For Libya, Tripoli's main public square has come to symbolize the success of the country's 2011 revolution. Originally named Piazza Italia under Italian colonial rule (Western European-inspired central squares are a common theme in this part of the world) and then Independence Square by the Libyan monarchy, it had been renamed "Green Square" after Muammar Qaddafi's political ideology. Libya's transitional government promptly renamed it Martyrs' Square after those who died fighting Qaddafi's regime in Libya's civil war.

But these public spaces don't always survive the revolutionary moments that make them famous. Bahrain's most prominent public square (or circle) met the same fate as the uprising that once filled it. After demonstrators marched to Manana's Pearl Roundabout in March 2011, the Bahraini government retook the circle in a bloody crackdown, then tore up the grass with backhoes and demolished the central Pearl Monument to reassert control.

In many ways, France pioneered the conscious use of urban design for political purposes. Paris in the early 19th century was essentially a medieval city, suffocating from overcrowding and poor infrastructure. Baron Haussmann's urban renovations under Napoleon III in the 1850s and 1860s gave the City of Light a modern sewage system, beautiful suburban parks, and a network of train stations. He also took the opportunity to demolish unruly lower-class neighborhoods, banish their impoverished inhabitants to suburbs, and replace their cramped, narrow alleys with spacious, grand boulevards. In the event of an uprising, like those that took place in 1789, 1830, and 1848, French authorities hoped the wider streets would be both harder for revolutionary Parisians to barricade and easier for columns of French soldiers to march through to suppress revolts.

Similar calculations are still made today. In 2005, Burma's ruling junta moved the government from Yangon, a sprawling metropolis of 5 million people, to the new inland capital at Naypyidaw for security reasons. Isolated from other population centers, Naypyidaw is populated mostly by government functionaries and military officials who spend as little time as possible in the eerily desolate city. Burmese officials claim almost a million people live there, although the true population is likely far, far lower than that.

When the Saffron Revolution erupted two years later, in 2007, the large-scale protests that rocked other Burmese cities never took hold in Naypyidaw, and the country's military rulers remained in power after a brief but brutal crackdown. Even if the city's population had been large enough for demonstrations, where would they have taken place? Broad boulevards demarcate the specially designated neighborhoods where officials live, with no public square or central space for residents, unruly or otherwise, to congregate. A moat even surrounds the presidential palace. One journalist described the city as "dictatorship by cartography."

Kazakhstan's Nursultan Nazarbayev, meanwhile, relocated his seat of power to Astana, a capital deep in the Kazakh steppe filled with futuristic architecture to dazzle visitors. Russian President Vladimir Putin looked to the past for inspiration: In 2008, he revived the Soviet tradition of massive military parades in Moscow's Red Square to project strength. Not blunt enough? Saudi authorities use Riyadh's Deera Square to carry out official public beheadings.