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Comment by g_sch | Hacker News Reader

Madrid, Amman, Naypyitaw, Brasilia, Washington...history is replete with examples of governments who wanted to move out of unruly urban centers and start with a "clean slate".

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There's a Wikipedia page for these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_purpose-built_national...

Washington was located where it is for different reasons other than moving out of unruly urban centers.

...but it was, nevertheless, moved away from New York City and Philadelphia (the prior centers of government) and not located in Richmond or Baltimore (both of which existed as cities in the general area).

Oh my sweet summer child...

The https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania_Mutiny_of_1783 is specifically what convinced Congress that the capitol building needed to be moved to an isolated area not in an existing city.

I was just reading a recent "George Washington's Final Battle" which details Washington's struggle to get the capital built where it is. The main reason for the location was to be somewhere halfway between the Northern and Southern states; any other more partisan location may have caused a breakup of the Nation. (at least that's what Washington believed)

You're confusing two different decisions: 1) to relocate the capital to a new federal district in a rural-ish area, and 2) to decide where that federal district was going to be located. You're talking about #2; I'm talking about #1. Washington's recommendation to pick a location in the south came several years after congress had already decided #1. If Washington had not pushed for it, DC would have been built in a different previously-undeveloped area, possibly in the north. Again, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania_Mutiny_of_1783

Also Ottawa, after the Burning of the Parliament in Montreal by a mob [0] relatively similar to the recent January 6th one here in the US.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_of_the_Parliament_Buil...

I can't anything about Madrid.

I believe in some cases a capital was moved to a minor but already-existing city. Amman and Madrid are examples of this, so maybe they don't count as "purpose-built".

Can you explain what you want to tell about Amman? I lived there when I was a kid (and the city a lot smaller) and it is the only major city in Jordan the the only logical choice as a capital. The position is also good for a capital city, there is nothing in the south (I lived in Aqaba first).

Amman is the largest city in Jordan by some distance _now_, but when it was designated as the capital in 1921, it was much smaller. Its growth has come almost exclusively since then, and as a result of its designation as the captial, it became the largest city in the country.

Bonn, Germany’s capital from 49(?) to 1991 would also fit that pattern. There were far larger cities such as Munich, Hamburg, and Frankfurt in West Germany. Nobody wanted a strong German capital.

Here's a [comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1kalgn/why_d...) that matches my recollection from elementary school.

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