Practicing Utopia: An Intellectual History of the New Town Movement

摘要

Rosemary Wakeman's ambitious book Practicing Utopia explains how the new town movement, which played a major role in regional growth strategies in the West, became a transnational movement during its golden age of 1945 to 1975. Wakeman notes in her introduction that she consciously resists any ultimate definition of what constitutes a new town because meaning must be dependent on the specifics of time and place. Her aim is to explore why the new town became "such a powerful talisman of the future" (17). To answer this question, she states, she will not provide a survey of new towns or physical descriptions of such towns, but instead will dissect these "visionary dreamscapes" intellectually (17). This contradicts the tide of her book, which refers to illusionary Utopia implemented in practice. It is regarding that practice, carried out by an international network of experts with a variety of institutional support in housing, urban design, and infrastructure development, that Wakeman's book is particularly illuminating. Failing to provide a tight definition of the new town movement allows Wakeman to cast her net far and wide, drawing in an astounding number of examples.