> 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.
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.
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.