[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.