A few years ago I fell into the why isn't there a major city at the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers internet rabbit hole and learned about Cairo. Apparently there was even a group that wanted to create a "New Colombia" type national capital there in the mid 19th century.
I'm all for the idea. I had a college internship in Washington, DC and absolutely hated the place... way too many smug assholes whose only release was alcohol. Never have been back since. I have, however, been to Brasilia several times (someone really needs to shoot a retrofuturism film there). It really helped develop the interior of Brazil and made the country (at least slightly) more multipolar. Deconcentrating the US East Coast would be a good thing, plus the spiteful side of me would love the DC bubble crowd being inconvenienced and knocked down a peg.
With all due respect to the idea, Cairo is a terrible place to build a major city for the simple reason that it's extremely vulnerable to floods. The land around it is only slightly above the level of the two massive torrents of water converging on it. Cairo is surrounded by levees to defend it against floods (which almost failed in 2011—the US army corps of engineers had to deliberately breech levees in less populated areas to divert the water), and expanding them to accommodate a bigger city would just displace the floodwaters downriver.
I suggest moving the site 50 miles to the north near Eldorado, IL.
For me, the biggest question is, how concrete is this intention? This is a very interesting essay, with a lot of interesting points at the level of metaphor, but there are a hundred reasons why this won't actually happen. But maybe more importantly, there are at least a few things in this general direction which actually could and probably should happen.
For starters, have you ever read Steve Sailer on the Sears Tower? The basic point was, the real power elite strongly tends to live and work out of the second or third floor, with the possible exception of people in NYC. You get can away from whatever's going on in the street when you want or need, but you're also close enough so that you can feel or engage with them as necessary. Skyscrapers are for middle managers, like Sears. Because Sears buyers can't interact with anything beyond their computer screen, they could be coopted by vendors. On the other hand, Wal-Mart made its vendors go to its turf in Bentonville, AR, where Wal-Mart beat them like rented mules.
So it's easy to imagine government employees and government functions being moved out of DC but it's much more difficult to imagine who's going to populate a mega-skyscraper in Cairo, IL.
In general, lot of bureaucrats want the illusion or the reality of being close to the center of power, but for embassies this is an actual need. The ambassador from Japan has to be able to get in a cab and talk face to face with an American somewhere inside one of the inner circles of power. Nobody in Honolulu counts.
Also, when you move the Executive Branch functions out of DC, don't put them in Seattle or Boston, put them in South Dakota or the like. Especially the domestic agencies like Commerce, Labor, or Interior. Then you federalize California land use and business/labor/education regulation. So if I want to open a Starbucks in Anaheim, I don't talk to an Orange County zoning commissioner, I call a presumably Republican Dept of Commerce bureaucrat in Sioux Falls.
You also say that liberals and conservatives would both be comfortable there. I'm wondering why on earth liberals would be comfortable there? I'm not a lib so I really don't care but for me this sounds like one of the deeper circles of hells for them.
Finally, DC as the capital of the USA is embedded in the Constitution in at least a couple places. I'm wondering whether you were supposing this would happen with or without a Constitutional amendment?
War of Independence was the reason founding fathers of Turkey chose Ankara as capital. After the war, it was about destruction of Ottoman establishment. You need to wait Civil War 2.0 for a new "capital". Circa 2040 GOP doesn't achieve that kinda goal in my opinion.
A few years ago I fell into the why isn't there a major city at the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers internet rabbit hole and learned about Cairo. Apparently there was even a group that wanted to create a "New Colombia" type national capital there in the mid 19th century.
I'm all for the idea. I had a college internship in Washington, DC and absolutely hated the place... way too many smug assholes whose only release was alcohol. Never have been back since. I have, however, been to Brasilia several times (someone really needs to shoot a retrofuturism film there). It really helped develop the interior of Brazil and made the country (at least slightly) more multipolar. Deconcentrating the US East Coast would be a good thing, plus the spiteful side of me would love the DC bubble crowd being inconvenienced and knocked down a peg.
With all due respect to the idea, Cairo is a terrible place to build a major city for the simple reason that it's extremely vulnerable to floods. The land around it is only slightly above the level of the two massive torrents of water converging on it. Cairo is surrounded by levees to defend it against floods (which almost failed in 2011—the US army corps of engineers had to deliberately breech levees in less populated areas to divert the water), and expanding them to accommodate a bigger city would just displace the floodwaters downriver.
I suggest moving the site 50 miles to the north near Eldorado, IL.
For me, the biggest question is, how concrete is this intention? This is a very interesting essay, with a lot of interesting points at the level of metaphor, but there are a hundred reasons why this won't actually happen. But maybe more importantly, there are at least a few things in this general direction which actually could and probably should happen.
For starters, have you ever read Steve Sailer on the Sears Tower? The basic point was, the real power elite strongly tends to live and work out of the second or third floor, with the possible exception of people in NYC. You get can away from whatever's going on in the street when you want or need, but you're also close enough so that you can feel or engage with them as necessary. Skyscrapers are for middle managers, like Sears. Because Sears buyers can't interact with anything beyond their computer screen, they could be coopted by vendors. On the other hand, Wal-Mart made its vendors go to its turf in Bentonville, AR, where Wal-Mart beat them like rented mules.
So it's easy to imagine government employees and government functions being moved out of DC but it's much more difficult to imagine who's going to populate a mega-skyscraper in Cairo, IL.
In general, lot of bureaucrats want the illusion or the reality of being close to the center of power, but for embassies this is an actual need. The ambassador from Japan has to be able to get in a cab and talk face to face with an American somewhere inside one of the inner circles of power. Nobody in Honolulu counts.
Also, when you move the Executive Branch functions out of DC, don't put them in Seattle or Boston, put them in South Dakota or the like. Especially the domestic agencies like Commerce, Labor, or Interior. Then you federalize California land use and business/labor/education regulation. So if I want to open a Starbucks in Anaheim, I don't talk to an Orange County zoning commissioner, I call a presumably Republican Dept of Commerce bureaucrat in Sioux Falls.
You also say that liberals and conservatives would both be comfortable there. I'm wondering why on earth liberals would be comfortable there? I'm not a lib so I really don't care but for me this sounds like one of the deeper circles of hells for them.
Finally, DC as the capital of the USA is embedded in the Constitution in at least a couple places. I'm wondering whether you were supposing this would happen with or without a Constitutional amendment?
War of Independence was the reason founding fathers of Turkey chose Ankara as capital. After the war, it was about destruction of Ottoman establishment. You need to wait Civil War 2.0 for a new "capital". Circa 2040 GOP doesn't achieve that kinda goal in my opinion.
Cairo is a lovely place. I would not wish 'Congress' on those decent people at all.
We don't need to build something new. We need to invest something existing with fresh meaning.
The obvious choice is Saint Louis.
Scrub all the criminal elements (which would show resolve) and gussy up the place.
It's already got a very nice national unity monument in the form of the Arch.