Utopian Architecture Research Paper

H. G. Wells’ book, A Modern Utopia was published in 1905. This book seems to be unique for two reasons. As Wells tells us, it is told from the point of view of "a whitish plump man" that he calls the "Voice" (1). This allows the book to be what Wells calls, "a sort of shot-silk texture between philosophical discussion on the one hand and imaginative narrative on the other" because the Utopia that we visit in the story is the one inside the mind of the "Voice" or the narrator (ix). He (the Voice) is talking to a friend, a botanist that continues with him on his journeys, about utopian thought when suddenly these two men have been transported past Sirius to Utopia, the Voice’s ideal planet

Paul Goldberger, an American architectural critic once quoted, “Urbanism works when it creates the journey as desirable as the destination.”

In my personal opinion, there is no feasible way to create a true utopia in a world of imperfect humans, but there are many improvements we can make to America today. Criminals will always break the laws that keep us safe and happy, greedy aristocrats will always try to amass more than their fair share of wealth, and corrupt politicians will always lie and cheat to further their own agendas, but the doesn’t mean we can’t make the world we live in better. A few of the areas that we can definitely improve in the most are education, career benefits, welfare, and criminal justice.

In class, we talked about three utopian ideas that were actually put into action in a few cities. The first is the city beautiful movement. The design is just like the name makes it sounds; the idea that everything in the city will be designed with beauty in mind. This meant that it would reflect the rebirth of the United States through confidence and class of mostly prominent, architectchally sound buildings. A real example is Central Park in New York City. Despite the rapidly changing population of New York, this design is clearly thriving. The next utopian idea was from Le Corbusier called the Radiant City. His idea stemmed from changing the polluted industrial city into a clean one. He wanted to do this by making taller buildings where large amounts of people would reside to ensure for more green space. One can see a city that reflects this design idea in Brasilla. The last utopian idea is called the garden city by Ebenezer Howard and was implemented in Greenbelt, Maryland for one example. The garden city utopia is designed in concentric rings with a mix between a country and a city feel. Howard thought if the city had both the country and the city feel that everyone would want to live

and needs of these types of technologies will also evolve and become more prevalent amongst

The word utopia is, in origin, a pun. Commonly thought to be derived from the Greek eu-, meaning good, and -topos, meaning place, the prefix of the word is actually derived from the also Greek ou-, meaning no. In short: the meaning of the word utopia is no place. Utopia does not exist. Works of dystopian fiction such as Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, Kurt Wimmer's Equilibrium, and Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange seem to revel in this fact, creating dystopian worlds born with the intent of being utopias, but falling short in one crucial area or another, driving home a common theme: an ostensibly utopian society cannot be achieved without the sacrifice by the masses of some vital aspect of human nature.

The city was becoming an inhumane place to live and today present different view. We are experiencing the emergence of a new urbanism that, unlike traditional planning does not seek the satisfaction only, of the maximum economic efficiency of a city, where the flow of capital, selling cars, real estate speculation and manufacturing productivity are above the minimum human needs. The "New Urbanism" offers a balanced city, where economic, social and environmental are in the same plane of importance, where humans and their physiological and psychological needs are the starting point of urban planning. The New Urbanism simply proposes a human city; we might well call, planning of the city for the Humans.

In our lives today, we take advantage of all the luxuries that are presented daily. Freedom alone is one of the greatest luxuries we possess as an American nation. In Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs and Utopia by Thomas Moore, we are presented two life styles, which some might consider very similar in various ways. Both authors focus on a peaceful living lifestyle, to better the people of the nation. Although some of their specific details are different, I believe that Jacobs would definitely approve of the features that More develops in Utopia.

Firchow, Peter Edgerly. "George Orwell's Dystopias: From Animal Farm to Nineteen Eighty-Four." Bloom's Literature. Facts On File, Inc. Web. 11 Mar. 201

Imagine a city where no green space can be found. Where concrete and steel buildings rise up and block the sun. Where streets are chaotic and gridlocked and citizens are stuffed in cramped, dirty and unsanitary apartments. This was the world of 19th-century cities where human health and happiness were disregarded for economic gain. These horrid conditions shaped the lives and ideas of three very influential men: Ebenezer Howard, Le Corbusier, and Frank Lloyd Wright. They took their own experiences and redesigned the sprawling metropolis to improve the lives of the residents. Each man created urban utopias that included green spaces, farms, and parks to improve air quality and the livelihoods of the people. Despite theses similar views, each design differed from the others. Howard, Le Corbusier, and Wright all completely reimagined the urban city in differing ways based on scale, distribution of land and technology. Their design concepts have been adapted across the globe and implemented into modern urban planning everywhere.

“The best that can be said of the conception is that it did afford a chance to experiment with some physical and social planning theories which did not pan out. “ This quote reflects Jane Jacob’s philosophical ideas in an attempt to criticize the social housing’s design approach and its associated urban planning in modern era. “The physical and social theories” outlines the urban planning idea of social housing (Utopian idea) and according to Jane’s statement, such experiment of these theories were deem to be unsuccessful. It is inevitably certain to some extent that a provocative statement towards modern era social housing approaches would hold true due to the minimal success the plans brought to the city, such as solving the working class commendations temporarily. Nevertheless, it is a failure to deliver long-standing social improvements corresponded with the increasing suspicion of modernism, one cannot simply attribute ill fate to its “innovative physical features” (As Jane said, the Utopian and Utopia), but should rather considered a range of other elements in the larger aspect of society: factors such as difficulty of racial integration, problems of financing and management, lack of bridging between architecture and planning, as well as the increasing preference of suburban lifestyle from the rising mid class. These problems reflected evidently in some stereotypes of social housing communities built in the modern era such as Pruitt-Igoe, sunny side Gardens, Paul

“Wright and Le Corbusier seem predestined for comparison. Their ideal cities confront each other as two opposing variations on the same utopian theme” (Fishman, 163). Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris, more commonly known as Le Corbusier (October 6, 1887 – August 27, 1965), was a Swiss-French architect, designer, painter, urban planner, and writer. Throughout his life, he was a pioneer of modern architecture and city planning (Frampton, 12). One of Le Corbusier’s contemporaries was also hugely influential but with a competing plan Frank

As a result of a booming development of the nineteenth century city, “progressive” architects of the time started to deliberate and conceive opinions to create long term solutions. Known for his radical cultural manifestos, Le Corbusier is one of the architects that epitomizes the change in ideal of the Machine Age. He introduced ideas of living in completely analogous, planned, designed, and then built, cities. Le Corbusier 's proposition for the City of Tomorrow had in its roots the intention of creating a series of fundamental principles that would become the skeleton of any modern city plan. However, considerations that were not applied during that period of time, are the cause of its unsuccessful development.

Designing a city from scratch is a remarkable thought experiment but ultimately fails at implementation because we always approach it from the perspective of “how can we create a new city that solves problems of existing cities.” It’s less a process driven by design and more by critique. Urban living has paved its way into modern society, yet the vision for a city has changed over time. Large settlements need planning to grow; yet differences in minds is what leads to the modifications of a city, in return makes a city so unique. Alterations in opinions are what thrives urban life, still these differences are what skews the view of how others see a city compared to myself. They say the eye of the beholder deems beauty; this could explain

We are witnessing a phenomenal advancement in technology over the last three decades, and our citizens are experiencing remarkable