OK, so I've been looking for a rules clearification and haven't been able to find one yet.

If you encounter a dragon scale on the City space and draw a place such as the Dragonspire what happens to the City space? I know the rules state that the cards don't interfere with the ability to enter any of the 4 corner expansions but what about the city space itself with no expansion and what happens to that "Place" card that was drawn?

The Place Card remains faceup on the City space. When another character lands on the City, he may either encounter another character there, encounter the space (the Place Card must be encountered first), or encounter the scale (draw 1 card from the Dragon deck that matches the scale and encounter the Place Card but you cannot encounter the City). If the dragon scale matches the current Dragon King, the scale must be encountered!

Ell.

OK, That's pretty clear. But in IIRC in the instance I was thinking about the place stayed there throughout the game and the card caused a teleportation.

I this case it would render the city unusable, it's hard to imagine that a card redefines the city but would still allow the space to function as an entrance if The City expansion was in play.

I don't have a problem with tokens or drawn Dragon cards on the 4 corners but if a unique space is unusable for the rest of the game, this affects the balance too much. I think that if this was the intention there would be options to draw cards (and thus redefine these spaces) in the original rule-set.

If the Place causes a mandatory teleportation, then its a matter of if you have the choice of encountering the space; chapel etc or the Place card. If Dragon scales are in the game, than a different protocol may cause further ramifications.