Alternative Capital cities?

A local newspaper mentioned the tourist Rough Guide to the World which gives basic stuff on places to visit rather than high faluting stuff. It had suggested Glasgow would have been better as the capital as it had more going for it than Edinburgh. Other places referred to were St Petersburg instead of Moscow (maybe unaware that "Peters" was the capital until 1918). New York instead of Washington DC, etc. Any thoughts on alternative capitals?

Define "more going for it".

Originally posted by rjhowie:

Other places referred to were St Petersburg instead of Moscow (maybe unaware that "Peters" was the capital until 1918).

And Moscow was the capital until Peter I. decided he wanted a new one. Before that Moscow became the capital only after Ivan the Terrible kicked the tatars out ( since he happened to be grand prince of Muscovy ). Long before that, Kiev was the capital. Sort of. So were Novgorod, Kazan, Astrakhan and a bunch of others, sort of, in their respective parts of what used to be the russian empire, soviet union and what's now Russia, Belarus, Ukraine etc.
It's kinda complicated over there.

Having been to all four, I think St Petersburg is to Moscow as Edinburgh is to Glasgow, except that the Russians got it wrong.

There's nothing wrong with Lisbon. Portugal is Lisbon and the rest just country side.

The reason why the capital was moved to Moscow was two-fold. Moscow was regarded as more Russian whereas St Petersburg was the window to the West. St Petersburg was also riddled with all sorts of political and revolutionary groups and had a horrendouse assination record. The Reds took note of that hence the move to Moscow as they didn't trust the situation in the former Imperial city.

Would be interesting to see if people in different countries are happy with the capital city they have at present?

Washington DC is where it is for a reason. It exists outside of any state and was constructed to fit. To move the capital would cause too many problems and makes little sense. New York did house the congress early on and Philadelphia served as an early capital for a decade or so until DC could get going but the intention was almost always to build a federal capital that was independent of any state jurisdictions while locating it as close to the middle of the then 13 states as possible.

It's nice to have Brasília as capital city, since it is located near the center of the country - a huge country - and it is well structured to administrative functions. It is a beautiful city, but, besides some nice buildings, there is nothing else to see or to visit there. There are complaints that people there don't have a life to live...
It is not, by far, the largest city of Brazil, nor does it have economic relevance. The biggest cities are São Paulo (for business) and Rio de Janeiro (for gorgeous landscapes and beaches). But there is much to see everywhere in the country - or almost. So, Brasília is geographically a good choice anyway.

As for Germany, Berlin was the capital when Germany became a unified country. While the country was divided the western government was in Bonn, the eastern one in east Berlin ( West Berlin was under allied control and technically not part of the Federal Republic of Germany )
That said, Berlin is neither the oldest ( not by a long shot ) nor was it the biggest city until fairly recently. During the Holy Roman Empire the capital was more or less wherever the emperor was, for a while it happened to be Prague.
Berlin became capital of the state of Brandenburg in the 15th century ( before it was the city or Brandenburg - founded as a slavic fortress, nobody knows when, became a german frontier bishopric later on, changed hands between slavs and germans a couple times, lost most of its importance during the 30 years war ), the state evolved into the principality of Brandenburg-Prussia, then the kingdom of Prussia and when the prussian army unified Germany ( by conquering most of its territory and forcing the remaining rulers ( except austria ) to join, more or less at gun point ) Berlin naturally became the capital.
So, it's more or less an accident. There are far older german cities ( some date back to the Roman Empire - the actual empire, not the 'holy' one ), Berlin isn't exactly in the center of the country ( it was, for a little while, near the center of Brandenburg-Prussia but things kept moving ), it didn't even start out german ( it was another slavic fortress ). These days Berlin is the biggest city by quite a margin ( not the largest metropolitan area though, that would be the Ruhrgebiet ), there is no good reason to move the federal government and a whole lot of embassies elsewhere.
Many cities that used to be imperial 'capitals' for a while aren't that important ( or german ) anymore.