Interesting...but necessary?

Imagine the drab fortress of the FBI building in Washington, D.C. gone, the freeways and ramps around the Kennedy Center covered by parks and boulevards, and a Metro stop near the Jefferson Memorial.

A sweeping plan unveiled today would make Washington more open, inviting and less "9-to-5," which anyone who lives there knows is problematic.

The National Capital Framework Plan is highly critical of much of the 1960s and 1970s-era construction that surrounds the Mall, at turns calling it "hostile," "unwelcoming" and "imposing."

But with D.C. already considered one of the nation's most pleasant, walkable cities, is such a plan really important in a time most consider to be a recession?