest income per capita in Brazil and it doesn't produce anything. Rio Janeiro, the old capital, was left with no alternative and has been decaying ever since.

[rayiner]

The U.S. avoided this outcome for a long time, but it's in the process of happening to D.C. too. D.C.'s median household income was only slightly higher than the national average in 2006. But by 2015 it was almost 40% higher: https://www.washingtonian.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/DC-....

Not surprisingly the Michelin Guide started handing out stars for D.C. restaurants in 2017: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Michelin_starred_resta..... For decades, it ranked (in the US) only restaurants in SF, NYC, and Chicago.

[cafard]

Under Anthony Williams, Washington, DC, made progress on improving city government. Under Adrian Fenty the school reforms included an openness to charter schools. I suspect a fair number of upper-middle-class households decided that it was better to stay in the city and send the kids to Yu Ying, Washington Latin, etc. than to move to Bethesda or Potomac.

The increase is probably driven largely by these people, who 20 years ago would have been in Fairfax, Arlington, Montgomery or Howard Counties.

And the area has always done fairly well. An uncle by marriage had planned to move back to Long Island after finishing up at Georgetown Law. Then he read that Arlington County topped the list of US counties ranked by average income for lawyers. He moved across the river and didn't look back. That would have been about 1950.

[ed25519FUUU]

I’m willing to bet it’s almost entirely more money being made from contracting and lobbying. None of the people living high on the hog in DC send their children to public or charter schools.

How much has the federal spend increased in that same time period? A lot.

[showerst]

I don't mean this as an attack, but do you live in DC? The stereotype is actually that the very wealthy lobbyists and contractors live in VA where the taxes are lower.

There's plenty super-rich here, but they're not particularly tipping the scales out of 700,000 people. The rise of DC's wealth has largely been a huge influx of young professionals in the past 20 years. Most of whom are probably government-adjacent, but we're talking people making 120k/year, not 10MM. It's the same pattern as a dozen other big US cities over the past 10 years.

DC public schools enrollment is up 10% in the past 5 years, and DC Charter school enrollment is up nearly 30%.

https://dcps.dc.gov/release/dc-public-schools-enrollment-sur.... https://dcpcsb.org/student-enrollment

Sorry I know i'm taking the bait, the lazy stereotypes of DC as a non-city with a few zillionaire lobbyists just irk me.

[jfengel]

An influx of young professionals and a consequent push of older, browner folks out. A bunch of neighborhoods in Southeast have changed character substantially in the last couple of decades.

Not that places have to remain static, but these are neighborhoods with a long and interesting history. DC isn't just a government seat. It's a real city, sandwiched between the Confederate capital and a slaveowning but non-seceding state. That gave rise to a unique culture -- including having one of the nation's most prominent Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

That culture persists and evolved, and it's worthwhile to consider that rather than simply replacing it. Exactly how to do that, though, is an ongoing challenge.

[showerst]

Yeah for sure. Hopefully we can continue to evolve ways to share all the new gains, especially with people who got pushed out who weren't property owners.

[cafard]

High on the hog by the standards of the big coastal cities, or high on the hog by the standards of Midwestern or Southern small towns?

A fair portion of the upper middle class, mostly "west of the park" (Rock Creek Park) uses the public schools: Eaton, Deal, Wilson is a common progression. And some those who can use the public magnets, Banneker, School Without Walls, Ellington. I am not talking here about the really rich, whom I do not know, but about the prosperous.

Yes, lobbyists, but there have always been lobbyist. Yes, contractors, but the DOD contractors tend to be in Virginia. Again, I don't think that there prosperity of the region as a whole has changed that much, rather the share of the region's prosperous who live in the District.

[rayiner]

> High on the hog by the standards of the big coastal cities, or high on the hog by the standards of Midwestern or Southern small towns?

Does it matter? Coastal cities have been rich for a long time. DC pulling away from the median dates to 2006.

[softwaredoug]

Not sure it's the same, DC is effectively part of a connected set of Northeastern US cities starting in Boston (or NYC) and going down to DC. So there's a lot of cultural linkages and travel between those areas. It's not in the middle of nowhere disconnected from society.

[throwaway0a5e]

To play devil's advocate DC is more a part of the urban DMV area than it is anything else and most of middle America and the south (and a sizeable minority on the west coast) would argue that both the DMV and the northeast corridor are disconnected societies from the rest of the country.

[idiotsecant]

The US is a large and diverse country, no matter where you put the capital it will be in a society disconnected from the rest of the country. You could build the capital in a corn field in ohio and it would be culturally disconnected from the coastal areas which, importantly, is also where most of the people live.

[ceilingcorner]

Only about 40% of the population lives in a coastal county.

[riskable]

"Coastal counties" is super misleading. About 82% of the US population lives in coastal states and that figure goes up a little bit every year.

[matwood]

Are you defining coastal county as a county with at least one border on the coast? That's pretty misleading, as someone could live a 1/2 hour from the beach and not be in a coastal county. But, I think most people including that person, would consider themselves to be living on the coast.

[dragonwriter]

> Only about 40% of the population lives in a coastal county

Counties have a variety of shapes and sizes, so that doesn't really tell you proximity to the coast, but a majority of the population lives within 50 miles of the coasts.

[showerst]

Almost 1/3 of the US population lives within about day's drive of DC - https://www.statsamerica.org/radius/big.aspx. That's pretty central given how spread out America is. You could certainly argue that they're culturally different from places like the midwest, but I don't think 'disconnected society' makes sense when they're such a substantial fraction of the total.

[1] Let's say a day's drive is around 400 miles, since if you go north traffic is rough.

[khuey]

1 in 6 Americans live somewhere in the Northeast corridor so it can't be that disconnected. There's plenty in common with the other large urban centers too.

[acjohnson55]

Is DC any more different from middle America than any city is from distant rural areas? Take NYC vs Upstate or Chicagoland vs Southern Illinois. Or even Louisville-Frankfort-Lexington vs rural Kentucky.

[jfengel]

Less so, arguably. Although DC is part of the Boston-New York-Washington corridor, it has a thriving culture that originated with the migration of black people out of the south. It is in no sense a rural culture, but it has roots and relatives in rural parts all over the south.

[rhino369]

Lack of good BBQ in the district calls into question its southern roots :)

[andybak]

DMV?

[5555624]

I'm not sure who first used it; but, millennials and other young people started using the term about 15 years or so ago to refer to the Washington DC metro area -- District Maryland Virginia. The local media picked up on it and started using it. Old farts like me still think "Division of Motor Vehicles."

[yardie]

DC, Maryland, Virginia. The 3 share common borders and most of the DC politicians and workers actually live in the 2 states. It's only fairly recent that having a residence in DC became fashionable.

[riskable]

In my head every time I see that acronym I think, "Department of Motor Vehicles" but in this context it means:

DC - Maryland - Virginia

aka "The greater Washington, DC metro area"

[cool_dude85]

DC, Maryland, Virginia. Really as far as I know it just means like DC and its various exurbs. Not sure if even Baltimore is considered in the DMV.

[jcranmer]

Baltimore is a very distinct city with a distinct identity, although the border between DC suburbs and Baltimore suburbs is kind of vague; I wouldn't consider Baltimore part of the DC area.

My general cut of it would be Frederick - Leesburg - (follow US 15 south) - Gainsville - Quantico - La Plata - Waldorf - Bowie - Laurel - back to Frederick, although I'm not high confidence of the cuts on the MD side of the line.

[ericmay]

I hadn't heard that term before either. Always just (maybe incorrectly) referred to the greater area is NoVa.

[showerst]

NoVa is specifically the northern Virginia part, people here wouldn't consider that to include any of DC or Maryland.

[softwaredoug]

DC - Maryland - Virginia. Basically Northern Virginia to Baltimore as one larger metro area.

[ceilingcorner]

D.C. Maryland Virginia

[mjklin]

Christopher Hitchens had a good piece on why Washington and other politically-necessary cities are so insipid: https://www.city-journal.org/html/search-washington-novel-13...

[acchow]

"D.C.'s median household income was only slightly higher than the national average in 2006. But by 2015 it was almost 40% higher"

Isn't this just another way of saying D.C. is defined to be a highly urbanized area?

[9935c101ab17a66]

What do you mean it’s happening in dc? Are there plans to move the capital? I think the two data points you provided, while interesting, don’t make much sense on their own.

[SllX]

No but some Departments are moving more of their bureaucracy out of the capital to avoid paying higher salaries in a higher cost of living area.

[madenine]

...and as a part of a deliberate effort to reduce the size and effectiveness of government agencies.

If you relocate a government agency HQ to an area that doesn't have any competitive jobs, you're making it more difficult for that agency to attract and retain tallent.

Just by moving the office in the first place you'll hemorrhage experienced personnel who don't want to move their lives across the country.

To proponents - that's a feature not a bug. Less effective regulation (and eventually deregulation) being the goal.

[bpodgursky]

This is wildly overstated. The big example here is the Department of Agriculture moving headquarters to Kansas City.

But... that's also much closer to the people they are actually regulating. And if you think Kansas City isn't a "real city" able to attract competent bureaucrats, you are way too deep in the swamp.

[rhino369]

Talented people are in DC for the jobs, not the other way around.

If my wife's job got moved to a more affordable place, I'd love to leave.

[sarsway]

To be fair its not like they are moving the capitol hundreds of miles away inland. The new location is almost a suburb. Also Cairo gotta be one of the biggest craziest urban jungles in existence. Having grown organically since the beginning of time basically. Not to say this isn't political motivated, but sometimes is better to build up from scratch.

[Someone]

Also, the population of Cairo is growing by about 2% a year. That means it will double in about 35 years.

Looking at https://www.macrotrends.net/cities/22812/cairo/population, that’s a slight slowdown from the 30 years it took them to go from 5 to 10 million or from 10 to 20 million, and looking at https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/EGY/egypt/population-g..., it may slow down further, but they need to build a lot of houses fast to accommodate that.

[Hankenstein2]

I want to echo this. I am stunned anything productive gets done in Cairo. Flip a coin whether the traffic nightmare lets you get to a meeting on time or even the office in less than 4 hours.

I, probably naively, took this as more of an efficiency move rather than political.

[forinti]

Brasília could have been set up at Goiania, which is not too far. But the president wanted it be be built at exactly the centre of Brazil.

This certainly made it much more expensive as it was the middle of nowhere and there wasn't any infrastructure there.

[distribot]

Kinda curious now, are there other examples of cities like this? Rome? Jakarta?

[umeshunni]

Funny you mention Jakarta. Indonesia is also moving its capital out of Jakarta https://www.npr.org/2019/04/29/718234878/indonesia-plans-to-...

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feart.2020.0000...

[ars]

Jerusalem probably.

[distribot]

Jerusalem definitely has the age, but it's never struck me as a place of intense urban activity. Am I wrong?

[ars]

Depends where you go. The old city maybe not, but head to the rapidly growing neighborhoods on the edges of the city, and construction doesn't stop.

They keep growing the city larger and larger. Leave for 20 years and come back, and you don't recognize the scenery anymore.

Actually that's true in the old city as well - there is a huge commercial sector and it's very dynamic and alive.

[jkhdigital]

Yes, one has to be astonishingly ignorant of history to think that cloistering a society’s leaders in an ivory tower will result in long term stability and prosperity.

[arethuza]

The list of purpose built national capitals is actually pretty interesting:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_purpose-built_national...

Constantinople lasted over 1100 years.... and Washington seems to be the capital of a reasonably prosperous and stable country?

[v77]

Ottawa, Canada wasn't purpose-built but was an insignificant city meant to be a neutral choice of capital between Anglo and Francophone Canada. This has also worked fine.

[cafard]

Byzantium was a city for centuries before Constantine was born, and a fine place to control the grain trade from the Black Sea.

[arethuza]

There was a city there but it wasn't that large and was dramatically redeveloped after it became the new capital:

https://www.thegreatcoursesdaily.com/making-constantinople/

[danjac]

Not to mention being closer to the Silk Road trade routes through Asia.

[raverbashing]

Interesting list

Both the Canadian and American cases are not a relocation that made it too far from the original place

[fakedang]

Constantinople was a major port way before Byzantine times. Calling it a purpose built capital is a joke. It was a purpose-assigned capital though.

[flycaliguy]

This ivory tower has a lot of well planned security features.

[riskable]

As long as they're not inconveniences that make people think, "why would I want to put up with that every day‽"

[mc32]

Indonesia is doing something similar for some of the same reasons as well as due to subsidence.

Brasilia was hundreds of Km from the original capital, this move is 45Km away.

It will probably produce some stratification but also relieve pressure from Cairo.

[fakedang]

> relieve pressure from Cairo.

* relieve pressure for the elites in Cairo

[mc32]

They expect to have six million people on the new city. If six million are elite, then they have a pretty good ratio of elite to commoner in Cairo.

Anyhow, lowering Cairo’s pop by six million should make it more livable traffic and smog wise.

[pasttense01]

The Cairo area was previously projected to grow another 6 million people in the next 12 years.

https://www.macrotrends.net/cities/22812/cairo/population

It will take longer than 12 years for this new city to reach 6 million people. So what will happen is the population growth will slow some in Cairo; there will be NO population decline there.

[Ericson2314]

Lowering population is not how cities become better. Building more floors and more public transit is.

[mc32]

Not if it's overcrowded and unhealthy. Cities improve by obviating slums/shanties and overdensity and by modernizing.

[Ericson2314]

"overdensity" as people per land area or per floor area? Because I pretty firmly believe the former doesn't exist.

[fakedang]

You're going to believe the numbers of what is essentially a vanity project?

[throwaway0a5e]

To be fair, this is a much smaller move. It's like Wall St. moving to Warren NJ. I suspect new development will just fill in the middle.

[TheRealWatson]

When you put it like this it sounds like Brasilia doesn't have any life or non-government people living there. Over the last few decades Brasilia has changed a lot and it is considered by many a good place to live. It also has developed suburbs (satellite cities) in its vicinity, just like any other major metropolitan area in the country.