Washington, DC is a city with some of the most magnificent public spaces and some of the worst at the same time. The Mall is mixed; it’s a huge tourist attraction with great, free museums and monuments, but many of the buildings present blank stone walls to the streets and there are too many cars, rendering it more of an empty grassy space between attractions than a destination in itself.

The neighborhoods reveal an even wider variety. Beautiful streets of old brick rowhouses (here are pictures from Southwest and Georgetown), and vibrant new streets in revitalized, mixed-use areas like the Penn Quarter, mix with superblock developments like the DC Convention Center and the Reagan-ITC building that create barren voids around themselves.

Like all cities, Washington is struggling with the form of its new development, trying to create active areas which foster community while dealing with developers, local politicians, and others trapped in pre-Jane Jacobs modes of thinking.