They usually don't start inhabited, but then the people building and working at it want to live closer, which pulls in the support roles of stores, which bring more people, etc etc etc.
If you build somthing in the middle of nowhere, and employ people there, the somthing will create a local population.
There are not that many big enough inhabited places left in Europe. And if you build them in Siberia, you're back to square one - dependency on the current tyrant in charge.
