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> Historically, efforts to create cities by decree have not worked well.

can you list some examples? Cuz all i can think of (as mentioned in this thread) are places like Ankara, Astana, Saint Petersburg (matter of fact i think _most_ cities in Russia were created by decree in a swamp) etc.

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I was thinking specifically of Brasilia and the criticisms of it in the book Seeing Like a State, how the planning ignored the reality of how people actually lived their lives.

It's also interesting that all the examples you gave as well as the other reply, are (or were) capital cities of their respective countries. Of course, if it's the seat of the national government, people will need to live / work there and there will be a city. The Line doesn't have that, though.

If you go far back enough the Romans were responsible for founding a large number of modern day Western European cities. In CIV terms building a city surrounded by desert tiles is just a very late game move.

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