Utopia

Utopia usually refers to an imaginative projection of an ideal society. In distinction to current conditions, this is typically located in another time or space. The term's geographical roots are apparent in its original coinage by Thomas More in his book Utopia, of 1516, which played upon the Greek words for good place (eu-topos) and no place (ou-topos). That book inaugurated a literary genre in the West concerned with depicting, often in considerable detail, “the best state of a commonwealth” achieved through human actions. The genre has continued, with fluctuating fortunes, into the present. So, too, has More's narrative device of projecting his ideal as a geographically distinct land, discovered through a process of exploration and travel, where current problems and ills have been surpassed.

Despite the presence of this foundational text, however, there is no agreed-upon definition of utopia that fixes it to a particular place, time, and form. Much recent debate suggests that, as attempts to imagine better worlds, utopias have a longer history that finds different modes of expression in different geographical settings. They are also not confined to literature and include depictions in other media. They further involve social and political visions of and theories about better ways of [Page 946]living, from formal plans for building new spaces and societies to more open expressions of desire for radical change. In addition, despite common assumptions that utopias are intrinsically impractical or impossible, utopias are associated with experiments to construct alternative communities and settlements in the present. Some commentators go further and, following the lead of the philosopher Ernst Bloch in particular, suggest that utopian impulses may be discerned in a whole range of everyday activities and practices that embody desires for a transformed existence and hence that reach toward different futures.

For all their diversity, utopias have had a long and close association with urban communities. Many commentators trace the association back at least as far as the ancient Greeks, who conceived of the body politic in terms of the polis or city-state. Utopian thought since then abounds with images of new sparkling cities, as attested by such titles as the City of the Sun, the Garden City, and the Radiant City. The German saying “city air makes one free,” derived from a medieval legal principle about the freedom from serfdom granted to city dwellers, is similarly suggestive of how cities have often been viewed in utopian fashion as potential sites of enlightenment, democracy, and freedom against countervailing views of them as sites of alienation and oppression. Cities have been viewed not only as favored spatial settings for projections of ideal societies but also as instruments for bringing them about. They have been the subject of numerous utopian plans, schemes, and proposals that have aimed to confront current problems and radically transform their spaces as well as wider society. The considerable influence of utopian thought on how cities have been physically constructed as well as imagined, conceived, and lived is one reason why utopias are of critical interest within urban studies. Yet the importance of the question of utopia for urban studies extends further, for it invites consideration of the normative commitments and understandings of the good society that underpin different approaches to cities and urbanization in general, including in cases where these are not explicit.

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