The Floating Cities - a very short story in the manner of Italo Calvino

There are two floating cities that I know of.

One Mahogany lies in the mouth of a river so vast that the shore is scarcely visible on either side, and yet the water that bathes it is still fresh and suitable for drinking.

The other, Cuilper (or Culyper), where every building sits within its own quarried out hole, and is fixed to the bare rock with a strong anchor like chain. At times the dykes fail and the sea pours in, and the buildings of Cuilper, rise, bobbing and floating in the floodwaters of an encroaching sea. As the dykes are restored, the floating buildings are reeled back in and sit back down in their housings until the next flood. 

The city of Mahogany is ramshackle, logs are added to it, and the city sprawls with opportunistic concentrations of multi story buildings congregating, until the underlying logs become waterlogged and start to sink down. Each log is fixed with a rope, and in general the ropes will rot away in time for the waterlogged logs to drop down into the current. At times, logs are cut loose. In this way, segments of the city become redundant and unusable until fresh log foundations are floated into place. But this all takes place over a great period of time, and seems no more unusual than the changing fashions, or gentrification in another city. 

In Cuilper the layout of the city is literally fixed in stone, the holes quarried out for housing each building remain in place, they form streets and quarters. Everything is organisation, it is the neatest city you ever saw. The chains are neatly painted, the houses are neatly arranged, the people are methodical and ordered, save the one great uncertainty, when the dykes will break and their city will float up on its chains. 

In my experience the people match their cities, the people of Mahogany sprawl expansively, they are moody and gregarious, prone to exaggeration and argument. At heart though they are warm and kind, every ready to share and offer assistance. The people of Cuilper are fastidious and organised. They dress neatly in blacks and greys, even their flamboyance, the odd laced collar or brass buckle, is restrained and almost mathematical. The people of Cuilper would watch cooly as a neighbours house flounders in the tide, drawing a wry moral from their neighbours failure to prepare adequately, or to appropriately ensure that their household possessions are evenly distributed within their domicile. 

And at times I wonder, did the people of Mahogany and Cuilper make their cities, or, in truth, did their cities make them?