In light of the mixed legacy of planned cities, taking the rhetoric down a notch might be wise; in fact, a dose of humility might make these ventures more realistic and more likely to succeed. But pragmatism and modesty rarely galvanize, excite, or motivate. Invented cities are like urban startups, full of utopian optimism, ego, and often arrogance. That is often what makes it possible to build something grand from nothing, and it is often why these cities are so unrealistic and prone to less-than-optimal results.

Take the moves by the military junta in Myanmar to move the capital from Rangoon (Yangon) 180 miles north to Naypyidaw in 2005. As urban planning, its success is questionable. To avoid public demonstrations that might imperil the regime, the city was designed with no public squares of any size. The new capital is vast---six times the size of New York City. It is in the middle of nowhere, and visitors describe a nearly empty feeling, with few signs of life on its many-laned highways and streets, not to mention its plethora of golf courses. If the goal was to get an easy tee time, the city is a success; if it was to preserve the power of the military regime, that clearly failed. The military retains substantial power, but it was forced to cede some control to the elected government of Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi in 2015

Or take Astana, the invented-out-of-whole-cloth capital of Kazakhstan, which was constructed starting in 1997. Funded entirely by the former Soviet republic’s oil money and the vision---or ego---of its ruler Nursultan Nazarbayev, Astana rises in the middle of the Asian steppe, with massive glass-clad towers, arenas and parks. After a decade of near emptiness, Astana is filling out and now has a population approaching a million. It has been a boon for architectural creativity, but its effects of the Kazakh economy are less clear, aside from the expected boost to GDP from the constant construction.

Brasilia, the capital of Brazil, was constructed in the late 1950s. It was meant to showcase Brazil’s emergence as a modern country, leading the way for the southern hemisphere. Meticulously planned by the architect Oscar Niemeyer, it won accolades from designers and urban planners with its sweeping boulevards and layout designed to accommodate a car culture and the needs of a modern bureaucratic state. Much like Washington, DC (another invented city), Brasilia was a geographic compromise that for many years pleased no one. But the population has grown, perhaps too much, and the city has settled into itself, not loved but no longer loathed. Brazil, however, has struggled with decades of corruption and erratic economic progress. Brasilia was meant to end those struggles; it did not.

Some invented metropolises are more clearly products of vanity and megalomania. The late-not-so-great Felix Houphouet-Boigny may have been the first leader of the newly independent Ivory Coast in 1959, but he clung to power and in his waning years, moved the capital from Abidjan to Yamoussoukro, the village where he was born. He then spent $200 million in the late 1980s to begin construction of a basilica that copied the design of Bernini’s Vatican, only bigger, in a country with a Muslim majority and an annual per-capita income of less than $1,000. Needless to say, Ivory Coast over the past two decades since his death has seen neither grandeur, peace, nor much in the way of prosperity.

Others start with grand dreams and end with more proletarian realities. South Korea’s Songdo, begun in 2000, has cost $35 billion and counting and was conceived as a model for future cities, with wide lanes, a mix of commercial and residential development, and a robust transportation network. Filled with parks, bike lanes, and business hubs, Songdo has been attractive mostly to middle-class Koreans who either can’t afford or dislike Seoul. That isn’t a bad thing, but it is has yet to embody its status of “city of the future,” which was its initial purpose.