utopian philosophical link represented in
Reps’s (1965) writings on the Making of Urban
America; and also the Australia and New
Zealand company settlements (depicted in
Williams 1966), are all historically relevant
enterprises which interfaced public and private
capital in the same utopian-radical venture.
Then in the early twentieth century Clarence
Perry (published 1929) identified the ‘neigh-
bourhood’ as the defining, and again largely
utopian, urban planning principle, being to his
way of thinking a quarter-square (160 acres)
with 5,000 to 6,000 population centred on an
elementary (primary) school.
And for the present, is the pursuit of utopia
identifiable? Are not the United States and
Canada in North America, Britain, France,
Germany in Europe, and New Zealand and
Australia in the Antipodes, loose-fit ‘utopias’ from the perspec-
tive of the newly arriving Pakistan, Afghan, North African,
Turkish, Pacific Island, East Asian and Mexican in-migrants?
These movements are ‘revolutionary’ and ‘social reformist’
examples of people ‘inventing an improved future’ for
themselves.
Authoritative support for the utopian movement comes from
the ordered writing of Mumford (1961) and the broad polemic of
Illich (1973) arguing for a communitarian approach. In terms of
‘social reforms’ there is no better advocate for this new-age
‘utopia’ than the oppressed, poor and uneducated moving
toward their own perception of employment opportunities, per-
sonal security and advantage, constituting for themselves their
own new-age ideal. Disparagement of ‘revolutionary’ ideals,
simply because the inflexible and violent examples best known
to us have failed, should not blind communities to the essentially
social worth of purposefully achieved progressive utopian
quests.
The reformists of Australasia and Northern America achieved ‘quiet’
twentieth-century democratic revolutions: the emancipation of women (particu-
larly European women); and the recognition of rights for Native Americans,
Maori and Aboriginal. But there has never been sufficient pain, oppression and
brutalization to mobilize nationwide revolutionary revolt in the Anglo sectors of
the New World. Within these settler societies spatial class segregation (through
zoning) and the marginalization of people (through selective skills enhancement)
gave rise to discord, and citizens grew to know that some discontent was there.
The neomodern challenge is to communicate and channel this discontent from60 Principles
Here is Rexroth’s droll
parody of nineteenth-
century communitarian
colonists who ‘with flags
flying and music playing
to the wilderness...
began with a picnic...
[yet] within a few days
passions began to run
short, necessary skills
were found to be in
even shorter supply, and
tempers were shorter
yet. Soon competition
for what little was
available seemed worse
than in the world they
had left, and they began
to quarrel and accuse
each other.’
K. Rexroth,
Communalism, 1974Adelaide: the initial layout