"A historical timeline of past and present envisionings of the perfect city, from detailed Renaissance plans to new millennium metropolises...gorgeous full-color plates."--"Dwell"

This vast panorama spans more than 2,000 years of Western attempts to invent the perfect city. Embracing not only architecture and town planning but also art, literature, philosophy, and politics, Ruth Eaton takes the reader through the imaginary environments of a wide variety of fascinating and often controversial movements and figures: Plato, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas More, Thomas Jefferson, William Morris, Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright, Archigram, Superstudio, and many more.

Eaton explores the ability of ideal cities to stimulate reflection and change. She also suggests under what conditions they might continue to exercise their vital function in relation to the urban environment of the future, heeding the great historian of cities Lewis Mumford's words that "a map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at." 300 illustrations and photographs, 250 in color.