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This paper aims to assess the contemporary paradigm of urban utopia’s ability to fulfil its goals and to evaluate its attainability in the first place. Its main question is: are contemporary urban utopias achievable? If not, is there an alternative?

In light of modern urban utopia’s failure to achieve the “good city/society,” skepticism regarding utopianism has prevailed. However, many scholars stress the significance of utopianism, calling for its revival. Recently, a new paradigm of urban utopia has emerged; one that stems from present capitalist urban conditions and requires resolving its ills. It puts great emphasis on rights as a means to accomplish the good society and the just city. This research critically examines contemporary urban utopia to evaluate its ability to fulfill its goals. It poses questions such as: Does capitalism facilitates achieving its goals? Could rights as a means achieve the good city/society? If not, is there an alternative? To answer these questions, a substantially different perspective, that of Islam (as a societal system), is used as a utopic paradigm that could open up new paths for developing an alternative utopia.

It is found that despite the focus of both the Islamic societal system and mainstream contemporary urban utopia is on the concept of rights, vital dissensions exist between the two models regarding the concept of rights per se. Hence, the urban utopia of the good city and society is achievable, yet, it cannot transpire within the capitalist kaleidoscope.

Recently, discussions on what constitutes the future city and the alternative conceptions to the (Western) post-Enlightenment approaches generally offered in the English language planning literature have been on the rise. Therefore, this paper contributes to this debate through critically assessing Western contemporary urban utopias from a non-Western perspective, that of Islam. It introduces an alternative model based on Islamic urbanism that could open doors for deeper thinking regarding the alternative future/good city.

The purpose of the article is to develop the concept of forecasting futures using the past by integrating the concept of heritage in it.

This paper demonstrates the process of development of the total heritage approach and its application. The process consists of the following steps: the review of the selected urban life visions and models of the past from prehistoric Catalhoyuk settlement up to the 20th century Japanese Metabolism to trace the examples of complex problem-solving and singularity presence that can be used for horizon scanning for the futures of urbanism; the development of total heritage approach based on the further analysis of selected examples demonstrating even unintentional presence of heritage in the construction of the futures; application of the total heritage approach for the modeling the futures of urbanism and illustrating it with the scenario of the future eopolis as the premise for cultural urban singularity.

This paper demonstrates the process of development of the total heritage approach and its application. The process consists of the following steps: the review of selected historic urban utopias to trace the principal scheme, how the future or ideal visions of urbanism were constructed; the development of total heritage approach based on the further analysis of Thomas More Utopia and Neolithic Catalhoyuk settlement demonstrating even unintentional presence of heritage in the construction of the futures; application of the total heritage approach for the modeling the futures of urbanism and illustrating it with the scenario of the future eopolis as the premise for cultural urban singularity.

The total heritage approach, developed in this research, presents heritage as the determinant structure or ethical imperative for sustainable future development toward cultural urban singularity.

This paper reviews the prospect of a radical redefinition of the relationship between society, technology, and Nature as posited within Paolo Soleri’s Arcology theory, and anticipates a transformative social order and environmental setting in support of sustainability as demonstrated within the urban laboratory Arcosanti. It locates the roots of Soleri's ecological architecture within a rejection of urban sprawl emerging from his early apprenticship with Frank Lloyd Wright at Taliesin West in Arizona, and argues that his own theoretical model, in presenting a fusion of architecture and ecology, prefigures a utopia of transcendence and offers a more rational planned response to the challenges of our age, while offering environmental movements a vision of what a sustainable urban future might look like. The paper argues that the positive utopian tendencies in Soleri’s work should be reaffirmed and, at the same time, it underlines an urgent need for multi-aspect and multi-disciplinary research, and postgraduate education, to be undertaken at Arcosanti, to test the parameters of micro- and macro-structures within alternative models of ecological design. In concluding the paper gives acknowledgement to the ongoing work of the Cosanti Foundation’s Board of Directors and its new Strategic Plan Steering Committee, and their commitment to attract renewed levels of financial and human resource in support of the urban laboratory’s unfinished business.

Launched in the 1960s, the nine French New Towns are generally considered as a pragmatic response to the urban growth of the Paris region, before it was extended as a national policy to other regions (Merlin, 1997). If their creation is usually placed in the continuity of Ebenezer Howard’s Garden City Movement and of previous New Towns experiments, especially those conducted in England, this historical lineage has never been appreciated in terms of architectural and urban research. Were the French New Towns projects formulated against these early ideas and models or, on the contrary, planned in light of them? Moreover, what are the main characteristics of their projects, their points of resemblance and particularities? These questions, often raised by observers, cannot be answered without a comprehensive knowledge of each New Town’s story, which is not yet available. But a renewed comprehension of their common history can be proposed by analysing their creation in light of the French urban debate of the twentieth century, and by giving special attention to two housing projects which, in Évry and Le Vaudreuil, were presented as ‘landmark operations of contemporary urban planning’ (New Towns Program, 1971).

This chapter considers how to, following David Harvey (1973), produce a genuinely humanizing smart urbanism. It does so through utilizing a future-orientated lens to sketch out the kinds of work required to reimagine, reframe, and remake smart cities. I argue that, on the one hand, there is a need to produce an alternative “future present” that shifts the anticipatory logics of smart cities to that of addressing persistent inequalities, prejudice, and discrimination and is rooted in notions of fairness, equity, ethics, and democracy. On the other hand, there is a need to disrupt the “present future” of neoliberal smart urbanism, moving beyond minimal politics to enact sustained strategic, public-led interventions designed to create more-inclusive smart city initiatives. Both tactics require producing a deeply normative vision for smart cities that is rooted in ideas of citizenship, social justice, the public good, and the right to the city that needs to be developed in conjunction with citizens.

One of the key normative questions that critical smart city scholars pose is if, and how, politically meaningful agency of citizens in the neoliberal smart city is possible? The Lefebvrian concept of the “right to the city” proves particularly fruitful in this endeavor, as it allows for imaging ways and possibilities in which citizens can assert the use value of the city over the exchange value, and thus affirm the social “urban” over the economic “city.” This chapter seeks to contribute to this quest for and imaginations of politically meaningful agency in the neoliberal smart city. First, it does so by arguing that what smart city scholarship typically considers as politically meaningful interventions into the neoliberal smart city are too often initiatives that are strongly influenced by peoples’ and cities’ access to specific and unevenly distributed resources, like technological or political literacies and economic (infra-) structures. Therefore, and second, the chapter proposes that we look for critical interventions into the neoliberal smart city by “ordinary citizens” elsewhere, namely, in urban inhabitants’ everyday readings of the promotional and performative narrative of the neoliberal smart city.

Rapid urbanization and providing pragmatic solutions for its development is one of the fundamental agenda of last decade. The metabolism is one of the latest post-war movements-founded in 1960 by Kenzo Tange where urbanization and city as a process is re-examined within the framework of accelerated modernism and technology vision. This paper discusses Metabolism movement in order to identify crucial intimations of its utopian architectural and urban approaches as a tool for future city. The study examines four initial metabolist city approaches-Plan for Tokyo (1960-62), Clusters/city in the Air (1960-62), Helix city (1961) and Ocean/Marine City (1962) that are designed for post-war Tokyo city in Japan. The study gives modest insight of indentifying city design theory within in a series conception; such as conducting to architectural characteristics regarding urban structure, tectonic vision between land-sea-sky and organic notion (city as process and mega-structuralism). Research method is embodied with examining relevant data of literature data. Upon discussions on theory, study aims to establish an ironic notion of future city by asserting familiar characteristics or variations between four pioneer projects of Metabolist movement.

The recent construction boom has led to new urban development dynamics in Gulf cities driven by real-estate speculations and large infrastructure investments. While in the past affordable housing for medium income migrants and their families was integrated within the fringes of old downtown areas and compound developments in the suburbs, recent investment patterns have led to an increasing challenge of these economically highly engaged social groups to find residences. In recent years, a newly emerging trend in the Gulf region has been the establishment of large scale mass housing projects as new dormitory settlements to address the growing demand for affordable housing. This paper presents an overview of current development patterns by exploring two major affordable housing projects and their impact on sustainability in Doha and Dubai. This is undertaken by establishing a preliminary assessment framework that involves relevant sustainability parameters. The assessment reveals the major differences between both projects and their impact on environment, economy, and society.

This chapter provides an introduction to the smart city and engages with its idea and ideals from a critical social science perspective. After setting out in brief the emergence of smart cities and current key debates, we note a number of practical, political, and normative questions relating to citizenship, social justice, and the public good that warrant examination. The remainder of the chapter provides an initial framing for engaging with these questions. The first section details the dominant neoliberal conception and enactment of smart cities and how this works to promote the interests of capital and state power and reshape governmentality. We then detail some of the more troubling ethical issues associated with smart city technologies and initiatives. Having set out some of the more troubling aspects of how social relations are produced within smart cities, we then examine how citizens and citizenship have been conceived and operationalized in the smart city to date. We then follow this with a discussion of social justice and the smart city. In the fifth section, we explore the notion of the “right to the smart city” and how this might be used to recast the smart city in emancipatory and empowering ways. Finally, we set out how the book seeks to answer our questions and extend our initial framing, exploring the extent to which the “right to the city” should be a fundamental principle of smart city endeavors.