Ideal cities : utopianism and the (un)built environment / Ruth Eaton.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Ideal Cities presents a vast panorama spanning more than two millennia of Western attempts to invent the perfect city, cradle of the ideal society. Embracing not only architecture and town planning but also art, literature, philosophy and politics, this book takes us through the imaginary environments of a wide variety of fascinating and often controversial movements and figures, including Plato, Filtrete, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas More, Thomas Jefferson, Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, Charles Fourier, Etienne Cabet, Robert Owen, William Morris, Ebenezer Howard, Bruno Taut, Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright, the European Situationists, the Japanese Metabolists, Archigram, Superstudio and many more. In this richly illustrated book, the author explores the ability of ideal cities to stimulate reflection and change, and suggests under what conditions they might continue to exercise their vital function in relation to the urban environment of the future. The ideal cities presented by Ruth Eaton exist for the most part in the virtual domain of ideas, treading the fine line between dream and nightmare. While it is true that notorious attempts to cross the border to reality have greatly discredite

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Acknowledgements (p. 6)
• Preface (p. 7)
• 1. Introduction (p. 8)
• Definitions (p. 11)
• Stepping stones (p. 14)
• Characteristics of utopian worlds (p. 16)
• 2. Sources of the Ideal City from High Antiquity to the Middle Ages (p. 18)
• On heavenly and earthly paradises (p. 21)
• The fruits of human organization (p. 26)
• 3. The Idealization of the City from the Renaissance Onwards (p. 38)
• The city: an object, an idea (p. 41)
• Observing other worlds (p. 42)
• Establishing an ideal vocabulary (p. 44)
• Quattrocento applications of the ideal (p. 50)
• Military appropriation of the ideal city in the sixteenth century (p. 56)
• Thomas More founds the utopian literary genre (p. 63)
• Utopias between More and Bacon (p. 67)
• 4. Exporting the Ideal to the New World (p. 72)
• Encountering the 'New World' (p. 75)
• Colonial practice in New Spain (p. 78)
• The grid enraptures North America (p. 84)
• America, promised land (p. 90)
• 5. The Horizons of Knowledge (p. 98)
• Worshop of progress and nature (p. 101)
• The ascent of Neoclassicism (p. 103)
• Claude-Nicolas Ledoux (p. 106)
• 6. The Search for Order in the Age of Great Cities (p. 118)
• From polis to megapolis (p. 121)
• Experimental communities (p. 125)
• Literary utopias (p. 136)
• Urban models (p. 142)
• 7. Cities for the Machine Age (p. 152)
• The urban Janus (p. 155)
• Anti-utopian literature and cinema (p. 159)
• German visions of a crystal paradise (p. 164)
• Italian Futurists: cities that rise and re-arise (p. 179)
• Constructing a communist world (p. 183)
• Ideal-city planning in France (p. 196)
• Contrasting visions in America (p. 205)
• 8. The Revolt of the Citizen (p. 214)
• Struggling with the chains of utopia (p. 217)
• Megastructures: swansong and seed (p. 218)
• Playgrounds for Homo ludens (p. 223)
• Architectural counter-utopias (p. 231)
• 9. Conclusion (p. 236)
• Notes (p. 244)
• Selected bibliography (p. 248)
• Index (p. 251)
• Photographic Credits (p. 255)

Author notes provided by Syndetics