Maggie's Farm

And how is Brasila these days?

Governments like these build-it-and-they-will-come efforts.

Sometimes it works. Initially creating Washington D.C. outside of any populated area was more an expression of weak government than strong. Braslia was the opposite.

St. Petersberg was a geopolitical move toward Europe and a counter to Sweden. We forget Sweden was a major power at the time. It made sense for Russia to have a presence on the Baltic. Peter the Great went beyond establishing a presence and moved the capitol there. Lenin moved it back to Moscow.

In retrospect Peter might done better to move it to the Black Sea coast. After all, the Russian Czars spent more effort in the next two centuries contending with Turkey and Central Asia.

Right off hand I don't recall any other totally artificial capitol cities of recent times. Turkey moved from Istanbul to Ankara but I Ankara was already a political center.