Architecture and Urban Visions in Nineteenth-Century Utopian Literature

Walker, Nathaniel Robert

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Year:: 2014
Contributor:: Walker, Nathaniel Robert (creator); Neumann, Dietrich (Director); Vidler, Anthony (Reader); Roemer, Kenneth (Reader); Brown University. History of Art and Architecture (sponsor)
Genre:: theses
Subject:: urban planning; utopian literature; Architecture; Garden suburbs; Utopias
Extent:: viii, 532 p.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.7301/Z0JQ0ZCS

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Abstract:: It has long been acknowledged that one of the most influential urban planners of the twentieth century, Ebenezer Howard, began his career as a social reformer and reader of utopian literature. The novel that inspired him to launch his Garden City Movement was the 1888 international bestseller Looking Backward 2000-1887 by Edward Bellamy. This study is designed to confront the ironic fact that Looking Backward is, in fact, rather light on architectural and urban content, by tracing the history of architectural and urban planning thought in the utopian novels that preceded Bellamy’s work, and in many ways informed it. Victorian utopian discourse on the future of the city was transnational, arguably beginning in France, thanks in part to the legacies of Saint-Simon and Fourier, and reaching a fevered pitch in 1860s Paris, when Haussmann’s transformation of that city erased any doubt that modern technology had the power to alter large, complex, existing cities. After considering the utopian and dystopian reception of Haussmann’s urban schemes, this study turns to 1870s Britain, where the utopian novel exploded in popularity and acquired a sense of true political urgency throughout an intense but exciting decade of labor unrest, urban growth, sanitation reform, and profound developments in housing design. This study then finally turns to the United States, where longstanding ambivalence about the industrial city had for some time been propelling growth in suburbia. The distrust of cities combined with radiant technological optimism to produce utopian novels that advocated the total erasure of traditional urbanism and its replacement with high-tech, shimmering suburbs of glass architecture and pastoral bliss.
Notes:: Thesis (Ph.D. -- Brown University (2014)

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Rights: In Copyright
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Walker, Nathaniel Robert, "Architecture and Urban Visions in Nineteenth-Century Utopian Literature" (2014). History of Art and Architecture Theses and Dissertations. Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library. https://doi.org/10.7301/Z0JQ0ZCS

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History of Art and Architecture Theses and Dissertations

Theses and Dissertations for the History of Art and Architecture department.
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