ABSTRACT
From a twenty first century perspective, a utopian city is a city that is ideal in its living conditions and is generally delineated by sublime architecture—a paradise on earth. There is a sense that a utopian city is either ethereal or born from human hope and folly, but either way, Utopia is most likely unobtainable. Yet this is far from the original concept of a utopian city. When Thomas More published his famous novel Utopia in 1516 he was exploring different political and societal solutions to the social problems of his day. Utopia has a great deal of ambiguity in the text; nevertheless, More was exploring new approaches and ideas of what society was and the structure it should have. Utopia creates the fictional dialogue that gives its name to a body of societal and political thought, and its literary device of a shipwreck or equivalent to discover a new ideal city has been replicated for over 500 years.
