History Main / LandOfOneCity

[[quoteright:350:[[VideoGame/{{Tropico}} https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Tropico3.jpg]]]]
[[caption-width-right:350:Welcome to the city... uh, country... [[VerbalBackspace Tropico! Welcome to Tropico!]]]]

* Industria in ''Anime/FutureBoyConan'' was once a full-on country, but in the FloodedFutureWorld are reduced to the largely-nonfunctional Triangle Tower, a shanty town built around it, and a few outposts. They're still the most influential force on the known Earth because everywhere else is so scarcely populated and they're the best-armed.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Stars}}'', possible race builds (known as One-World Wonders) have habitability as narrow as possible, in order to [[Main/MinMaxing allocate points for other advantages]] such as production capacity and research. The result is that very few planets are colonizable, the homeworld holds much of the population, and the rest are available for strip mining from orbit.

Compare BritainIsOnlyLondon when an entire Real-Life country is reduced into consisting of nothing more than its most popular city, and DevelopingNationsLackCities when a poor nation doesn't have a single major city.

* Spoofed in the ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'' episode "E. Peterbus Unum" when Peter turns his house into the nation of Petoria.

Compare BritainIsOnlyLondon when an entire Real-Life country is reduced into consisting of nothing more than its most popular city.

* ''VideoGame/MasterOfOrion2'' has each planet treated as a single city. The trope is bizarrely consistent, with the player allowed to micromanage individual buildings and each planet having a population of only a few million.

* City-states were the default form of government in Ancient Greece, though many were small enough that it'd be more accurate to call them "town-states." They incorporated numerous surrounding settlements and townships, minimally the number of farmsteads needed to feed the urban dwellers. They were much smaller than medieval and renaissance Italian city-states like Florence and Venice, which tended to integrate (the largest, Athens/Attica, had less than half of the population of the medieval Republic of Florence - and Florence was smaller than Milan or Venice). Most of these places started out genuine city-states with little-to-no influence beyond sight of the city walls; but the more famous ones over time either conquered[=/=]puppeted[=/=]bought out their less successful neighbors, sent out fleets to establish control over maritime trade routes[=/=]rivals, or both.

* While it may look big, UsefulNotes/{{Mongolia}} is actually almost entirely devoid of human settlement. The exception is the capital, Ulaanbaatar, which holds about 50% of the country's population and nearly ''70%'' of its GDP and by extension pretty much everything of relevance. This includes the government, the sole military academy, almost all of the universities, most of the airport capacity, some 90% of its power plant production, and the central node of the country's sparse rail and road networks. Needless to say, Mongolia is a ''de facto'' city-state.

* In spite of their name, Ancient Greek city-states incorporated numerous surrounding settlements and townships. They were only city-states to the extent that power was concentrated in the hands of the eponymous cities, such as would also be the case with medieval and renaissance Italian city-states like Florence and Venice. Most of these places started out genuine city-states with little-to-no influence beyond sight of the city walls; but the more famous ones over time either conquered[=/=]puppeted[=/=]bought out their less successful neighbors, sent out fleets to establish control over maritime trade routes[=/=]rivals, or both.

** Marienburg is a city-state planted across the mouth of the river Reik. While it nominally controls an area of land around the Reik's estuary, this is primarily uninhabited marsh and wasteland -- almost every citizen of the tiny nation lives within its sprawling capital, which is the primary thing that comes to people's minds when Marienburg is discussed.

** The novelization outright says that Ukstead's castle is bigger than Aurora's entire kingdom.

* {{Exaggerated|Trope}} in ''Anime/CodeGeass R2'', where Zero announces the formation of [[spoiler: the United States of Japan]] by declaring its first territory (and thus "city") to be the very ''room'' he is currently broadcasting from. Everybody reacts just about how you'd expect them to by this point, since it's [[RefugeInAudacity Zero]] and all.

* In the Franchise/MarvelUniverse, Attilan, home of ComicBook/TheInhumans, and Madripoor - which, conveniently enough, is next-door to Singapore.

* In the live action ''Film/SuperMarioBros'' movie, the parallel world where Koopas reside had only one city, surrounded by endless tracts of desert.

* ''Film/JudgeDredd'': Mega City One (developed from New York City, since the Statue of Liberty still stands there) is technically a city state, though it's massive enough to equal many existing countries that are far more extensive.

* ''Film/{{Maleficent}}'' has multiple one town kingdoms within casual walking distance of eachother.
** King Stefan's Castle and surrounding town looks to be about a mile or two from [[LandOfFaerie the Moors]].

* Quite a few locations in ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'' are city-states. Of particular note is Ankh-Morpork, wherein most of the books are set, and which is also surrounded by other city-states, such as Quirm and Pseudopolis. Each is a [[FantasyCounterpartCulture stand-in for a real-world country]]. At one point these were all part of a single Ankh-Morpork empire, but said empire [[VestigialEmpire went into decline]] and its wider surroundings are now largely autonomous. However, Ankh-Morpork is still the economic powerhouse of not just the region but the entire continent, and thus has significant political influence over these.

** The city-state of Far Madding only claims jurisdiction over itself and its immediate surroundings -- out of necessity, since they're an AntimagicalFaction and their irreplacable AntiMagic artifact only affects that area.

** Melniboné itself is a fairly large island which at one time contained several large metropolises: by the time Elric ascended to it's throne, its society had grown so decandant and its nobility so apathetic that all of the island appart from its capital was abandonned and reverted to wilderness, while Imrryr (the aforementioned capital) itself is still by far the largest city in the world, although half of its buildings are empty.
* The Nine Free Cities of Essos in ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire'', based off the real life Italian city-states, except much larger. Initially they were colonies of Valyria's empire, who were forced to become autonomous after the Doom destroyed Valyria. However, they may also be something of a subversion; it's remarked that the Free Cities are more or less the same country in all but name, "hiring the same soldiers to fight the same wars for the same rulers".

** ''TabletopGame/DarkSun'' has several city-states, each of which controls one of the few remaining fair-sized spots of fertile land and not much else ([[SpaceWhaleAesop centuries of sorcerous warfare and use of magical WMDs millenia past]] [[GreenAesop reduced most of the world to desert]], natch).
** ''TabletopGame/ForgottenRealms'': The Sword Coast is mainly wilderness, interspersed with various city-states. Notable ones include Neverwinter, Waterdeep and Baldur's Gate.
** ''TabletopGame/{{Greyhawk}}'' has the eponymous Free City of Greyhawk, a major city-state which keeps its independence by taking advantage of its central location, ideal for trade and politics. It helps that most of its neighbors are ruled by [[CharacterAlignment Good-aligned]] leaders who are more concerned with their own hostile neighbors than sparking a war over ownership of the city.
** In the Tippyverse setting, the existence of Teleportation Circles has reduced the world to city states, since noone has any reason to go outside when they can just teleport between cities and farming is unnecessary thanks to limitless magically created food.

** Lookshy, a relatively small city state, is capable of fielding military forces comparable to [[TheEmpire the Realm]] (which on its own is an island the size of the continental United States or Asia and recieves tribute from across the world), through a combination of an extremely militant society and huge stockpiles of artifact weaponry. Lookshy is comparably disadvantaged in that it doesn't have nearly the same power projection as the Realm (they can protect themselves and their neighbours, but are unable to be as expansive).

* ''TabletopGame/WarhammerAgeofSigmar'': The Cities of Sigmar are independent states (in a confederation under Sigmar the God-King) centered around large cities (who share their names with the state), with the main urban area varying from as little as ten thousand to as many as ten million inhabitants. While there are unique cases like Hammerhall which is actually two cities in different Realms connected by a giant portal called a Realmgate, most are just one city within a wall. Some also have underground cities of Duardin (dwarfs) below the city on the surface where Humans, Aelves, and Seraphon live. ''Soulbound'' and the Dawnbringer Crusades supplements specify that the Free Cities rule a considerable amount of land around the cities themselves, colonizing new territory and building smaller settlements along the same lines. Interestingly, getting around ''within'' each city-state is almost always much harder than traveling from one capital city to another, because there aren't Realmgates linking locations within the state, only to other capitals.

** ''Civilization V'' introduced "city-states", which can eventually expand their borders to control as much territory as any player city, but which will never found a second city (though in rare cases they may conquer and puppet one if they get drawn into a war). They more or less serve as "minor" civs compared to the major playable empires, representing real-life city-states like Vatican City and Monaco, or the best-known cities of nations that didn't make the cut, like in the cases of Hanoi, M'banza-Kongo, Kabul, or Cahokia. Happily, some city-states like Stockholm, Seoul and Toronto ended up PromotedToPlayable empires in later expansions and installments of the series.
** The ''Brave New World'' expansion for ''Civ V'' added the Republic of Venice as a playable civ, whose unique trait renders it unable to build settlers and do more than indirectly rule conquered cities as puppet cities. To compensate, Venice has a unique unit that can puppet AI-controled city-states, and has twice as many trade routes as a normal civ, allowing it to become [[{{Fiction 500}} ludicrously wealthy]].

** In ''VideoGame/EuropaUniversalis'', states that only control one province are commonly referred to as "'One Province Minors." In a subversion of this trope they aren't meant to represent just a city in the province, but also the surrounding countryside and villages.
** In ''VideoGame/{{Stellaris}}'', empires with the Life-Seeded civic start on an idyllic Gaia World, [[BlessedWithSuck but their primary species can only colonize other Gaia worlds]], the rarest planet type in the game. Such empires can go on to claim neighboring star systems and build space stations as normal, but won't be able to properly expand onto other worlds until at least the mid-game, when advanced {{Terraforming}} technology lets them make their own Gaia Worlds, or advanced gene editing lets them change their core species' planetary preference. Since by then regular empires will have settled upwards of a dozen planets, Life-Seeded empires will have a challenge keeping pace with their rivals.

* In ''VideoGame/SuperMarioOdyssey'', Mario only travels the area in and around a kingdom's most well known location. The brochures imply there's more to the place, but as far as the game is concerned, it's basically the kingdom itself. To be fair, the regular platformers do a fine job of illustrating just how big ''one'' kingdom is, so limiting Mario's exploration range is probably to ensure he stays on task.

* ''VideoGame/{{Thief}}'''s [[CityWithNoName The City]]. In fact, there are only two other cities mentioned in the series, and they're both feudal city states as well. Civilisation of any kind outside the City certainly exists, but it is hardly ever elaborated on.

** Dalaran is a city-state [[TheMagocracy ruled by mages]], giving it enough political and military clout to be treated as an equal by the other Seven Kingdoms of Lordaeron. When Lordaeron fell to the Undead Scourge, Dalaran was devastated and went into seculsion behind a magical barrier, but by ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'' it has re-emerged as a flying city that positions itself to combat the latest threat to befall Azeroth.

* The Last City from the ''VideoGame/{{Destiny}}'' series takes it UpToEleven by the being ''the center of all human civilization''. This is, however, justified by the game being set AfterTheEnd (there really ''aren't'' any other cities or countries anymore and the only people living outside the City are tiny, sporadic tribes), as well as the City itself being [[MegaCity absolutely massive]]; it very believably looks like the kind of city that could be a nation unto itself.

* The kingdom of Overture in ''VisualNovel/AnOctaveHigher'' is a technologically-advanced nation with colonies all over the world, yet the nation itself is just one city.

* Gha'alia in ''VisualNovel/EbonLight''. It's a walled city on an island with limited space and resources, and dangerous beast-like harpies living in the surrounding forest, all of which makes one city preferable choice over several smaller ones.

* ''WebAnimation/{{RWBY}}'': Most of the kingdoms are named after their central, most well-defended city, with surrounding towns, villages and smaller cities scattered throughout their range. However, the northern continent, Solitas, is a tundra wasteland with few natural resources. As a result, its kingdom consisted of a single city, Mantle until after the Great War ended. A new city, Atlas, was built around its brand-new Huntsman Academy and R&D facilities, raised off the ground to hang in the sky over Mantle, and gaining the nickname 'the City of Dreams'. The government and administration centres relocated to Atlas and the kingdom was renamed Atlas-Mantle, although everyone just calls it 'Atlas'. Now, Atlas is home to the wealthy and privileged, while Mantle does the all the work of keeping them in wealth in privilege without reaping any reward. The kingdom is therefore a city-state composed of two cities that are tethered to each other and which function as one half of the whole -- one trying to pretend it doesn't need the other while the other becomes increasingly resentful of being taken for granted and treated like second-class citizens.

* While it may look big, UsefulNotes/{{Mongolia}} is actually almost entirely devoid of human settlement. The exception is the capital, Ulaanbaatar, which holds about 50% of the country's population and nearly ''70%'' of its GDP, and by extension pretty much everything of relevance. This includes the government, the sole military academy, almost all of the universities, most of the airport capacity, some 90% of its power plant production, and the central node of the country's sparse rail and road networks. Needless to say, Mongolia is a ''de facto'' city-state.

* UsefulNotes/{{Djibouti}} is another modern example: 70% of the population lives in the capital (which shares the name of the country, natch), with the rest scattered in the sparse countryside. The second largest city is Ali Sabieh at 40,000 inhabitants; Djibouti [the city] has 600,000.

* The Italian peninsula also has UsefulNotes/SanMarino[[note]](Strictly speaking the place is 9 adjacent villiages in the mountains inland from Rimini, but with a land area of only 61.2 km2 (23.6 sq mi) and population under 34,000....)[[/note]], made notable by being the last survivor of Italy's ancient city states and the oldest surviving sovereign state in the world (as the continuation of a monastic community traditionally founded on September 3, 301), with the oldest republican constitution still in effect (ratified in 1600, beating the runner-up, the US Constitution, by 189 years)

** This also applies to some of the states that made and make up the successors of the Holy Roman Empire. For instance, one of the cantons of the [[UsefulNotes/{{Switzerland}} Swiss Federation]] is the self-explanatory one of Basel-Stadt (Basel city, as opposed to the canton of Basel-Land (Basel countryside)). The [[UsefulNotes/TheBerlinRepublic Federal Republic of Germany]] contains three city-states, of which UsefulNotes/{{Berlin}} and the Free and Hanseatic City of UsefulNotes/{{Hamburg}} consist only of one city, and the third, the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen consists of two (Bremen proper and Bremerhaven). This is also reflected in the fact that these three states do not have a ''Ministerpräsident'' (prime minister), but a ''Bürgermeister'' (burgomaster or mayor). Modern day Germany [[WhatCouldHaveBeen nearly got another city state]] with Lübeck, but the Nazis rescinded its sovereignty (Hitler reportedly hated the place) and the German constitutional court was unwilling to give it back in the 1950s or grant a petition to have a vote on Lübeck becoming a city state. Lübeck today has about 250 000 inhabitants, and that is rounding up.

* The Republic of Ragusa on the Balkan side of the Adriatic, like Venice, started out under East Roman suzerainty and unlike them had little luck expanding beyond the neighboring coastline and offshore islands. However despite paying tribute (read: protection money) to the Venetian lagoon, Buda, Kostantiniyye, and Wien in turn; it's Romance dialect being slowly supplanted by the language of the Slavic hinterlands; and being all but leveled by a powerful earthquake in 1667 it retained it's internal oligarchic self-government and an at least semi-respectable fleet for almost 1000 years until the coming of Napoleon at the beginning of the 19th century.
* There are numerous first order administrative divisions worldwide (states, provinces, counties, or what have you) that are made up of a single city. They all qualify for this trope to whatever extent the central government permits them to handle their own affairs. Berlin and St. Petersburg are good examples, while others might be in doubt.

** Brasilia is another notable example. It was purpose built to be an city independent of regional politics because it became clear that would just not be possible if the government stayed in Rio De Janeiro.

* ''TabletopGame/WarhammerAgeofSigmar'': The Cities of Sigmar consist of independent cities. While there are unique cases like Hammerhal which is actually two cities in different Realms connected by a giant portal called a Realmgate, most are just one city within a wall. However, they are quite large and continuously expanding, with some even having underground cities of Duardin below the city on the surface where Humans and Aelves live.

* ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer}}'': The Estalian and Tilean cities are fiercely independent and self-ruling -- Tileans, in particular, identify very strongly with their hometowns above everything else and perceive even takeover by their nearest neighbors as foreign conquest -- while the Border Princes consist entirely of isolated villages and colonies looking after themselves.

* On the ''LetsPlay/DreamSMP'', L'Manburg (and to an extent, Manburg)'s territory primarily consisted of the territory encompassed within the walls of the faction. Even after the annexation of Rutabagville (a small, enclosed snowy mountain, which was basically abandoned after the Manburg-Pogtopia War) during the Manburg era and of Pogtopia (an isolated underground ravine where LaResistance against Manburg was headquartered) during the Tubbo administration, the lands are rarely accessed and are essentially L'Manburgian territory in name only, to the point that they are completely ignored during the Doomsday War and thus stand to this day.