ABSTRACT
Vision is a key ingredient for long-term change. It can inspire, motivate, spread ideas, and provide guidance for more pragmatic activities. Vision can be developed in many ways, including through community planning documents, blueprints for reform, manifestos, speeches, visual images, films, and a variety of forms of utopian literature. Not for nothing was crusading urban critic Lewis Mumford’s first book entitled The Story of Utopias (New York: Boni and Liveright, 1922). The very idea of “sustainable communities” represents a long-term vision, albeit one that needs much definition and detail. Documents such as the Brundtland Commission report and Agenda 21 also fall into the category of vision documents, as do the Charter of the New Urbanism, McDonough’s Hannover Principles, and many other writings of authors represented in this book.
