The Utopian Urban Space

No later than Plato's Republic mankinds had begun imagination of perfect future, which included a lot of imagination of the concept of concrete physical environment about cities and some of which even were planning of the ideal cities. These Utopian ideologies and the urban thought that included guide us for a long time. It is the main purpose of this thesis to carry out thoroughgoing and painstaking research on urban space and to detect the concealing and important clues among them.10 cases are chosen to carry out research, which are Utopia, the City of the Sun, Christianopolis, village of New Harmony, Phalanstere, Familistere, Garden City, Ville Contemporaine, Ville Radieuse and Broadacre City, whose time separated by 4 centuries from beginning to end. The 10 cases belongs to 3 different stages if judged by time, however, they are categorized to Social Utopia and Urban Utopia respectively if judged by function and content. Such categorizing way is the prerequisite of carrying out research by the method of comparison.Firstly, the thesis analyses the urban space of Social Utopias . The former 6 cases-Utopia, the City of the Sun, Christianopolis,village of New Harmony, Phalanstere and Familistere belong to Social Utopia. Through comparison of these 6 cases, it is pointed out that the urban space of social Utopias has much similarity, which could be summarized to the following several points : 1. They were all located at places favorable to agriculture and defence. 2. Utopia, the City of the Sun and Christianopolis all had ramparts around. The structure of village of New Harmony and Phalanstere had such functions of defence as ramparts as well. 3. Religious powers dominated the social orders and urban constructin. 4. The centre districts were occupied by square and religious architectures such as churchs, shrines, temples etc, which constructed the polar areas of the cities. 5.The cities ruled the surrounding countryside.The difference among urban space of social Utopias and that of the cities at that time is mainly the forms of houses and inhabitant location. Since Utopia, the City of the Sun and Christianopolis implemented property publicly-owned completely, urban house forms and inhabited area landscape were homogenized. In the former industrial cities, the habitation of the ruling class and the noted socialites was close to the centre districts. There were shacks of common people at urban fringe. The landscape and living conditions of various inhabited areas are disparate.Then, the thesis analyses the urban space of Urban Utopias. Urban Utopias were concentrated from the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century. The subject problems which were faced by the most cities in the west were: 1. Urban diseases appeared because of Industry Revolution in industrial towns which replaced the finite cities coming into being in Europe over the previous 500 years. At the beginning of the 20th century, the rapidly growing up of new classes after Industry Revolution facilitated the change of the social orders and the process of urbanization accelerated further. By then, the urban living problem is still outstanding. 2. New means of transportation, such as single track railway, automobile etc, had a deepest impact on urban form. Urban Utopias which were all schemes to solving these issues, however, were totally different on the urban space that stood for various urban thoughts. Garden City and Broadacre City belonged to Decentralization. On the contrary, Ville Contemporaine was the model of Centralization, while Ville Radieuse had the structure of Linear City that was categorized to Decentralization. Because of radical different urban thoughts, cities of urban Utopias were different in many aspects such as centre districts, inhabited regions and industrial areas,etc.Finally, through comparing urban space of social Utopias with that of urban Utopias, conclusions could be drawn. Because of the period span, aiming at different social concerns, there were such distinctions between social Utopias...