City creations are ordered all the time and they do not forcibly fail. Many new world (ie. US, Australia, NZ) cities weren't organically grown. And so were a lot of cities built during Antiquity that are still there in Europe. Greeks and Carthaginians (themselves Phenician colonials) founded colonies ex nihilo that are still thriving today. And so did the Romans, though they often built on top or besides existing urban centers (my own city was founded in -133 on a new spot, but was a few kilometers away from a Gaulish oppidum of which the population was subdued). Most of the cities inside what used to be the Empire have been rebuilt from the ground or created by Rome at some point.
It's just a matter of good engineering.
There are numerous examples over the course of history of new cities being built from scratch by government decree. I guess some worked out better than others.
I believe in some cases a capital was moved to a minor but already-existing city. Amman and Madrid are examples of this, so maybe they don't count as "purpose-built".
Many great european cities grew entirely out of deliberate projects. Some noble family would want to harbor a thriving marketplace so they could tax it.
American cities did used to be planned. Philadelphia and New York didn't just assemble as grids. It's only in the postwar era suburbia build out that urban planning became haphazard and driven by developers.
The idea of a polity building a well planned city from scratch has loads of successful historical precedent.
It's an interesting bit of curiosity how capital design kind of spread from France to the U.S. and then from the U.S. to Canberra. While other purpose built cities, like Brasilia had designs sourced locally.
Meh, the Romans and Greeks are upstart striplings when it comes to city planning. Mohenjo-daro in present-day Pakistan was built as a planned city in c. 2600 BCE, and Chinese capitals like Luoyang's first incarnations aren't far behind.
Seems like what you're describing is a planned community or also intentional community. The latter being more of focused on the community part and the former on the planning part. Washington DC is a planned community.
Yeah, building a city from scratch opens up new possibilities for governance, institution building, city zoning and layout. I'm for a lot of small cities, each experimenting.
Adding to an existing city plugs you into all these incumbent systems, including existing hierarchies and notables.
Your question is asking something other than the obvious. Could you explain more?
"The obvious" is to look at how your state or country handles city incorporate. In the US that's at the state level. See https://legalbeagle.com/4913925-a-city-incorporate.html for one of many resources I found by a DDG search for "how to incorporate a city".
Beyond that, China is making many new cities. A DDG search for 'China "new city"' finds many links.
> Last week, Y Combinator, the Silicon Valley startup accelerator that helped launch companies like Dropbox and Airbnb, announced it was launching an ambitious project of its own. The “New Cities” initiative will study freshly minted cities, and how to plan, design, and build them from scratch.
I'm sure you could find more scholarly references in Google Scholar using similar keywords.
Aren't all cities built by people... on their own? Almost all cities formed spontaneously via market forces or geographical incentives, then eventually organize a more local government system - largely by the same families who founded the village/town.
Not to mention the government mandated cities and folks like Le Corbusier! I think the vast majority of current new city developments are government mandated (e.g. Neom, Egypts new administrative capital, many new projects going up in China, etc.)
At least Brasilia, Brazil's capital was planned, and if I remember well, there wasn't any city/encampment/etc before. Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais' capital was also planned, but I believe it had some sort of settlement there before. So some cities just happen, others are planned, and others Oklahoma I guess :)
The quotes around acquired are due to the way some land was bought or negotiated. Some times Maori would receive insignificant amounts of money, or in other cases pakeha would use of loopholes, such as a law requiring the land to belong to one person. Then once the land belonged to a person, they would negotiate with him directly. Some more succinct information https://teara.govt.nz/en/land-ownership/page-1
"List of purpose-built national capitals" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_purpose-built_national...
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