Visions of the City

Utopianism, Power and Politics in Twentieth-Century Urbanism

David Pinder (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

320 Seiten

2005
Edinburgh University Press (Verlag)
978-0-7486-1488-2 (ISBN)

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Visions of the City is a dramatic account of utopian urbanism in the twentieth century. It explores radical demands for new spaces and ways of living, and considers their effects on planning, architecture and struggles to shape urban landscapes. Such visions, it shows, have played a crucial role in informing understandings and imaginings of the modern city. The author critically examines influential traditions in western Europe associated with such figures as Ebenezer Howard and Le Corbusier, uncovering the political interests, desires and anxieties that lay behind their ideal cities, and drawing out their ‘noir side’. He also investigates oppositional perspectives from the time that challenged these rationalist conceptions of cities and urban life, and that disturbed their dreams of order, especially from within surrealism. At the heart of this richly illustrated book is an encounter with the explosive ideas of the situationists. Tracing the subversive practices of this avant-garde group and its associates from their explorations of Paris during the 1950s to their projects for an alternative 'unitary urbanism', David Pinder convincingly explains the significance of their revolutionary attempts to transform urban space and everyday life. He addresses in particular Constant’s vision of New Babylon, finding within his proposals for future spaces produced through nomadic life, creativity and play a still powerful challenge to imagine cities otherwise. The book not only recovers vital moments from past hopes and dreams of modern urbanism. It also contests current claims about the ‘end of utopia’, arguing that reconsidering earlier projects can play a critical role in developing utopian perspectives today. Through the study of utopian visions, it aims to rekindle elements of utopianism itself.

David Pinder is based at the Department of Geography, Queen Mary College.

Preface; 1. INTRODUCTION; An urban adventure; Underground visions; Utopian spaces past and present; In the wake of utopia?; Utopia, desire and the city; Outline of the chapters; 2. RESTORATIVE UTOPIAS; Utopian awakenings; The vision of Ebenezer Howard; Smokeless, slumless cities; The 'master key' to socio-spatial reform; Biologically sound cities and bodies; Securing space; 3. MODERNIST CALLS TO ORDER; Time and space died yesterday; Le Corbusier and the spirit of construction; Spatial purification; Water-tight formulae; Urban surgery; Political authority and the plan; 4. DREAMS OF CITIES AND MONSTERS; Between two journeys; White cathedrals: confronting New York; Of monsters and organic life; Utopian regulation and authoritarianism; Counter-spaces of the surrealists; Destabilising dreams of order; 5. SITUATIONIST ADVENTURES; To build the haçienda; The critique of human geography; Environments of abstraction; Bringing fuel to the fire; Never work; Unchaining the city; In quest of new spaces; 6.THE GREAT GAME TO COME; A science fiction of architecture; Unitary urbanism and the construction of situations; Passionate environments; Living art of the Imaginist Bauhaus; Games with machines; A camp for nomads; 7. LIFE WILL RESIDE IN POETRY; Welcome to New Babylon; Play structures; Paradise on earth; Not yet: utopianism and games to come; For another city and another life; A lived utopianism; Reappropriating cities: urban critique; 8. PARTISANS OF POSSIBILITIES; Dark skies; For utopianism; Re-dreaming modernist urbanism; Spaces and times of the avant-garde; Challenges of utopia; Future paths; Notes; Selected bibliography; Illustration credits; Index.

Erscheint lt. Verlag	15.7.2005
Verlagsort	Edinburgh
Sprache	englisch
Maße	156 x 234 mm
Gewicht	650 g
Themenwelt	Naturwissenschaften ► Geowissenschaften ► Geografie / Kartografie
	Sozialwissenschaften
	Technik ► Architektur
ISBN-10	0-7486-1488-5 / 0748614885
ISBN-13	978-0-7486-1488-2 / 9780748614882
Zustand	Neuware