Urban Utopias: The Built and Social Architectures of Alternative Settlements / Edition 1

by Malcolm Miles

Overview

Utopia tends to generate a bad press - regarded as impracticable, perhaps nostalgic, or contradictory when visions of a perfect world cannot accommodate the change that is necessary to a free and self-organizing society. But people from diverse backgrounds are currently building a new society within the old, balancing literal and metaphorical utopianism, and demonstrating plural possibilities for alternative futures and types of settlement. Thousands of such places exist around the world, including intentional communities, eco-villages, permaculture plots, religious and secular retreats, co-housing projects, self-build schemes, projects for low-impact housing, and activist squats in urban and rural sites. This experience suggests, however, that when planning and design are not integral to alternative social formations, the modern dream to engineer a new society cannot be realized.

The book is structured in four parts. In part one, literary and theoretical utopias from the early modern period to the nineteenth-century are reconsidered. Part two investigates twentieth-century urban utopianism and contemporary alternative settlements focusing on social and environmental issues, activism and eco-village living. Part three looks to wider horizons in recent practices in the non-affluent world, and Part four reviews a range of cases from the author’s visits to specific sites. This is followed by a short conclusion in which a discussion of key issues is resumed.

This book brings together insights from literary, theoretical and practical utopias, drawing out the characteristics of groups and places that are part of a new society. It links today’s utopian experiments to historical and literary utopias, and to theoretical problems in utopian thought.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780415375764
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	11/22/2007
Pages:	268
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

About the Author

Malcolm Miles is Professor of Cultural Theory at the University of Plymouth, UK, where he convenes the Critical Spaces Research Group and coordinates a research methods programme for the Faculty of Arts.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations vii

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction 1

Part 1 Histories and theories 5

1 Imagining places: literary Utopias and the far-away 7

2 Drawing lines: modernity and Utopia 22

3 Planning harmony: Charles Fourier and utopian socialism 37

Part 2 Practices 57

4 New cities 59

5 Social Utopias 75

6 Ecotopias: frameworks 91

7 Ecotopias: practices 110

Part 3 Horizons 131

8 Mud-brick Utopias 133

9 A barefoot society 157

Part 4 Short case studies 177

Case 1 Economy, Pennsylvania, USA 179

Case 2 Arcosanti, Arizona, USA 184

Case 3 Auroville, Tamil Nadu, India 189

Case 4 Christiania, Copenhagen, Denmark 195

Case 5 Ufa-Fabrik, Berlin, Germany 201

Case 6 Uzupio, Vilnius, Lithuania 205

Case 7 Cambridge Cohousing, Massachusetts, USA 209

Case 8 Ecovillage at Ithaca, New York State, USA 214

Case 9 ZEGG, Belzig, Germany 220

Conclusion 227

Bibliography 233

Index 248