Ideal Cities: Utopianism and the Built Environment. . - Un - Reviews - book review

Contemporary Review, August, 2002

Ideal Cities: Utopianism and the (Un) Built Environment. Ruth Eaton. Thames & Hudson. [pounds sterling]39.95. 255 pages. ISBN 0-500-34186-9. Ideas about the perfect city have been part of European civilisation from the beginning. Hesiod wrote of it in 800 BC. Plato described it and the mediaeval Church often defined the Kingdom of God as the Heavenly Jerusalem.

This book deals with those cities designed in the mind's eye by those who 'invented them in the conviction that they belonged to an elite capable of understanding the nature of these original patterns and hence of attuning the city as closely as possible to their perfect harmony'. Ideal cities were set in contrast to the haphazard, confusing and usually unhealthy cities which developed organically. They projected order and regularity, straight lines, circles and squares where there was none. Their appeal grew with the Renaissance and the renewed use of Greek and Roman styles of building and this appeal has lasted until our own era. Utopian cities are ultimately civilising forces for they can express our highest goals for mankind and act as a criterion against which to measure reality. This is a most learned and informative survey, graced by a marvellous collection of 300 illustrations of which 250 are in colour. (P.P.F.)