If Washington, DC was no longer a viable capital city, what city would make for a new capital?

37 comments

1. Boston

2. St. Louis it’s in the middle-ish.

3. New York

4. Sheboygan, Wisconson. Mostly because I think it would be funny.

5. How about Kansas City?

   Its in the middle more or less,and it is already spread across two different states…that piece could be separated and made a capital district.

6. Pennsylvania or Deleware

   Edit: My bad I didn’t read the question all the way it’s like 4 o clock where I am sorry!

7. I feel like a lot of people are going to comment with already highly developed cities but I think if we’re building a new capital we should pick somewhere that we can easily redesign the layout. So, I’m gonna throw out Lebanon Kansas, the geographic center of the contiguous 48.

8. I can’t believe no one said Philly yet. It’s the birthplace of the country, and is even larger than DC.

9. Doesn’t really work that way in my opinion.

   Wouldn’t be an existing city, but rather a location that was chosen and then annexed from a state to be the future capital of the nation and built up to serve as such.

   I’m a fan of decentralizing things in a lot of cases, so why not pick a few locations? We also have way easier communication than in the past, so no need for old school transportation requirements like river routes, railway hubs or whatever. Still need some established infrastructure though to make it easier for growth and expansion.

   —–

   So…let’s spread it out and also pick a random connection in town names.

   I’d split the new capital between Wichita Falls, TX / Sioux Falls, SD / Niagara Falls, NY.

10. Juneau, AK

11. Intercourse, Pennsylvania

    Just for the name.

12. Lebanon, Kansas.

    It’s the geographical central point(roughly) of CONUS. Plus the name would be funny.

13. Denver

    You try giving a long winded speech at high altitudes.

14. Lincoln, Nebraska. It’s the perfect name and in the middle.

15. Pago Pago, the capital of American Samoa. Governing the country from that great distance would be fun to watch.

16. Philly

17. Philadelphia

18. They’d probably have to do what they did the first time and find some plot of land that is mostly empty, that a state or two wouldn’t mind giving up. Which means they won’t just throw it into an existing city.

19. St Louis. It’s in the middle, needs revitalizing, is currently cheap, and it’d be great to thin out the beauracrats by making them move to (gasp) the flyover states.

20. Might as well go for the oldest capital and the highest elevation capital in the US: Santa Fe

21. Denver would be a likely candidate. Iirc it has one of the largest presences of federal government outside of dc

22. Philly

23. A city where politicians would suffer Detroit would be good

24. Kansas city would be a good one. Major city, near middle of the US. Plenty of land around but lots of infrastructure. If under attack and you some how made it past all the other states you now have to cross massive amounts of wide open flat land to attack the city

25. Stockton because the politicians deserve it.

26. Guys. Guys, it’s ok. We have a backup Washington.

    I propose we send them specifically to the town of Humptulips as it is based in Washington #2, has a population of exactly nobody, and is called Humptulips

27. I think we should put it in Mianus.

28. Branson, Missouri.

    No one would suspect it.

29. Detroit, or really any city that’s experienced a large amount of population loss.

    It means there’s space to remodel/put in all the stuff you need for a capital district, with existing infrastructure. But without the nightmare of building from scratch or the headaches of ousting property owners via eminent domain.

30. Criteria:

    Is located in the center of the country.

    Isn’t already a state capital, or is close to a state Capital.

    Straddles regions.

    Here are my candidates:

    Wichita, Kansas.

    Saint Louis, Missouri.

    Pueblo, Colorado

31. Have you seen DC? It’s already not a viable capital.
    I live 5 minutes outside of DC and I can definitely tell you the place is a craphole.

32. Tightwad, MO. Population: 69.

    (Yes, it’s a real place, and yes, that population has been posted on the road sign upon entering.)

33. Gary, Indiana or East St Louis

34. Build a new city in the middle of Kansas or south Nebraska, geographic center and allows us to do the capital planning from the ground up.

35. Idk why people are insistent on the geographic center of the country when 50% of the country lives in the eastern time zone alone lol. Sorry West Coast.

    I don’t want foreign tourists visiting our nations capital and they have to visit Kansas 💀 put it on the Great Lakes or something lol

36. Metropolis, IL. A small city with room for growth along the river border between two states, one D and the other R.

37. We’re not quitters. We’ll make DC viable again.