Landscape and Utopia

<p>This book examines three landmark utopian visions central to 20th century landscape architectural, planning, and architectural theory. </p><p>The period between the 1890s and the 1940s was a fertile time for utopian thinking. Significant geographic shifts of large populations; radically altered relations between capital and labor; rapid technological developments; large investments in transportation and energy infrastructure; and repetitive economic disruptions motivated many individuals to wholly reimagine society – including the connections between social relations and the built environment. <i>Landscape and Utopia</i> examines the role of landscapes in the political imaginations of the Garden City, the Radiant City, and Broadacre City. Each project uses landscapes to propose a reconstruction of the relationships between land, labor, and capital but - while the projects are well-known – the role played by landscapes has been largely left unexamined. Similarly, the radical anti-capitalism that underpinned each project has similarly been, for the most part, left out of contemporary discussions. This book sets these projects within a historical and philosophical context and opens a discussion on the role of landscapes in society today.</p><p>This book will be a must-read for instructors, students, and researchers of the history and theory of landscape architecture, planning, and architecture as well as utopian studies, cultural and social history, and environmental theory.</p> <p>1. Why Utopia? Why Landscape? 2. Landscapes as Political Media 3. When the Social Order was a Public Question 4. Land, Capital, and Labor 5. Technology 6. Food and Agriculture 7. Leisure 8. Freedom, Cooperation, and Authority 9. History, Nature, Agency and So What Next? Afterword</p>