ABSTRACT
Exploring the historical interplay between the landscape and the institutions that shape the metropolis helps us to understand the powerful embrace that urban imaginaries have held over political leaders, the bureaucracy and the citizenry throughout the ages. This chapter explores how real and imaginary urban environments, (towns, cities, metropolises and utopias) have been conceived through the ages and how those conceptions influence the way modern planning emerged from this dialogue. The chapter considers how city visions have captured the imagination of philosophers and politicians alike since Plato’s Republic. Metropolitan plans today retain elements of the Platonic vision for a good civic life by nurturing a public sphere in which social activity is fostered for social and political purposes.
