Capitals despised by their country's citizens

[Anzeigenhauptmeister]

When I think of capitals that are deeply despised by their country's citizens, there are two cities that immediately come into my mind: Washington D.C. and Berlin.

Do you know other examples? Do the French and the British love or hate Paris and London?
Is it more common for a capital to be loved or to be hated by the inhabitants of the whole country?

[DavidB.]

Despised is maybe too strong a word, but most people definitely don't like Amsterdam mentality and the typical Amsterdam elite. Of course it does not have the political connotation that dislike for "the beltway" has. Dislike for "The Hague" is pretty deep-seated too, but only in a political context, not towards its inhabitants or the character of the city.

An obvious counterexample would be Jerusalem. Many Israelis dislike the Haredi character of the city, but even to them, it usually has a special place in their hearts.

[Santander]

Naypyidaw

[Anzeigenhauptmeister]

Naypyidaw

Really?

[parochial boy]

Bern isn't hated - it gets laughed at because it has the reputation of being rural, slow and full of yokels. People tend to hate Geneva (where they whine all the time and think they're the centre of the universe), or Zurich (where they whine all the time and think they're the centre of the universe).

I suspect that, as a general rule, where a capital is also the major financial/economic/population centre - it will tend to be resented more by the rest of the country.

[Anzeigenhauptmeister]

Despised is maybe too strong a word, but most people definitely don't like Amsterdam mentality and the typical Amsterdam elite. Of course it does not have the political connotation that dislike for "the beltway" has. Dislike for "The Hague" is pretty deep-seated too, but only in a political context, not towards its inhabitants or the character of the city.

Amsterdam is a hipster city, I think. And the rest of the Netherlands (except the North Sea coast) is quite conservative, right?
What about Den Haag? Is it a good middle-class city?

An obvious counterexample would be Jerusalem. Many Israelis dislike the Haredi character of the city, but even to them, it usually has a special place in their hearts.

Good point!

[2952-0-0]

Canadians love to joke how Ottawa is boring because nothing exists other than bureaucracy. But otherwise unless you work in the government, it's rarely in the public mind.

But for English-speaking Canadians, the city to hate is Toronto. For Quebecois, it's Montreal.

[Anzeigenhauptmeister]

Bern isn't hated - it gets laughed at because it has the reputation of being rural, slow and full of yokels. People tend to hate Geneva (where they whine all the time and think they're the centre of the universe), or Zurich (where they whine all the time and think they're the centre of the universe).

That's funny since Bern isn't really a small city. With over 140,000 citizens (or should I write: 140'000 ), it is number four on the list of the most populous Swiss cities.
Interesting to know that there seems to be a competition between Zurich and Geneva, which I didn't know of. I think it has something to do with their different language area.

[Anzeigenhauptmeister]

Canadians love to joke how Ottawa is boring because nothing exists other than bureaucracy. But otherwise unless you work in the government, it's rarely in the public mind.

But for English-speaking Canadians, the city to hate is Toronto. For Quebecois, it's Montreal.

Was Ottawa declared the capital of Canada because of its location between the anglophone and francophone areas?

[Angel of Death]

For an inverse example (albeit on a subnational level), many inhabitants of the capital of Friesland, Leeuwarden, despise the Frisian nationalism displayed by the rest of the province and consider themselves proud Dutch(-speaking) citizens.

[DC Al Fine]

Canadians love to joke how Ottawa is boring because nothing exists other than bureaucracy. But otherwise unless you work in the government, it's rarely in the public mind.

But for English-speaking Canadians, the city to hate is Toronto. For Quebecois, it's Montreal.

Was Ottawa declared the capital of Canada because of its location between the anglophone and francophone areas?

That was one of the reasons. The other was that at the time the British were concerned about invasion from the USA and Ottawa was less vulnerable than the other candidates.

[Mike88]

In Portugal, there's a lot of jokes about Lisbon. In the North, jokes about Lisbon, and sometimes depreciating comments, are quite common. One of the most well known is "While Lisbon rests, the North works" or "In Lisbon, they're all moors". Although the main argument of the jokes is the huge rivalry between Porto and Benfica, economic and social factors are also relevant as it's regularly criticized the over centralization of services in Lisbon and the diversion of investments/events to Lisbon, which creates huge protests against Lisbon.

[dead0man]

I've kind of always assumed most people hate their capital and the people in it.  Most people don't like being told what to do with the the threat of ultimate force behind it.  Resentful even.  Probably fewer examples of a people that like their capital.

[LabourJersey]

"despised" is a bad term, but any capital that was explicitly created as a government center--Washington, Ottawa, Canberra, Brasilia, etc--is going to be disliked far more than, say, Paris or Berlin, since they are seen as fundamentally "company towns" for politics.

[seb_pard]

Santiago is a a little despised by the rest of Chileans, people like to complain that we are soft, spoiled and like to complaint a lot (specially people from Concepcion, they really think they are special).

Although this hate is not politically motivated

[AustralianSwingVoter]

Canberra

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

Canberra

Came here to post this, as well as make a joke about the NHL.

[2952-0-0]

In China, Beijing is resented for the usual reasons, but even more so since so much of the economy is dominated by massive state-owned enterprises headquartered there, and which although their shares are on the stock market, they function exactly like a lumbering communist bureaucracy. And, the Beijing accent is absolutely horrible to listen to.

The problem is made worse by the Chinese household registration system: people are free to move around China, but are not free to move their official place of residency. Since access to public services is tied to your official place of residency, and since the largest cities are wealthiest, this means the official residency of either Beijing or Shanghai is hardest to obtain.

This means that the huge migrant populations in these two cities who don't enjoy official residency resent the locals for their privileges, while the locals view the "outsiders" as rabble. Locals are even suspicious of dating "outsiders" since there's the suspicion they're marrying purely to obtain residency.

[Zinneke]

Brussels is both disliked and fought over. Not to mention as capital of Europe its disliked by many, but I enjoy that unique hatred of having 70% of your legislation made in my city. Euroscepticism nowhere near as damaging to the city as the structural linguistic divide in Belgian politics, although the EU is probably what keeps Brussels from being unwanted.

Berlin has ''ach Berlin" but on a general level my experience with Germans (mainly in football kurves and my ''ossie'' gf) is that Saxons especially dislike Berlin, I think down to a historical rivalry between Prussians and Saxons, the GDR years, and given the events in Chemnitz that seems to have been hatched upon again (Berlin forcing migrants on us, ''Saxit'').
Others are fairly apathetic because Germany did, to its credit, build a multipolar country, and they can still enjoy Berlin as a weekend out. France and Paris on the other hand...

ALso if we go into sub-national entities (and again most of this is probably from groundhopping football but also political/cultural too) :

- Frisians do not like Leeuwarden, and Leeuwarden definitely does not consider itself Frisian. Mostly a linguistic divide rather than a political one I think, but Leeuwarden feels almost like a Brabantian industrial city in some parts where the rest of Friesland is just rural.
- Most Dutch Limburgers think of Maastricht as their arrogant capital, full of posh guys in bright trousers going to Michelin star restaurants. Not sure what Maastricht think but having witnessed a Limburg derby that included burning the limburgish flag and whistsling the anthem, I think the feeling is mutual. In contrast, Belgian Limburgers seem apathetic to Hasselt.
- Ghent is a mile away from being East Flanders' capital. Waasland and the Denderstreek are culturally opposite to it, and vote differently to it.
- A lot of North Rhine Westphalians I've met hate Dusseldorf as a city in terms of architecture and feel, and think their people to be too bling bling.

[parochial boy]

Bern isn't hated - it gets laughed at because it has the reputation of being rural, slow and full of yokels. People tend to hate Geneva (where they whine all the time and think they're the centre of the universe), or Zurich (where they whine all the time and think they're the centre of the universe).

That's funny since Bern isn't really a small city. With over 140,000 citizens (or should I write: 140'000 ), it is number four on the list of the most populous Swiss cities.
Interesting to know that there seems to be a competition between Zurich and Geneva, which I didn't know of. I think it has something to do with their different language area.

I wouldn't say Geneva and Zurich are rivals really. More that Zurich is the Big City if you are German speaking, and Geneva is the Big City if you are French speaking. Other than that, they don't always have a lot to do with each other.

And Bern is smaller than Lausanne once you factor in suburbs - Lausanne is certainly a bigger industrial centre; whereas Bern stills like a sleepy town in the countryside, just with a lot of civil servants.

Anyway, taking inspiration from Coloniac, the big two rivalries within regions in Switzerland would be between the lakeside and the mountains in Neuchatel; and between the towns of Solothurn and Olten in Solothurn. In both cases it is a case of antipathy between industrial working class areas and the rich-bourgeois seat of power.

[EPG]

I would be more interested in political / economic capitals appreciated by their country's other citizens.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

'Despised' is doing rather a lot of work here, I feel. Some people in the provinces will always whinge about the capital (and other major urban centres; concentrations of economic, political, cultural power etc), and some people in the capital (and other etc.) will always sneer at the crudeness of the provinces. But for every person that rants about That London there's someone who believes that it's Streets Are Paved With Gold; for every person who insists that the Yorkshire dialect is barely English, there's someone who dreams of a little cottage in the Dales. The only truly hated capitals are artificial ones, particularly when they are recent creations.

[cp]

'Despised' is doing rather a lot of work here, I feel. Some people in the provinces will always whinge about the capital (and other major urban centres; concentrations of economic, political, cultural power etc), and some people in the capital (and other etc.) will always sneer at the crudeness of the provinces. But for every person that rants about That London there's someone who believes that it's Streets Are Paved With Gold; for every person who insists that the Yorkshire dialect is barely English, there's someone who dreams of a little cottage in the Dales. The only truly hated capitals are artificial ones, particularly when they are recent creations.

That seems rather sweeping. I can see all national capitals being disliked because they symbolize centralized authority, but based on this thread it doesn't seem like it's any more intense in countries 'artificial' capitals rather than natural (?) ones. I'd love to hear about what people think of Brasilia or Astana for comparison. Ooh! Or Sucre/La Paz!

Also, if one wanted to be pedantic, the 'City of London' is technically the 'capital' city of England/the UK, and 'the city' has a very specific kind of resentment directed toward it: full of rich, entitled finance toffs. (I supposed you could also make an argument for the borough of Westminster, as that's where Parliament and 10 Downing Street are, but that borough has no reputation beyond its government role).

[Anzeigenhauptmeister]

Berlin has ''ach Berlin" but on a general level my experience with Germans (mainly in football kurves and my ''ossie'' gf) is that Saxons especially dislike Berlin, I think down to a historical rivalry between Prussians and Saxons, the GDR years, and given the events in Chemnitz that seems to have been hatched upon again (Berlin forcing migrants on us, ''Saxit'').
Others are fairly apathetic because Germany did, to its credit, build a multipolar country, and they can still enjoy Berlin as a weekend out.

Saxony is the most right-wing state of Germany by far (the AfD won a plurality there in the federal election), wheres Berlin is a hipster city that is governed by a red-red-green coalition that openly supports the Antifa. Thus, it's not really surprising that Berliners and Saxons hate each other.

[Anzeigenhauptmeister]

A lot of North Rhine Westphalians I've met hate Dusseldorf as a city in terms of architecture and feel, and think their people to be too bling bling.

That's right. Düsseldorf is one of the wealthiest cities of Europe and its citizens are perceived as very posh and snobby. The city is known for its Kö, a boulevard with many luxury retail stores and a beautiful moat.


The citizens of Cologne, on the other side, are said to belong to the lower class, they have a funny accent that makes them seem proletarian, and their national beverage a disgusting "beer". 😖

But I think the hatred chiefly stems from the fact, that Düsseldorf was declared the capital of North Rhine-Westphalia despite Cologne having twice as many citizens.