ABSTRACT
The stimulus to create Utopia is sharpened by the perceived unacceptability of what it is seeking to replace. Thus, as a spur to creating a Utopian alternative, nothing could have been starker than the reality of the nineteenth-century industrial city. Utopians in the early twentieth century rooted their own ideas in a reaction to the archetypal industrial city; hope was juxtaposed against a simple model of despair. The prospect of a city on the hill, a city in the sun, had its roots in a century or more of despair. The contrast that was offered was unequivocal, the invitation to Utopians irresistible. Utopian authenticity depends less on the soundness of argument of how to reach the Promised Land than on the depth of the vision itself. By the end of the 1930s, the idea of creating new settlements was although time and events had rather steered it away from the Utopian aspirations that were embedded in Howard's original manifesto.
