| Sumario: | The concepts of cities and utopia went hand in hand throughout history. The image of the city as the venue for the good life that had spread since ancient Greece transformed in the course of the industrial revolution: the massive population growth resulted in a strong pressure on resources and infrastructure. Overcrowded buildings and smoking factory chimneys shaped the cityscapes - the formerly positive connotation attributed to life in the big city gave way to an increasingly antiurban atmosphere. Against this background, several personalities contrived alternatives to the status quo that can roughly be divided into »restorative« and »modernist« approaches. Key elements of restorative utopias are decentralisation, dispersion and simpler forms of spatial organisation. Modernist approaches focus on technological progress, turning it into the very essence of urban utopias. The models of Howard, Wright, Garnier, Sant'Elia and Le Corbusier provided different answers to the question of how the future city might be.
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