ABSTRACT
In visions of idealised societies, transport is often a prominent component. Le Corbusier's Contemporary City famously depicts futuristic superhighways, but also features a railway interchange and airport at its heart. While strikingly different in terms of urban form, Frank Lloyd Wright's Broadacre City is also based on modern transport, enabled by the ubiquity of the automobile. Similarly, Ebenezer Howard's cluster of Garden Cities was based on railway accessibility, while Arturo Soria y Mata's Ciudad Lineal – a city extendable from Brussels to Peking – was more or less defined by its public transport spine (Houghton-Evans, 1975). Even Utopian literature takes care with its transport plans: Etienne Cabet's Icaria envisaged urban ‘streetcars’ running at two-minute intervals as far back as 1840, while Thomas More's original Utopia features cities set apart by a day's walking distance (Berneri, 1982).
