Draining the Swamp: How Washington, D.C. Grew from Backwater to Major City
Cities are super-organisms; and like any living thing, they grow under the right circumstances, at the right time —or they don’t grow at all.
Many cities spring up at the nexus of trade routes, or spots that offer the locals some defensive or economic advantage. For example, Chicago’s rapid growth in the 19th century was due to its proximity to both the agricultural areas of the Midwest and the transportation routes to the East.
But while many urban centers are founded around industrial, agricultural, and trade concerns, Washington, D.C. (that acronym stands for ‘District of Columbia’) was solely designated from the outset as a political center; its particular location chosen not because of proximity to some resource or trade route, but because of its geographical “centrality” to the original thirteen states. (It was also on land that nobody wanted —a swamp, for all intensive purposes.)
Major Pierre L’Enfant, commissioned to design the city in 1791, had envisioned an urban space that was, in his words, “en plus grand.” A 1791 map shows that he plotted the city out in a rigid spatial arrangement, with geographical features such as Tiber Creek (which no longer exists —at least on the surface) integrated effortlessly into an elegant whole. Take a look:
