[close04]

> At one point there was nothing where every single city now stands. Everywhere it started with a blank slate.

Before the city there was a town, or a village. It's not blank slate > city, it's blank slate > something > something else > city. There's some evolution in the middle and that makes the difference. One grows organically over time and goes through different stages until it reaches the "city" stage, one is planned as a city from the start.

[ElBarto]

It starts with a blank slate...

That's arguing on a distraction, though, as the key is planning, not blank slate.

[sparkie]

The key isn't planning, the key is population. A city without people is a ghost city. The city is as much the people as it is the infrastructure. Cities are alive.

It's like arguing that you can build a person by assembling organs in the right place. You can build a humanoid structure which mimics the human, but it's missing the most important feature: life. You can't simply instil life into something. It needs nurturing.

[burntwater]

But they are not necessarily planned as cities. They are first planned as settlements. Then planned as towns.