Utopian Social Justice

Construction of the city consumes minimal resources because the assets already present are conserved rather than destroyed. The houses themselves, although “unpainted and patched” are simple but effective structures. This shows how rather than dwelling on superfluous aesthetics, the older generation devotes itself to more fruitful endeavors. For example, residences sport compost heaps. The implementation of such devices preserves and recycles many resources, further emphasizing the conservative ideology of the older generation. While their practical lifestyle is compared to “savagery” by the younger generation, the city of the old generation is really an example of their efficiency.

According to the essay “ Nature Through the Looking Glass”, the author believes that people should be part of nature, but most of the time people do not have real touch activity of nature. Under the strong competition society, it is not easy for a normal worker to go outside and interact with the nature. Those green plants on two sides of the city sidewalk is one of the chances for people to get touch to nature. More importantly, walking in the city sidewalks is easier than having a travel, which can satisfy most of the city people’s working requirement . Also, nature world will bring quiet life for people I always ask myself, if I can live without business area, after reading the essay “ The Forged City”. And I get a response, which is people need to get out of business activities and come back to nature even a short time in each day. Without interest relationship, people’s life will become simple and pure. Shopping malls cannot replace traditional city centers because people have large limitations in business malls. In contrast, people can observe different levels people in the society with equality ideas in traditional city centers. City sidewalks can fit for this requirement and provide a comfortable area for all of us. When children go

Through a multitude of significant changes physically, conceptually, economically, and more, the societal reformation of cities in the Progressive Era had set themselves as the foundations of American civilization. The juxtaposition between the rich and poor statuses in these urban areas show the drastic separation within developing cities. Through this division caused a wide variety of living conditions, the majority of which held the overcrowded sections of cities where the population mostly stayed while the higher end communities had more luxurious lives. Through this success of entrepreneurship and economic growth from all aspects in cities, the entire landscape, both physically through innovative architecture and the perspectives outside rural and suburban areas had on them, had transformed for the better in these areas.

Well known in cities at the time were the City Beautiful movement and the city practical, however, social issues were merely pushed to the side. Wirka (1996) explains that “both are undoubtedly important movements in the history of planning” (p. 57), however, she goes on

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.

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.

“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

The notion of “Garden City”, famously explored by Ebenezer Howard was a solution intended to bring together the economic and cultural advantages of both city and country living. He sees it as an alternative to the congested urban areas in England. Canberra –the capital city of Australia differs from the garden city proper, a city that is perhaps not what Howard wished garden city to be. Nonetheless Canberra is a city that incorporates many of the garden city principles and in this essay I will argue that Canberra indeed is a garden city, as Canberra is build on central garden city concepts such as public ownership of land, limited growth and population in the city and a balance between town and country. Whilst Canberra may not be a true

These cities would have adequate space of residential habitation, industrial work and agricultural production. In order to shift people who moving to the urban cites to the suburbs, a concept of garden city setting was coming out by Ebenezer Howard. His idea was inspired by the utopian wave which existed from mid and the close of 19th century. Howard (1902) idealized that in garden city, a 6,000-acre site would have 32,000 people living in. Furthermore, there was a sustaining potential which is the limit of the population density in garden city plan, so they would build a new garden city nearby when another city has reached the limit. In Howard’s book, there is a central city surrounded by lots of garden cities which could afford 50,000 people. Roads and rail is the way linking those garden cities. The aim of garden city planning is to create a beautiful, sociable and healthy communities with both a good natural environment and high quality of housing affordability. A combination of the active and energetic city lifestyle with the delight and the beauty of the countryside was the way to achieve it.

If we want to live in a better city and are sustainable, we must use utopian architectural methods so that planners can begin to think about the new possibilities of human life. The utopian city model is to ensure the need for dreams, the need for mystery, and sometimes even the desire to create poetry and construction. These projects are the means to escape monotonous life, and its continuation may lead to boredom and frustration. Through Utopia's urban projects, humans can realize that the material world is not static, but is in a state of continuous progress. By using the utopian method in urban planning, our habitual values are confused and we enter the utmost and newly discovered space of the utopia and have the opportunity to educate ourselves. We can find the power to inspire ourselves and the desire to be better the past, the desire to be better than present and desire for even more, most importantly is to desire in different

Part two of Death and Life explains several conditions for city diversity based on the observations of different American cities and discusses in depth the four factors that Jacobs believe are critical for the development of a city. The basis for generating diversity lies in these conditions, and cannot be secludedly achieved by planning and designing. This part lays out the foundation and is the basis for the rest of the book. It shows urban planning and many possible remedies for creating equal diversity, and studies why these are not applied and the effects of it not being so.

The garden city idea emerged during a time when countries were beginning to urbanize (15% of the world’s population were urban, a rapidly growing figure). There, the living and working environments were squalid and the working

It is widely acknowledged that Ebenezer Howard’s Garden City stimulated many significant urban design achievements in worldwide. Whether the theory is still suitable for sustainable urban planning in twenty-one century has been widely discussed. Some approvers argue that Howard provided the idea of self-sufficiency and limited growths still remain. However, the theory has been denounced because it is too idealistic, difficult to implement. Therefore, this paper will first review the original concept of Garden city, then examine legacy of the Garden Cities whether they have proved to be successful, sustainable places. The paper is divided into three parts. In the first section, the concept of Garden city will be first explained. In the second part, the discussion of Garden city concept will be presented. Then, case study on modern garden city will be described at last. The study shows, the ideas of Garden City have been widely misinterpreted, leading potential risks on environment. In addition, to some extent, the morphological model of Garden city is not appropriate any more due to vehicles dependency and new communication modes changed the planning concept.

The modern reality of the cities is defined by complex urban, social and environmental problems. The era of intense urbanisation is associated with the phenomenon of the unregulated urban sprawl, globalisation and consumerism. Especially for the metropolis, for both, the developed and developing countries, there is overconcentration of the population in confined spaces, which leads to insufficient-available infrastructures of common utility, accommodation and transportation. This has become a fact that is causing problems with the living conditions, and enhances the negative environmental effects. Due to those problems, humanity tried to create a theoretical concept of the ‘ideal’ and an implement based on its achievement. This concept -known as utopia- was referring to ideal situations that are impossible or really hard to achieve. Unfortunately, in reality, utopianism promises a lot more than you can imagine. It aims to resolve long-lasting problems efficiently. It is using a mechanism run by the government in order to give instant solutions. It is hoping for an unselfish collaboration, which also miscalculates human selfishness and antithesis. It anticipates a change that will come from strategies designed from the upper authority but will not do anything to deal with the substantial problems of its base. There is a thin line between utopia and dystopia as dystopia is a utopia that has gone wrong, or a utopia that functions only for a particular segment of society. Based

The process of people moving into cities, which is called urbanisation, was happening around the world in past decades. It causes cities to have more labourers and resources than before. This makes a big contribution to the social development of cities. Thanks to these social developments, public services are becoming better in these areas. Citizens can enjoy a better life by access these public services such as better medical care, more education resources and well-built transport. It means an equitable society can be created. An equitable society means citizens can have more opportunities to access social resources and to live a better life. This essay will argue that