The capital city of Washington, D.C. was meticulously planned from the start. In 1791, Pierre L’Enfant envisioned a grand city inspired by the elegance and organization of Paris, France. The U.S. The Constitution designated the District’s size as a 10-mile square in Article I. However, in 1847, the District’s boundaries shrank when the land was retroceded to Virginia after residents lobbied for the land return. Today, D.C. occupies roughly 20% less ground than originally outlined, making it one of the smallest cities in the U.S. by land area. Despite this, D.C.’s greater metropolitan region that spills into Maryland and Virginia boasts a population of over five million, making it the seventh-largest metropolitan statistical area in the country.
D.C. proper functions more as an economic hub than a residential space. For most, the city symbolizes work, school, and government rather than home. Thanks to D.C.’s high cost of living, intense housing crisis, and taxation without representation, many residents opt to live just across the Potomac River in Maryland or Virginia. The river, in a way, shields the suburbs from the high prices of the city. It is common for D.C. residents to cross state lines to buy gas, groceries, and other necessities at cheaper prices in the suburbs. The reliable metro and highway system, coupled with the costs and challenges of city living, has transformed D.C. into a commuter city surrounded by rapidly growing suburbs.
While these suburbs often face criticism from urbanists, they play a vital role in shaping D.C. as it exists today. D.C. suburbs are home to rich immigrant enclaves and diverse populations that challenge stereotypes of the city’s government-centric image of lawyers, senators, and Capitol Hill workers. For example, Rockville, Maryland, where I was born, is a vibrant Asian-American enclave, with over half its foreign-born residents coming from Asia. This community grew with the establishment of international and Asian grocery stores, which became pillars of the local business scene.
Similarly, Falls Church, Virginia, houses Eden Center, the largest Vietnamese commercial hub on the East Coast. Just 15 minutes from D.C., this strip mall features hundreds of shops, restaurants, and businesses catering to the Vietnamese-American population. My family and I have visited Eden Center regularly since I was a child, enjoying its specialty grocers and outstanding pho while forming connections with restaurant owners in the community.
Washington, D.C. is truly a city of suburbs, and being a resident of D.C. almost inherently means partial residence in the suburbs. To put it into perspective, I was technically born in Maryland, partially raised in Virginia as I attended elementary and middle school there, completed ballet training in D.C. since the age of 8, and later went to high school roughly two blocks away from the White House. Crossing state lines is a daily occurrence for many, and Maryland or Virginia license plates overrun the congested city during the workday. While the question “what state are we in?” may seem odd elsewhere, it is commonplace in D.C., where the metropolitan area is deeply interwoven with its suburbs.
I took my first steps as a child in a bookstore in Arlington, Virginia, lost one of my front teeth falling off a slide in Bethesda, Maryland, watched the New Year and Fourth of July fireworks every year in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia, and drove a car for the first time in an empty Ikea parking lot in College Park, Maryland. My upbringing was never confined to D.C.’s city limits. I spent my childhood zigzagging through D.C., Maryland, and Virginia, moving between home, school, ballet practice, tennis lessons, family gatherings, and errands, seamlessly navigating multiple states and neighborhoods in the process.
Many argue that suburbs should remain distinct from cities and cannot be considered equivalent, but Washington, D.C., defies this notion. Here, the city and its suburbs are intricately linked, forming a collective urbanized whole where one truly cannot exist without the other.
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