Expansion of the city in the landscape. Old and modern utopian conceptions

Abstract

Owing to globalisation, the present process of deep socio-economic and spatial changes undermines the traditional ways of thinking and acting concerning the organisation of urban-rural relations in the face of parallel developments, like suburbanisation and urban sprawl as well as de-urbanisation and degradation of urban areas. The article seeks to elucidate the contemporary discourse on the mutual penetration of landscapes and urban forms in terms of the formation of congruous, balanced urban structures in a historical perspective. In this way it will describe a curve from the urban utopias of the 19th and early 20th centuries through the conceptions of the garden city and the modernist city to those of cities without cities, right to the city, and energy self-sufficient city. As it turns out, the modern ‘utopian’ projects follow the historical line of traditional ideas for the organisation of democratic, consistent and healthy forms of coexistence.