Paolo Soleri and America’s Third Utopia: the sustainable City-Region

ABSTRACT

The ingredients of successful urbanism have been proposed by various scholars. However, their deployment has not always led to successful cities. Utopian visions are intended to help fill this gap. This article analyses Paolo Soleri’s main US arcology-based vision: Arcosanti. To what extent does Arcosanti constitute a realizable utopia, when it is only partially built and its chief architect is no longer able to shape the vision’s future implementation? It is argued that visionary urbanistic ideas put forward by intellectuals have influenced standard professional practice, pedagogy, and design and planning scholarship on the relationships between natural and built environments and more desirable human behaviours. The paper provides a distillation of thoughts to the operationalization of ideal communities in the 21st century.

KEYWORDS:

• Sustainable urbanism
• utopian visions
• U.S. Southwest
• Arizona
• arcology

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. On the vein of a first-generation social activist, Chicago’s Jane Addams (1860–1935) and followed by a neighbourhood advocate, New York City’s Jane Jacobs (1916–2006).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Carlos J. L. Balsas

Carlos J. L. Balsas, Ph.D., AICP, is an independent researcher. His main research interests are urban revitalization, resilience, urban governance, non-motorized transportation planning, and international planning. His most recent book is Walkable Cities Revitalization, Vibrancy, and Sustainable Consumption (SUNY Press 2019).