In 2010, the National Park Service announced a plan to refresh and refurbish perhaps the most visible civic space of our democracy, the National Mall, visited by over 25 million people every year. In 2011, the Trust for the National Mall announced a design competition to rethink three of the sites on the Mall: Union Square, with an oversized reflecting pool barring the flow from the Mall to the Capitol Building; the Sylvan Theater on the Washington Monument Grounds, which had been bifurcated by a recent security upgrade; and Constitution Gardens, which had never been fully realized since its inception in the 1970s. The winning proposals will shape the designs of Constitution Gardens and the Sylvan Theater, though issues of jurisdiction will alter the final renovation of Union Square.