" Heaven and Utopia both had a place in the structure of ancient cities; yet to the extent that the best human plans may miscarry and the most successful human dreams may, through their very success, succumb to internal perversities, Hell became part of the formative structure, too. The resulting material form often outlasted the ideal that originally quickened it: as is the fashion of containers, old buildings and public ways may serve, with minor changes, to hold a new dream. But that is a late development. So important was the symbol itself for early urban rulers, that more than one city was razed to the ground, to be rebuilt again by the destroyer on the same site. No rule of common sense or economics can explain that. "

― Lewis Mumford , The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations, and Its Prospects