What Drives Trump’s DC Takeover
Also today: A photographer captures New York’s vast water system, and Chicago rolls out a new flood-warning system.
Illustration: Derek Abella for Bloomberg
When President Donald Trump declared a federal takeover of Washington, DC’s law enforcement this week, he framed it as an emergency order to crack down on crime and disorder. But threaded through his announcement was a broader vision for the aesthetic transformation of the US capital: He promised to “clean up” the city by removing homeless encampments and graffiti. And he talked about grandiose projects like his plan to build a new golden ballroom in the White House.
Trump’s twin obsessions with crime and ornament hark back to a Gilded Age movement known as City Beautiful: In the 1890s, urban reformers sought to reshape major US city centers, often razing poor and Black communities to make way for gleaming gardens and plazas. In the South, urban beautification came hand-in-hand with building memorials to the Confederacy. More than a century later, Trump is using DC’s unique relationship with the federal government to revive that playbook. Read more from Kriston Capps today on CityLab: Trump’s Politics of Urban Disgust