Many
individuals have sought to design the ideal
community. Read any suburban paper today and you will
find story after story about citizens trying to
protect open space and control rampant suburban
sprawl. These citizens are unknowingly seeking John
Ruskin's vision of the `Garden City' small, beautiful
communities set in green open spaces.
Although his name is not one that springs to mind
when the public thinks of influential urban planners
and designers, he was, undoubtedly, a most important
influence. Art critic, social reformer, giant of
English literature, his prodigious output of books,
pamphlets and lectures, as well as his efforts at
practical reform, established his tremendous
reputation in Britain and America. More than
providing a vision statement, he challenged artists,
architects and town
planners to collaborate on developing prototypes of
his vision. To a remarkable extent they succeeded in
doing so and thereby created a legacy of good
community design that this book highlights.
Designing Utopia
presents a broad overview of John Ruskin's life: the
development of his views on architecture and urban
design, as well as his views on social justice; how
his vision was developed in his writings; his efforts
at practical application of that vision, in
particular his efforts to build a guild based
society. Finally the book analyses how Ruskin's urban
vision influenced the work of a long line of
progressive architects and planners and the buildings
and communities they designed modern urban designers
such as Lewis Mumford, Patrick Geddes, Ebenezer
Howard. The work of these figures are then related to
current practitioners of the New Urbanism such as
Duaney and Plater-Zyberk.
"Michael
Lang has shown, for the first time, the remarkable
influence of John Ruskin on the origins of the
nineteenth-century city planning movement. This book
deserves to be widely read by planning historians and
all those concerned with the main currents of
Victorian thought."
Sir Peter Hall, FBA, MAE, PhD, HonMRTPI, Professor of
Planning, The Bartlett School of Architecture,
Building, Environmental Design and Planning,
University College, London
"Most
valuable...reminds us of the continuing debt owed by
Anglo\_American urban planning to the physical and
social ideal of community...as contrasted with a
present reality of planning that is too often merely
a means of protecting already powerful
interests."
Professor Stephen V. Ward, School of Planning, Oxford
Brookes University
Table of Contents
Michael H. Lang is Associate Professor and Chair at
the Department of Urban Studies and Community
Planning, Rutgers University, in Camden, New Jersey.
He is the author of Homelessness
Amid Affluence and Gentrification Amid Urban Decline.
254 pages
Paperback ISBN: 1-55164-130-5 $24.99
Hardcover ISBN: 1-55164-131-3 $53.99
Archetecture / Urban Issues
January 1999
