ABSTRACT
The philosopher Mortimer Adler argues that the main purpose of life, towards which all should be striving, is to ‘live a good life as a whole’. Classical Greek philosophers, medieval and nineteenth-century Utopians, and twentieth-century economists, philosophers and science-fiction writers have all had something to say about the future potential for leisure. Utopian thought is a rich source of ideas on how people might live and work and spend their leisure in some ideal future. Utopian writers have presented their readers with a wide range of possible, and impossible, futures for consideration. Utopias are about how people should live, about human nature, and the meaning and purpose of life. One tradition in Utopian thinking has been concerned with community planning and design. Many of the Utopian community planners were concerned with the built environment as an expression of their philosophies of living.
