Labels:text | screenshot | font | document OCR: 5 questions refer to this lecture. Washington, D.C ., began as a planned city. It did not spring up around a fort or trading post like Pittsburgh, nor on a natural harbor like New York City. In the manner of Brasilia, the fabricated capital of Brazil, it was hewn out of wilderness on a designated spot. However, there was no large government subsidy for its completion as there was for Brasilia, nor was it an "instant city" like the new town of Columbia, Maryland. Washington City grew slowly, and at times painfully, on a swamp and farmland on the Potomac River near the flourishing ports of Georgetown and Alexandria, Virginia. In 1789, when George Washinton became president, one of the many pressing problems of the new government was to find a site for a capital that would be acceptable to various factions. Back in 1783, there had been an unfortunate confrontation when a group of unpaid Revolutionary War veterans menaced the Continental Congress at Philadelphia. Local authorities refuse to protect Congress, which was forced to move to Princeton, New Jersey. As a result, Congress decided that a city must be created far from the influence of local or national politics, thereby insuring safety to the government, which presumably would be subject to the physical violence of excited pressure groups. At the time it was a sound idea. Now, However, thanks to rapid air and surface transportation, the capital city can qualify as the Pressure Group Center of the western world.
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