Abstract
This thesis examines how Washington, D.C.’s streets, traffic systems, and Metro have shaped public assembly within federal space. Existing scholarship tends to treat the city as a passive setting for political action; however, this thesis reads urban form as an active author who influences how protesters approach federal institutions, move through the city, gather, remain visible, and encounter governmental control. Through historical plans, maps, photographs, newspaper archives, planning reports, infrastructure documents, and protester oral histories, the study compares the capital’s designed spaces with how they are occupied during protest.
The thesis is organized around four major urban-planning alterations. First, Pennsylvania Avenue demonstrates how ceremonial streets transformed early political movements into visible processions. Next, the National Mall shows how open ground and symbolic monuments support large crowds, encampments, and national exposure. Post-WWII roads, bridges, and intersections reveal how transportation networks can become critical targets of mass disruption. Lastly, the Metro illustrates how regional transit distributes participant arrival through multiple stations and points of entry. These planning epochs are examined through case studies, including Coxey’s Army, the Bonus Army, Resurrection City, May Day 1971, the 2017 Women’s March, and Black Lives Matter Plaza.
The findings demonstrate that urban form does not determine political action, but structures its routes, scale, duration, visibility, accessibility, and governability. Additionally, the same infrastructures that enable assembly can also facilitate its regulation and inevitable removal. By examining civic assembly as both a political and spatial practice, this thesis argues that architecture and urban planning strongly position where public expression occurs, and the conditions under which it can persist and be removed.