As an Austrian, I‘m already used to this concept. All but one of our state‘s capitals are the largest city (the exception is Vorarlberg, where the 3rd biggest is the capital, but only 20,000 fewer people than the biggest city).
What would it be like if Sacramento was replaced by Los Angeles, Albany to New York City, etc.?
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Giving Detroit even more power in this state? Hard pass.
(This has less to do with the politics and far more to do with state funding allocation and general corruption.)
Arizona, because absolutely nothing would have changed. Change is chaotic and expensive.
There’s 16 other states whose most populous city is also already their capital, but ours is by far the largest by population.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_capitals_in_the_United_States
I don’t know about the whole state, but Sacramento itself would take a hit. The state government is the city’s biggest employer by far.
It defeats the purpose that was decentralized power, but Illinois and Missouri come to mind.
Nah, I like the obnoxious state politicians cloistered away in Olympia where they can’t bother us here in Seattle.
Moving from Tallahassee to Jacksonville doesn’t really change all that much. Tallahassee would take a really big hit
Ohio would have problems because Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati all have claims to that title [depending on what exactly you’re counting](https://youtu.be/DnhsSbFiJ9s?si=pdTKR9d2-sVTju3j).
I predict civil war.
In some cases, the expenses of state governments would sky-rocket with the necessary cost of living increases.
OP- I would not have guessed that Bregenz is smaller than Feldkirch and Dornbirn. Miss visiting Lech, that was one of my favorite ski resorts in the Alps.
Alabama would lose one of its most populated cities. The only things propping up Montgomery are the military and the state government.
Madison residents would be so lost without the capitol. what would be in the middle of that big square?
A lot of state capitals would wither away cause most of them are only relevant at all because they’re the state capital.
Like Augusta here in Maine would be fucked.
I don’t really think there’s any specific benefit to having the state capital be the most populous city. Population of a city doesn’t really correlate to ability to effectively govern.
PSP would be posted at Blue Mountain Tunnel to make sure no taxpayer money was headed west
I’m torn. On the one hand, I hate Raleigh. On the other hand, I hate Louisville.
Everything in Minnesota would move about 10 miles to the west. We try to keep things consistent.
Somehow I think we would fine
I don’t know what the hell would happen if you made Harrisburg bigger than Philly and Pittsburgh combined. They simply wouldn’t fit. The city would collapse in on itself like a black hole.
Albany would have a bad time but maybe moving the state government to Manhattan would change the subway system for the better.
The MTA is a public benefit corporation and the city does not run the subway system.
California here.
I think there would be a political issue that “90% of California would be neglected, and everything would be Los Angeles”.
Even as it is, there are occasionally movements to break the state up into smaller parts so that “Taxes go to the taxpayers”. Don’t tell them that they usually get more in services than they give in taxes, because most of taxes are paid from LA and San Francisco areas, then a strip of land on the coast between those cities.
The population of Montpelier, Vermont, would drop by 5,000 people. That does not seem like much to most capitals. But it would be about 65% of the city’s residents.
You’d have to move New Jersey’s again in a few years, as Jersey City is growing much faster than Newark.
It wouldn’t really cause that many issues to any of the states overall. But it would definitely hurt the economies of small state capitols like Montpelier and Harrisburg.
A lot of our state capitals were built specifically to be so. Just magically changing the location doesn’t set up the infrastructure for that change to happen. We’re talking tens of thousands of people and jobs would need to relocate. Not just rank and file state employees but law firms, media, NGOs, universities, and more.
It would probably economically devastate the former state capital.
It would definitely worsen the insane real estate situations in many states’ largest cities if everyone working for the state governments had to pour in. Los Angeles, Seattle, and New York, for example, are all undergoing major real estate affordability (and homelessness) crises, and it would also annihilate property values in the former capitals. Office space premiums for the many government offices would also mean taxes would go up for everyone else in the states, although this would definitely have been a bigger problem if COVID and the resulting WFH culture hadn’t happened.
Our capital city, Cheyenne, is the most populated.Not by much, though.
Annapolis would probably be fine because the naval academy is there. Baltimore would probably benefit a bit from job creation and from state politicians giving more of a crap about what goes on there.
Honolulu is Hawaii’s capital and largest city. I vote move the capital to western Molokai for the lulz.
Springfield, Illinois would become a ghost town
I don’t think Alaska would particularly benefit from the move described in the question.
Anchorage would gain a bit more political power, so the rest of the state would probably suffer a little. Juneau, the current capital, would be economically devastated.
At one point, there was a serious movement to build a new capital in Willow, which is on the road system and much closer to Anchorage. The expense would have been astronomical, though, and improvements in communication technology over the past few decades took away much of the rationale for the move.
During the debate over the issue, it was calculated that the cost was enough to buy the entire NFL, move the teams to Alaska, and build each of them a new stadium in a different town or village. The opposition fundraised off of this, selling jerseys with logos for “the Barrow Packers,” and such.
We’d be paying a hell of a lot more for government buildings, that’s for sure. I can’t even imagine how much it would cost to buy that much office space in NYC.
I’ve read previously that there’s some correlation between corruption and the distance of a state capital from its major metropolitan areas… that is, remote capitals have higher incidences of corruption, with the supposition that most legislators are far from the constituents most of the time, and far from major media oversight as well. Not sure if anyone here is familiar with that reasoning, but I’d like to hear more.
Having our capital in northern Virginia would be *a lot* of power in one area.
Trenton would be redeveloped into something unrecognizable. There is nothing much there & the city is very small but its a good gateway/hub location.
It might not be a horrible thing; Newark could use the business & trenton could use the additional tax-paying properties.
For Missouri the city changes depending on how you count the population. Kansas City is the largest city proper by population but St. Louis is far larger Kansas City by Metro Area population. Realistically it wouldn’t necessarily affect the state that much as a whole but rather the cities involved
If we went by city size our capital would be on the border of our least favorite state. That could cause certain issues. If we went by metro area it would be on the border of a different state that we hate much less. St. Louis also used to be the capital of Missouri originally so it would be a bit of a smoother change there. It could also result in the state legislature making St. Louis no longer an independent city and allowing it to actually expand like a regular city causing it to annex the urban areas around it that everyone just considers part of the city already.
Also Jefferson City would lose a lot of its economy, population, and popularity.
Kansas City being the capital of Missouri is mildly hilarious.
Most states with one large economically and culturally dominant city that is not the capital because of a compromise between rural and urban interests (often using a smaller, centralized transport hub as the capital) would have a hard time with this.
You’re going to have the capital of Kansas and the capital of Missouri a few miles away from each other
Austin would be fine. They’ve got a major university plus an establish music and culture scene. But Dallas and Houston would fight it out. Houston proper is bigger in population but the DFW metro area edges out Houston.
I wish capitols would be in the center of population rather than the center geographically. That would probably locate most of them in a nearby suburb of the most populous city, which would be a lot better than trying to shove a state government into the middle of an already crowded city. But it would help reduce the travel time and costs for all the legislators.
Here in GA, I think we’d benefit from the state capitol not being in downtown Atlanta and such a pain to get to! But nor would it make sense to move it to a random rural location in the center of the state.
Nothing would change here, haha
The most dramatic changes would probably be Albany to NYC, Raleigh to Charlotte, and Springfield to Chicago.
In all cases, the former capitals would suffer greatly (Raleigh probably the least), and the cost of running the state government would increase significantly. On the other hand, NYC may benefit from having geographically local control over its transit system.