The Completion of Washington, D.C.

Cities and landscapes are the tangible expression of our material & spiritual worth. For good or for ill they express and define how we use or waste our resources, energy, time and land. Two score years of modernism and two score centuries of tradition stand to be compared and to be judged. In the historic districts of Charleston, Savannah and Williamsburg we possess ideals how small town America wants to live and present herself. No such emblematic model exists for the metropolitan centers. The eyes of the nation are turned towards Washington at all time. I believe that the symbolic heart of democracy and seat of government is destined to become the criterion for the rebirth of urban life & culture. What Venice is to us Washington will be to our children. The ultimate urban paradigm.

--Leon Krier, The Completion of Washington, D.C. 1985