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A good city location is right next to an existing city. Existing cities have everything someone moving to your city might want, so just locate next to them.

There are plenty of locations with the characteristics you name all over the world. You can start a city half way between Omaha and Kansas City if you want - nobody will home even though it meets all your requirements.

Major cities develop near shipping when there is a good port location (either river or sea), and there is a rural population to support the city. Those locations are not only already taken, but with better inland shipping many of them are not nearly as important for shipping as they used to be and exist because they are too large to die from other industry that moved in since.

Major cities can also develop when there is a natural resource nearby. It is possible someone will discover a large mineral deposit and open a mine in the middle on nowhere thus requiring a city to develop to serve it. If the city becomes large enough it could outlast the mine. Though more likely the city is already a small town, and will not grow to be large enough (from 2000 to 20000 isn't enough to sustain a city despite 10x growth)

In short, the next large stand alone city will not be on earth. Mars maybe?



Oh that's a good observation: near a city location is the best city location.




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