Almere and Lelystad come to mind, built from the 70ies onwards in the Netherlands on land reclaimed from the sea. They’re relatively small but still impressive

Almere and Lelystad come to mind, built from the 70ies onwards in the Netherlands on land reclaimed from the sea. They’re relatively small but still impressive to me, with decent public transport and excellent biking infrastructure. Of course many people prefer older cities with more ‘character’ but if it’s your thing the architecture really is quite nice. Dutch urbanism is good but it requires a lot of trust in the government. Urbanists make top down plans, and then work together with property developers to create neighbourhoods. These property developers have to follow a lot of rules and guidelines and there are municipal committees that check whether the architecture is good enough for example. Top down urbanism is often seen as a recipe for disaster, but it seems to work there. I guess there are enough feedback loops in the system so that urbanists get a clue about what people like and implement that. For example, people like living close to water so constructing a neighbourhood often coincides with creating lots of canals and ponds.