Persuading yuppies to move to “Swampoodle” was always going to be an uphill battle. So when the ex-industrial zone next to Washington, DC’s main railway station was slated for redevelopment in the 1990s and 2000s, the authorities ditched the neighbourhood’s original 19th-century name, which had already fallen into disuse. Instead, they christened the wider area “NoMa” (“north of Massachusetts Avenue”), a syllable or two away from trendy locales like NoMad (in New York) and Soho (in each of New York, London and Hong Kong).
