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Indeed there was a variety of city-type manifestations throughout the twentieth century, city surrogates that almost didn't bother to pretend that they were other than this. The funfair was one model provided in New York precisely a kind of playful mini city, or alternative city, a city unconstrained by practicalities of weight and mobility, Coney Island is a kind of surrogate city where fantasies not actually practicable in the city itself found expression. Another city-type manifestation is the university campus, specifically the residential Cite Universitaire in Paris from the 1930s with its pastiche of international styles.

Other common city-like projects of the twentieth century were the Great Exhibitions. The Exposition Universelle in Paris in the 1930's, The British Empire Exhibition in London (1924-5); The New York World Fair in 1939 etc. Today perhaps our city-like entities are airports.

Otherwise city fantasies remained unanchored to reality; and thoroughly enjoyed their state. We have Malevitch's Cosmic City, Krutikov's Flying City W.D. Hay's City of the Sea of 1881 (from Three Hundred Years Hence) etc. Kikutake's Ocean City, Isozaki's City in the sky; Kurokawa's grid city suspended from towers a story above the ground to allow freedom for agricultural use below.

And more plausible but actually very far fetched projects such as Raymond Hood's bridges design for New York. Improbably even Norman Mailer joined in. There was Archigram's Plug in City, Ron Herron's Walking City. There is the current computer game Sim City.

This wasn't just a modern preoccupation. Indeed the further you go back the less these fantasies were constrained by what was technologically possible: Henry-Jules Borie's project for Aerodomes, glassed in galleries thousands of fee long; Paxton's proposal for the Great Victorian Way, Mery's Paris Port de Mer, Leo Claretie's Paris prediction (in 1886) of a project to be realised in 1987: "a crystal canopy that would slide over the city in case of rain." All partly or completely implausible!

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