AHC: Have Washington D.C. as largest US city

One of the differences between the United States and most countries is that Washington D.C. is not also the most populous city in the country. In most other nations the capital city also serves as the main city of the country and is the most populated.

So your challenge if you choose to accept it is to come up with a way that D.C. is the most populated city in the US in the modern day. Any POD is acceptable.
 
Does D.C. have to be in the same location as OTL? Because the obvious answer is to have New York become the capital and rename itself "Washington".
 
The difference is that DC is a manufactured city, established after the country's beginning for no other purpose than to be a capital. In the case of most other nations the capital is that big because it already WAS big and important; the nation's history grew up around IT.

Had Philadelphia been chosen as the US capital (which might well have happened), or New York, the same pattern would have held.
 

jahenders

Banned
As noted, the easiest way would be for some other large, important city (New York, Boston, Philadelphia) to have been named the capitol, instead of creating a city just to be the capitol.

Assuming you ARE stuck with the DC construct a few things would be necessary for it to have grown to near-largest size:
1) The allotment of land (the diamond shape) would have had to be bigger to allow for growth AND it would have had to keep the 39% of the diamond (Alexandria, etc) that "retrocessed" back to Virginia in 1847

2) The government would need to be more willing to fund improvements early on, such as the C&O canal

3) The primary stock exchange could have been set up in DC (or moved there), making it a financial center. Instead it got its start in New York in 1792

4) The government could be more inclined to subsidize the city's growth so it would be a relatively inexpensive place for businesses (and people) to live, whereas now it's expensive for both

All that being said, it would probably, instead be better if DC were a SMALLER city, with far fewer government offices there, and thus far fewer supporting contractors there.
 

Sabot Cat

Banned
One of the differences between the United States and most countries is that Washington D.C. is not also the most populous city in the country. In most other nations the capital city also serves as the main city of the country and is the most populated.

So your challenge if you choose to accept it is to come up with a way that D.C. is the most populated city in the US in the modern day. Any POD is acceptable.

All of the cities that are more populated than Washington D.C. (about 21, at this moment) are destroyed by nuclear missiles. D.C. survives because it's the only city with a robust missile defense system.
 
As suggested by others, many European and Asian nations' capitals have a long history and were the "primary" seat of economic, cultural, religious, and political power in the region even before they became the formal capital of the modern nation states. Washington DC was a created seat of government, and it would have been the Founders' intention that the city itself would be relatively small and not be a rival to the existing large cities of the US (New York, Boston, Philiadelphia, etc) for power and influence. Think of Brazilia as an equivalent modern example.

Short of Sabot Cat's apocalyptic way of dong this, I suppose one could imagine a USA that grew much more slowly, with a number of economic downturns or outside invasions that crippled the economic bases of the existing cities - or perhaps even took them out of the USA either by secession or annexation. Then imagine redevelopment of a "new USA" under an activist authoritarian regime still based in Washington that sought to centralize all economic and politcal power in the capital, with a massively expanded military and bureaucratic government.
 
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I think this is impossible. There is no economic reason to have any city were DC is. The only reason it's not an empty stretch of land between Baltimore and Richmond is that its location was political. It's a miserable swampy spot with a river that's barely navigable and it's not on the intersection of any major trade routes. As others have pointed out DC was intended to not be a major city.

You can make it bigger than our history but I can't see a reasonable route to make it the largest. Anyone have any ideas?
 
New England secedes, taking New York with them. Philadelphia is burned during the civil war. Baltimore becomes the new port of the East Coast for the US. It slowly morphs with Washington.

That's my best attempt.
 
New England secedes, taking New York with them. Philadelphia is burned during the civil war. Baltimore becomes the new port of the East Coast for the US. It slowly morphs with Washington.

That's my best attempt.

I was thinking the same thing -- didn't DoD-America have Baltimore turn into the major port? (New York was out of the union, and Philly was compromised by a hostile border.) Maybe take that, but don't have the capital move away from DC, and the Balti-Wash Metro Area could eventually become largest in the U.S.
 

jahenders

Banned
Well, if you can count the population of the entire Baltimore-Washington metro area, you are up around 9M, which is more than NYC. However, if you then also count the NY metro area, then it's quite a bit larger.

Comparing city populations is often an exercise in confusion because on metro area will just be one city, while another (of similar size) might be 6-10 different cities. It's based on the local politics, but doesn't really change the population density.

I was thinking the same thing -- didn't DoD-America have Baltimore turn into the major port? (New York was out of the union, and Philly was compromised by a hostile border.) Maybe take that, but don't have the capital move away from DC, and the Balti-Wash Metro Area could eventually become largest in the U.S.
 
Any POD is acceptable.

Instead of returning Alexandria county to Virginia, the citizens are given monetary compensation and the land remains part of DC. Also, you’ll need a US that keeps all the OTL land it annexes over the years, plus one or two changes to the treaties at the end of wars. No changes to outcomes, just treaties.

Still, it’s probably impossible. New York’s just in too useful a place.
 
Very improbable but assuming no Alexandria retrocession, my next POD would be the New Deal. Congress requires that the principal offices of federal agencies be located within the District of Columbia. The growth of government during the New Deal, WWII and the Cold War leads to the District annexing most of Fairfax, Montgomery and Prince George's counties. Even that probably doesn't make Washington more than top 10.
Maybe the more concentrated government spending makes more contractors locate in the area, Sillicon Valley happens on the Potomac, all the money sloshing around draws a lot of the finance industry away from New York. Even then, I'm not sure it would meet the OP's challenge.
 

jahenders

Banned
Yeah, I think you'd have to change that to 25 or 20 miles square (4-6 times as big) to have adequate size. You'd also have to maintain that, not let some of that land retrocede back to MD or VA, and do some necessary canal work to help it grow.

If you drop the "ten miles square" maximum from the Constitution, theoretically you could eventually have the District annex all of what is now the Washington metropolitan area. Although even that, with 5,860,342 people (assuming it would still have the same number of people as it does in OTL) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_metropolitan_area would be less populous than NYC.
 
DC is a swamp (both in the literal and heavy handed political metaphor sense). Before the advent of air conditioning this is pretty hard to do, since it was simply too hot and muggy. After the advent of air conditioning other cities were far larger and the government didn't try to promote DC as a place to live.
 
DC is a swamp (both in the literal and heavy handed political metaphor sense). Before the advent of air conditioning this is pretty hard to do, since it was simply too hot and muggy. After the advent of air conditioning other cities were far larger and the government didn't try to promote DC as a place to live.

Being a muggy swamp isn't necessarily an impediment to having a large city if other criteria are met--Berlin, Moscow, and nearly every city in southern China were built on swampland that was hot and humid in the summer.
 
Being a muggy swamp isn't necessarily an impediment to having a large city if other criteria are met--Berlin, Moscow, and nearly every city in southern China were built on swampland that was hot and humid in the summer.

True, but in the U.S.'s case it would require subsidization and investment (in canals, dikes/levees, and reclamation) that the early government was fairly hesitant to grant.
 
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