I mean, you can, but you need to start from a relatively powerful position. While cities frequently arise organically, they do exist for reasons. People move

I mean, you can, but you need to start from a relatively powerful position. While cities frequently arise organically, they do exist for reasons. People move to cities for opportunity. Opportunity to find work is the most common one, but other ones crop up. Opportunity to meet people; opportunity to produce or consume the finer arts. Educational opportunities, for themselves or their children. Opportunities for freedom of some kind, religious, sexual, literal. So if you want to build a new city, you have to ask yourself, what opportunities can we create for people, to inspire them to move here? You don't have to provide all the opportunities - once you have a critical mass of people they'll create new opportunities themselves to pull in more people - but to get the ball rolling you need to create some core opportunity that is great enough to pull in that initial critical mass of people. Historically this has happened most often through industry. You go to a small nothing of a town, open a new factory that employs thousands of people, and it turns into a city.