The history of utopian thinking | Danilo Palazzo | TEDxUCincinnati

A renowned urban planner, Danilo Palazzo unpacks the meaning of “Utopia” and its practical implications for cities and architects.

Danilo Palazzo, educated as architect and planner, is director of the School of Planning at the University of Cincinnati. Previously he was at the Politecnico di Milano, Italy. He has authored books, books chapters, and papers on ecological planning, urbanism, urban ecological design, sustainable planning, and design processes and pedagogy.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx

So, think about some big problems
this planet is facing.

Think about access to food,

or think about another big problem:

the access to clean water
for everyone on this planet.

Or think about another big problem
that we are facing here:

the urban growth that can cause
slums and inequalities

in most of the cities.

Well, if someone in this audience

is thinking about solving
or even addressing

or challenging these problems

through some extreme innovative ways,

well, maybe among you
there are some utopian thinkers

or people that think about Utopia.

No offense intended.

What is Utopia?

So Utopia is a word that comes
from a Greek word, "topos,"

that means "place,"

and a prefix, that means "no."

So Utopia is a no place,
or a place that doesn't exist yet.

And since the moment that this word
came into the common language,

other words have been created
using "topos" and referring to Utopia,

like "Eu-topia," that means nice place,

or "Dys-topia," that means a bad place.

And so if you have to choose
where to go for a weekend,

I suggest you go to the Utopia.

（Laughter）

So, this word was coined
by this Englishman,

a man of the Church of England,

in 1516,

so five hundred and one year ago.

And Utopia was the name of an island;

it was part of a book
that Thomas More wrote years ago.

So the title of the book was very long:

Libellus vere aureus nec minus salutaris

quam festivus de optimo reip[publicae]
statu, deq[ue] nuoa Insula Vtopia.

That means, basically,

"Concerning the Best State of Commonwealth
or Republic and of the New Island Utopia.

A Truly Golden handbook
No less Beneficial Than Entertaining."

So, the book has a long title,

but actually it got a review in it.

So he didn't have to go to Amazon Books
to - you know - get some good reviews.

(Laughter)

So Thomas More lived
under the king Henry VIII -

not an easy guy, actually -

so who made him a knight

and then, a few years later,
ordered his execution

because he didn't give
the oath for Henry VIII

to become the king
of the Church of England.

And he wrote this book in Latin,

and it was published in 1516
in other places than in England,

and the book was translated in English
35 years the first edition,

and 16 years after Thomas More died -

executed by Henry VIII.

What he provided was a social dreaming.

Let's go one century after Thomas More.

There were new reasons for Utopia.

The new world was discovered,
but Europe was like this:

a lot of small states

that were ruled by authorities,

very severe religious
or secular authorities -

small states in continuing transformations

because of the war -

74 millions of inhabitants in Europe,
so a crowded continent.

Now look at the other side of the ocean,
of the Atlantic Ocean:

French colonies, British colonies,
800,000 inhabitants -

at the same time
when Europe had 74 million -

a lot of empty space

where to test, experiment,

where to move people
in utopian communities,

in new communities, in new societies,

on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.

The reasons to leave Europe

between the 17th century
and the 19th century -

there were a lot of reasons to leave.

One was the industrial cities
produced new health issues.

There were religious
and political reasons to leave Europe.

Poverty, inequalities in cities
were another reason.

And, of course, wars,
that happened in every place in Europe.

So look at this series of maps.

And if you can start
from the left, top left,

you will see a series of communities
that had been created -

follow the red lines, the red arrows -

you see a lot of new communities

that have been created,
that have been generated

between the end of the 17th century
and the half of the 19th century.

I have also located Cincinnati
with a very small red circle,

and you can see in some of these maps

that there were a lot of experiments
around Cincinnati.

So let me show you this map -

this was a utopian city called Hygeia.

Hygeia is a Greek word for health,

so this was the city of health.

Do you recognize something familiar
on the bottom of this light?

Can you read something that is familiar?

River Aiiah.

And in fact, Hygeia was supposed
to be just 15 minutes from here,

in Ludlow, Kentucky,

so just on the other side of the river -

you can recognize, actually,
some part of Cincinnati.

So in the year after,

architects and planners started
to design their own Utopia.

Let me introduce you Ebanezer Howard.

At the end of the 19th century,

he generated this idea of garden cities,

and he built one or two
of these garden cities.

You can see on the right
of the screen: Letchworth -

that was one.

And he advocated for a connection

between the built environment
and the natural environment.

He was looking for harmony
between these two landscapes,

between these two environments,

to provide a new way to live
for the people in England at that time.

And you can see some of this example

in a city that is close
to here, Mariemont,

not just because of the architecture
but also because of the plan.

Let's go to another utopian thinker.

You probably have recognized
Frank Lloyd Wright,

the architect of the falling water house

in Pennsylvania.

So Frank Lloyd Wright

designed his utopia city
that was called Broad Acre City.

And again he was looking for the harmony

between the built environment
and the natural environment,

the sort of harmony between men,
or human beings, and nature.

But he was in the machine age,
so-called machine age,

and I have highlighted
some of the sentences that he wrote

in the manifesto that was connected
with the physical plan of Broad Acre City.

And he said, "No traffic problem.
No railroads. No streetcars."

So basically no public transport,
just private cars.

He said, "An acre of ground
minimum for each individual."

So, a very less dense place

than some of the places that we know.

But you can actually see

that some of these principles
are in our suburbs -

so we cannot blame
Frank Lloyd Wright for the suburbs,

but, I mean, he gave
his contribution to that, I would say.

Let's go to another,

one of the most extreme utopian thinkers:

Paolo Soleri, an Italian architect.

He was educated in Torino,
and then he came here in United States,

and he spent all his life in Arizona.

And he was the most extreme

because he designed cities like this,

a city for 900,000 inhabitants.

Actually, he designed cities

or buildings, very large buildings
for two millions of inhabitants.

He was very radical,
he was very extreme,

and he actually tried
to build two cities.

And he was quite successful in that.

Arcosanti was a city
that he started to build

in the middle of Sonoran Desert.

He didn't succeed completely,

but at least, I mean, he started
to build his own Utopia city.

So, and if you're thinking
that all the utopian thinkers

that I have presented to you
at a very fast pace

are detached from our daily life

and they are remote in time,

well, let me introduce you
another utopian thinker.

Please meet Orville Simpson.

He lived here, 15 minutes
from here, in Hyde Park.

This is a picture of Orville Simpson

that appeared on the Life magazine
in September 1967.

So although Simpson was not educated
as an architect or a planner,

he'd designed, drawn,
and created rules and regulation

for a city that he called Victory City.

He made by hand a hundred of maps

that now are conserved
at the University of Cincinnati.

So now I think
you can legitimately ask me,

"So, but this Utopia has been
never realized in some way?"

And the short answer is "No."

The long answer is "Yes."

Because ideas have been transformed
in many other things.

And so this utopian thinker,

that think in a way that was
completely different from other people,

so they move laterally
in order to go further.

They jumped.

They didn't accept

that the only solutions were one or zero.

They were looking something
in between those

and something over those numbers.

So, Utopia is an important component

of our common future,

and I advocate for that.

We need utopian thinkers.

We need utopian thinkers

that challenge the way
we live in our cities,

that challenge the big problems
that we are facing on our planet,

which is actually
the only planet that we have.

I really do believe in this.

Thank you.

(Applause)