Abstract
In the essay reprinted here (originally published as an article in The Risk Society and Beyond: Critical Issues for Social Theory, ed. B. Adam, U. Beck, & J. Van Loons, Sage Publications, 2000), Levitas examines the, concept of utopia in relation to the Risk Society as defined by Beck and, Giddens. Although this essay does not deal directly with architecture, it offers an important attempt to redefine utopia in the post-industrial, context and provides a strong framework for analyzing recent architectural, production, articulating some of the complex (and often pernicious), implications of the new pragmatism and the neo-environmental trends, dominant today.