Bringing Utopia to Life

Cities typically emerge near natural resources like rivers, seas, a deep harbor, or larger and more developed cities. This is not true, however, for “new cities” established by command or planning rather than out of necessity.

In Realizing the Utopia, Rosemary Wakeman draws a detailed picture of the new city movement, which played an important role in regional growth strategies in the West, and examines how it became a transnational movement in its golden age between 1945 and 1975. Ranging from Tapiola in Finland to Islamabad in Pakistan, from Cergy-Pontoise in France to Irvine in the USA, Wakeman makes observations about the utopian aspects of these cities and what they can teach us about contemporary modernization and urban planning. Presenting this movement as a truly global phenomenon that transcends East-West or North-South polarizations, she repeatedly emphasizes that these cities, regardless of their location or scale, whether historic or forgotten, are a reflection on earth of a utopian hope for the future and a vision for the ideal city.

Realizing the Utopia blends the history of thought with the history of urban planning, tracing the efforts to transform abstract currents of thought into cities of steel and concrete.

- Rosemary Wakeman, Professor of History at Fordham University.