Urban Utopias and Dystopias

Harvard FAS

The word utopia—literally, “no-place”—was coined by Thomas More in 1516. The emergence of the word marks a significant point in literary history, but speculative dreaming of idealized societies far predates More’s era. Since ancient times, humans have dreamed of perfect worlds and conceptualized the societal changes that would be required to bring about radical change: who would live in these societies? What kinds of places would they inhabit, and what would their environments be like? How…