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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.

This study defines and critically analyzes Korean high modernism using the Sewoon Sangga project as a case study, as it has significant value in Korea's urban and architectural history.

The methodology applied for this study was a theory-interpretive analysis. This study examines the modernization process of Seoul based on the concept of “high modernism,” in that the theory-interpretive analysis method analyzes historical phenomena centered on a specific concept.

As a form of national belief, the various ideas that give birth to modern cities are defined as “high modernism.” As a Korean megastructure, the Sewoon Sangga project is significant in the history of Korean urbanism and architecture because it is the archetype of Korean high modernism and is representative of South Korea's compressed economic growth. However, soon-to-be-demolished Sewoon Sangga signifies the failure of Korean high modernism. This study identified the critical characteristics of Korean high modernism through the Sewoon Sangga project.

This study analyzed a representative Asian city through the specific concept of high modernism. It transpired that high modernism, which played an important role in the birth and development of modern cities, should be transformed for future cities and architectural development. This study has significance in that it expands the study of the history of urbanism and architecture centered on the West to the same in Asia.

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.

Based on the 5th wave/tomorrow age theory, we are living in the world that is in necessity to change. Rapid urbanization causes global challenges such as economic problems and recessions, environmental challenges, climate change, social instability, health diseases, biological attached, and crisis caused by technological dominations. These challenges threaten the world, humanity, and human beings. Therefore, it is vital to tackle and struggle with them in order to maintain the world and improve quality of livability and quality of life to achieve sustainability. Generally, modern Blue-Green urban areas and smart cities with high quality of livability and life are proposed to deal with urbanization challenges to maintain the world and improve quality of human life. Based on Prof. Doost's 5th wave theory, related theories, concepts and models like Doost Risk Mitigation Method (DRMM), and also his experience on sustainability as best practice such as cooperating with Danish Sustainable Platforms Company, working as an academic leader at IoE/EQ EU Erasmus Plus project in Germany during 2017–2020, cooperating with former mayor of Copenhagen, consulting the German MV State Minister of Energy, Digitalization, and Infrastructure to cooperate with Iran in 2016, more than 15 years holding lecture and research internationally about risk and risk management on mobility in different universities like (TU Berlin) Technical University of Berlin (EUREF Campus, Sustainable Mobility Management and Sustainability Building) and also achieving a honorary doctorate in sustainable development management, a practical model concerned on risk management in mobility to provide comprehensive global Blue-Green clean sustainable urban mobility risk mitigation strategic plan is given. Therefore, in this chapter, impact of risk management on mobility to provide sustainable global urban mobility plan in order to create modern Blue-Green sustainable urban area and future smart cities through the 5th wave theory are explored. Fundamentally, the main goal of the research is to have an applied study about mobility risk mitigation and utilize it as a key to create comprehensive global urban mobility risk mitigation plan toward Blue-Green sustainable clean mobility technologies to create modern sustainable smart cities through the tomorrow age theory in order to create livable urban area with high quality of livability and life. In addition, the risks in mobility through the DRMM are measured to analyze the risk and to do risk mitigation and mobility project improvement to move to sustainable mobility and high sustainability in future smart cities.

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.