The National Mall expansion plan for Washington, D.C.

Abstract

Apolitical contradictions in the United States have largely been reduced to policy issues in the last century. A shift in partisanship has seemed unlikely with each new administration. As a result, crises have compounded social, racial, and economic classes, forcing them to conduct insurgencies against the establishment. These insurgencies frequently take place in historically significant spaces, after which become post-conflict landscapes. These landscapes are representative of a larger social disorder glossed over by nostalgia in an American memory. The National Mall is a post-conflict landscape troubled by its perception as a hallowed ground of nonpartisan sociopolitical relationships. A controversial history infuses the dialogue surrounding national park design, monumentality, and urban conflict. The Expansion Plan functions like previous, historic master plans providing a remedial framework for the next century of design. Monumentality now reckons with uncomfortable topics and celebrates forgotten figures. The Mall becomes a democratic and educational space informed by historiography, analysis of existing conditions, and responses to post-politicization. It looks beyond partisanship and nostalgia to envision a retrospective space accepting of the nation’s past and its people.