Utopian Thoughts - Dystopian Executions

A retrospective look on utopian planning offers us an overview of various kinds of enlightened approaches picturing social happiness thriving in built perfection. It usually comes hand in hand with complete demolition of existing urban macroform, involving large-scale top-down urban redevelopments replacing the urban continuity with a functional, rationalistic and very artificial environment. The method of these transitions is not evolution — it is revolution.

Utopian approaches of today’s globalized world, always starting with an intention to build something better, are operating on a mega-scale. It is to give the cities competitive advantage on the global stage [1]. And so we shift, picturing a better future for our cities or communities and wanting a better world. But proven by history, every utopia carries a danger. Due to its all-encompassing nature, it impacts everybody and everything. Utopias also carry limitations, as the uncertainty of how the potential we envision transforms into an utopian beauty and not our worst nightmare. In this context, large-scale projects — turning an idea or a concept (ideology) into a spatial form and functional system — often deviate from the original thoughts and produce adverse results. Creation of new societal traits and behavioral habits reflects in new city forms.

The fact that utopias are good on paper, while attempting to alter the very design of the present systems and compress them into other conceptual forms. The results of this cannot be ever foreseen for various reasons, mainly due to limitation of science and cognitive bias. Such can be consequences of just a bad design, which was initially intended as utopia, but which can undergo distortions of perceived consequences and turn everything into dystopia. This statement makes evident that the system’s configuration is based on a specific model that produces structural consequences for said system. A model of a system cannot ever represent all key features and factors involved in the system and its entire interaction with other systems [2]. The projected developments and impacts are almost always different from those that take place in reality. So despite all the attempts to build models with verified data, still limited computational technology and most importantly the scenarios interpreted by limited human thinking, the system models are not even close to accurate and tend to generate immense errors.

The Process of Becoming

The fundamental motivation of humans to search for answers is the basis for searching better ways of existing. It is driven by a vision that is not yet realized. In this sense, utopia is something that has not been built yet, but it already exists in a non-physical form. It always aims to replace the physically manifested systems, which brings out other prominent characteristics of utopian thinking — rebellion against the pursuit of secured order. Oftentimes the alternative options included in utopian visions are also absolutistic, and so what arises is a clash of attitudes that similar in nature, aiming to replace one order with another. Absolutistic visions historically are based on authoritarian and totalitarian views, so it is hard to believe that the container for the thoughts would have the capacity to change when it comes to considering utopias further down the timeline. In essence, it is a strong belief that what is on the paper will become real, that all the characteristic will preserve and that the process of concretization will destroy the previous state things existing in a specific way in the process. That is projected without exceptions. In that sense, utopia is radical and it is destructive. It builds its own design in the environment without acknowledging its state and considering its continuity of accumulated events that resulted in its present state.

Although utopia appeared as a literary genre first, it has been adopted as a theory of state over time. It has been continuously associated with the form and converted into architecture of space. Even the most architecturally advanced and carefully weighted scenarios turned into a search for political philosophy and a greater order of society. Aiming to build a framework for a state that achieves the ultimate, airy and eternal perfection, abolishing and surpassing the existing state of imperfection. That, naturally, produces a perfect society exercising flawless humanity reflecting in architectural perfection of the city.

With humanistic optimism, the dream to progress towards a built perfection and also last forever has a kind of museum-like character. It is no wonder that these visions turn into nightmares, if they operate under the assumption that they should keep the state of perfect equilibrium over time. Modernism of the 20th century, strongly associated with authoritarian utopianism, is often blamed for subjugating human free will, emotions and freedom and turning them into tyranny. Nevertheless, in the original concept, that was never the goal. The concepts appeared perfectly rational, determining parameters of human happiness, turning the poetic into practical and the spontaneous into algorithmic. But do we realize how utopias fail? Despite diving in with good intentions, they end up misplaced and lead to terrifying destinations. So thanks to utopia, we have dystopia. Utopia did not make it beyond theoretical concepts yet, and when dystopia manifests and materializes in form, we are reminded of how the dream meets reality. So utopia and dystopia have a consequential relationship. Dystopia’s twisted execution is the embodiment of utopia’s dreamy and pure nature, it’s a result of the pure ideas coming into contact with life itself. And that is why dystopia is not a regressed state to the prior state of perfection, it is more of a remnant of utopian intervention.

Utopia and Territoriality

Firstly used by Thomas More, utopia stems from the etymological „no place, good place or perfect place“ [3]. The concept of a perfect place automatically brings in the concept of perfect life. Ideal life always exists in connection to the environment and space. Utopian thought is deeply embedded in territoriality, spatial structures and internal perceptions of geography [4]. Underneath lies the very need to ground our existence in physicality, to personify and claim space that allows us to exist. The concept of home is in a way a consecration mechanism to monopolize the right to space and claim bureaucratic power over it [5]. Urbanistic projections of this mechanism, the collective utopias aim to create an emancipatory paradigm of socio-cultural and political power. 20th century urban planning has vastly explored such a narrative. Utopian modernism has been given a recognizable urban form of ideal city that wants to contain and control any kind of disruptive force that may arise within its borders [6]. So consequently, utopias evolved into impostors of order, into design of perfection intending to replace any defective system. It is a proposal of actualization of abstract features, attempting to keep its stagnant nature at the same level throughout the entire process and maintain the equilibrium of perfection over time.

Aspiring to change the existing systemic structures, they are radical and revolutionary. At the same time, they aim to preclude change once implemented. Any changes which would be taking place after that would mean deviation from the original concept and impairment of the perfect structure [7]. Despite its revolutionary character, they embody immense conservatism at the moment of actualization. That could be one of the many reasons why no utopia ever has come to the point of  actualization, for it cannot build itself to just devolve into such determinate conservatism and stay in its stagnancy forever. Still, many utopian incentives provided progressive solutions for cities and they even have been realized [8].

Dystopia — from Purity to Chaos

Just like utopia, dystopia means a „non-existing place“. With its negative prefix, it indicates difficulty and hardship. Dystopia is the distorted image of utopia. It is utopia though cracked mirror. In dystopian writing, authors depict society and urban living in situations worse than regular living conditions and are set in a time and space. It specifies its position against utopia, taking a stance and describing a „nightmare in which our fears are realized“ [9]. On the contrary, utopia does not make any reference beyond its own implementations, dystopia aims to criticize societal problems, criticize its defectiveness and point at the consequences of existing problems. It is emotionally involving, uses pathos and catharsis, encourages empathy and supports critical views of happenings.

Modernist utopian ideas clash in the process of implementation, undergoing deconstruction. Deconstruction of the utopian structure led to destruction of modernism, a complete fragmentation of the absolute. In this sense, postmodernism is not opposite to modernism, rather it is a remnant of its self-destruction. As they do not involve opposition by definition, they go beyond the dissipation and trivialize that which constitutes the basis of compulsion, oppression, regulation and renunciation as a consequence of the lack of freedom. The main characteristic of postmodernism is then a state of ambiguity, irregularity and overwhelming heterogeneity that resists all efforts of homogenization and the precedent absolutes, taking a stance against the very idea of order. This creates an everlasting unease gradually escalating into fear, creating a societal mechanism contingent on it.

So despite utopia’s internal consistency and controlled image, practical utopianism involving restrictions to the natural instinctive human impulses encounters resistance due to ontology of the individual and society. Collision of absolute forces with the forces to overcome them result in totalitarianism [10]. For the instincts of the individual to be free fosters oppressive unity [11]. And wherever utopia emerges, out of pure abstract thought of a single mindedness, so the chaos is born, generated by the complicated, intricate, multiplicity-based mind of the cosmos itself.

Contemporary Utopia

Utopian visions depict an ideal, but non-existent environment, where nothing is ever questioned. Such visions are straight from a ruler’s handbook, aiming to exercise power. In order to legitimize authoritarian configurations, they promote economic and social benefits. Cities that were over-built — meaning they had an overly attached narrative associated with them — were left to exist as expo pieces for the next generations to see how static and evolution-repellent these narratives were.

But today’s utopian approaches toward cities are now much more invasive than in the past. They trigger dramatic urban transformations and alter urban realities, physical and social, in a significant way. Due to non-democratic planning process they fracture the coherence and generate pathological phenomena. These unexpected, unwanted, unpredicted and incalculable consequences are very hard to foresee, but they truly are proportional to the harmful human interference. Urban environments experiencing ecological disasters due to major urban interventions lead to effects that reflect on the macroform of the city.

They also aim for perfection, but in a different way — in a way where the absolute acts as fragmented, it is profit seeking and containing technological sublime. It is a true mirror of society as before. It is still the determination of social behaviors by adjusting architectural structures. Through spatial morphology it leads the collective mind, while any individual mindful action becomes a daring act. For an individual mind is not perfect. It harbors the rational and the irrational, offering an alternative to the totality of the collective mind. If there is no place for anything ‘other‘, any trace or an element foreign to the narrative, it will become a fertile ground for dystopia. Because in utopia, the existing world is abolished.

Final Thoughts

In a post-modern world, aiming for utopia does not mean to perfect cities. The possibility of introducing ideas that are based on pure abstraction has disappeared completely. Instead, the attempts focus on the power to realize and ‘re-think‘ economic priorities. The requirements for building a utopian thought today are fostering extreme change instead of static narratives. These changes are rapidly transformative and even though they do contain the visionary aspect, they expect to index the common mind in a different manner. The common mind is not ordered anymore, it is constantly told to re-evaluate.

The expectations have surpassed abstract universalism invoking simulacrum to re-generate things independently from reality. Cities have been adapted to  the changing urbanite of the idea that utopias represent only a station on the way to a dystopia, so they are not promoted as such anymore. On the other hand, it can be an opportunity to revoke the real utopia and revive the visionary purism, differently from the avant-garde approaches. Utopias can still find its way back, even if not realized by a ruler and executed in a non-democratic way.

References:

[1] D. Pinder (2006) Visions of the city: utopianism, power and politics in twentieth century urbanism

Routledge

[2] R. Poli (2010) The many aspects of anticipation, Foresight, 12 (3), pp. 7-17

[3] U. Eco (2015)[History of legendary places, Doğan Egmont Press, İstanbul (2015)

[4] D. Hardy (1991) Utopia: a place called New Town, Built Environment, 17 (3/4), pp. 277-286

[5] D. Harvey (1991) The condition of post modernity, Wiley–Blackwell Publications, UK

[6] K. Kumar (1991) Utopianism, University of Minnesota Press, Minnesota

[7] H. Kurt (2007) Utopian heritage on urban and environmental problem-solving, City and policy, İmge Press, Ankara

[8] G.Y. Kahya (2007) Future foresights with the context of urban development: Cybercities, Istanbul Technical University Master Thesis, İstanbul

[9] L. Sargisson (2009) The curious relationship between politics and utopia, T. Moylan, R. Baccolini (Eds.), Utopia method vision: the use value of social dreaming, Peter Lang Press, Oxford

[10] U. Beck (1992) The risk society: towards a new modernity, Sage Publications

[11] G. Beauchamp (1973) Of man's last disobedience: Zamiatin's we and Orwell's 1984 Comparative Literature Studies, 10 (4), pp. 285-301

Title image credits: Kolchitsky Nicholas (USSR 1907-1979)