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ABSTRACT
In Looking Backward (1888) and Equality (1897), Edward Bellamy offered two distinct but interrelated visions of a utopian future. The first and more famous book was set in a luxuriant, centralized metropolis. The sequel detailed decentralized, suburbanized infrastructures. Within the literature on Bellamy these emendations have been treated as evidence of regressive anti-urbanism. This paper argues instead that Bellamy used correlations between topography and technology to mediate an evolving approach to social reform. The discrepancies between the two texts did not represent abandonment of the city but rather an expansion of the scale and scope necessary to ensure social progress. While Looking Backward has often been invoked in relation the Garden City and City Beautiful movements, a new reading of Equality offers opportunities to rethink Bellamy’s relationship to planning history.
Acknowledgements
An earlier version of this paper was delivered at the Society for American City and Regional Planning History’s 16th National Conference on Planning History. My thanks to Carola Hein for the opportunity to present and Robert Freestone for his feedback. This paper also draws from my ongoing dissertation work at the University of Pennsylvania. John Gleim, Mary Miller, and Joan Ockman generously read and commented on the manuscript.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Joseph M. Watson is a PhD candidate in Architectural History at the University of Pennsylvania. His research explores the changing cultural and material landscapes of early-twentieth-century American cities and suburbs. He has taught architectural history and theory at the Rhode Island School of Design and the University of Pennsylvania. He received a BArch from the University of Tennessee and an MA in Theology from Union Theological Seminary.
Notes
1 See Fishman, Urban Utopias, 32–7.
2 See especially Wilson, “Experience and Utopia.”
3 See especially Wegner, Imaginary Communities, 62–98.
4 See Smith, Urban Disorder, part 2.
5 Bellamy, Looking Backward, 104.
6 Ibid., 100.
7 Olmsted, letter to Henry Elliott, in Olmsted Papers, vol. 3, 262.
8 Burnham and Bennett, Plan of Chicago, 1.
9 Bellamy, Looking Backward, 115.
10 Ibid., 117.
11 On these divergent positions, see Stradling, Smokestacks and Progressives, 14–20.
12 Bellamy, Looking Backward, 141.
13 See Leach, Land of Desire.
14 See Roemer, The Obsolete Necessity.
15 See Morgan, Edward Bellamy, 245–98.
16 See Baxter, Greater Boston.
17 Baxter, “Report of the Secretary,” 72.
18 See Moga, “Marginal Lands and Suburban Nature.”
19 Bellamy, Equality, 38.
20 Ibid., 295.
21 Ibid., 296.
22 Ibid., 302.
23 Howard, To-morrow, 130; cf. Diagram no. 7.
24 Mumford, The Story of Utopias, 159.
25 Mumford, “Regions – To Live In,” 90.
26 Burnham and Bennett, Plan of Chicago, 42.