Wondering if cities are even saveable?

Can cities be saved? They are so old, the people in them so dumb and stuck in their ways, the infrastructure specially designed for slavery. How long would it take to redesign a modern city into something healthy. Are the people in them even physically capable of accomplishing that? They so far seem incapable of coming to the truth about anarchy. I like the idea of starting a new anarchist tribe in an undeveloped region for those very reasons.