Space, Power and Utopia: the Ideal City and its Society
This theses connects together the sociological interest in utopia and city and urban planning. Classical social utopias are one of the main sources of the discipline of urban planning. In the work of utopist as well as later some of the architects and urban planners is often exercised the idea of the influence of ideal material environment on the social conditions of the society; it is both: planning of urban environment and planning of its society. There exists a precondition that a specific (urban) milieu is adequate for a specific type of inhabitants. In case of so called urban utopias is this type of assumption evident. The book has been published in Czech and can be ordered here.
There are two main goals of this text: (1) to initiate the reader into the sociological perspective and to introduce utopia as a specific type of knowledge and (2) to describe the form of ideal city and especially the principles of ideal society depicted in utopian texts; to show the its structure, organization and main features. Finally the text offer some examples of the influence of utopian thought on the modern urban planning.
The text deals primarily with these works: More's Utopia, Campanella's The City of the Sun, works and ideas of Robert Owen and Charles Fourier. The theoretical background is created mainly by Mannheim's conception of ideology and utopia, Foucault's concept of social power and Weber's approach to city and protestant ethic.
