Chandigarh is the best city to represent town planning in India (nominated this year). I also don't find New Delhi or Jaipur would be close enough for top WHS.

Good to note! I missed Chandigarh when I was going through the Tentative List earlier, and it does seem like an excellent example of urban planning for India.

I think it is important to emphasize that I only suggested using the "Categories" as a tool for for this exercise because they provided a ready made means of bringing together broadly similar sites for "comparison" which otherwise was going to be very difficult with a WHS population of over 1000. We could, I guess choose to continue to display the the ins and outs in these terms rather than simply as a list - but we are not there yet of course!) We may well (and indeed have) identified some clear errors and omissions in the assignment of Categories ( which, I have just checked, we did as long ago as Sept 2005!!! We only introduced "Connections" in 2009). In so doing we may, as part of this exercise, identify some improvements to the structure itself, but it should be seen only as an aid and not as "gospel". Just because a good site for Urban Planning isn't assigned to that category (possibly in error or possibly because it has wider aspects which justify an alternative assignment) doesn't mean that we have to move it there in order to include it in the "Top list" for reasons which include its Urban Planning credentials.
I would hope that the record of these discussions would include the fact that if, for instance, Ping Yao, gets included when we get round to its Category ("Urban Landscape - Asian"), its urban planning credentials were part of the reason (if that is the view of some contributors).
For that and other reasons I think it is important that contributors explain their reasoning when making suggestions - both for inclusions AND exclusions - otherwise they are just "assertions"!

Yep I think that is a really good point. Had I come up with arguments for each I would have come across Solivagant's concern's on Goree (which I already knew but glossed over in the rush to get down answers).

For most of us we are not going to have first hand knowledge of the majority of sites, so a fair chunk of our selections may just be abstract knowledge. If we just slow down a little and try to put down our reasoning on them it may lead to some more satisfactory results, and a bit of learning en route.

I believe we now stand at:

Tel Aviv
Val di Noto
Shibam - excellent example of vertical city planning
San Cristobal - influence on Spanish colonial cities in the Americas
Saltaire
Pienza
New Lanark - example of a philanthropist factory town
Morelia
Mantua and Sabbioneta
Le Havre
Ferrara - example of Italian Renaissance urban planning
Crespi d'Adda
Brasilia - pre-eminent example of 20th century architecture and urban planning
Modern Berlin

Val di Noto will come up again under "Post-medieval European". Maybe another case of two halves making a whole. It's essentially a very coherent late Baroque townscape.

My selection:

Tel Aviv
Saltaire
New Lanark
Modern Berlin

I'd follow Els's summary on this, but would like to additionally chip in for Tel Aviv. Further to urban planning, it ticks the Bauhaus box (and in a "living context", rather than as experiment, such as in Dessau).

I'll bring this over to the conclusion page ( http://www.worldheritagesite.org/allbyrank.php ).
Changes can always be made when we get to new insights further along the road.

Tel Aviv - Bauhaus in a "living context"
Val di Noto - very coherent late Baroque townscape
Shibam - excellent example of vertical city planning
San Cristobal - influence on Spanish colonial cities in the Americas
Saltaire
Pienza
New Lanark - example of a philanthropist factory town
Morelia
Mantua and Sabbioneta
Le Havre
Ferrara - example of Italian Renaissance urban planning
Crespi d'Adda
Brasilia - pre-eminent example of 20th century architecture and urban planning
Modern Berlin

I didn't have enough experience in this category to properly select sites, but New Lanark seemed somewhat bland when I visited. Beautiful landscape, the meaning of the site is clear, but Top 200?

Yeah I think New Lanark will be one of my easy culls when we knock down to 200. It does cover a gap with it's philanthropic ideals and layout based on industrial production, but I don't think that would carry much more weight for me.