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Tracing the design of "techno-cities" that blend the technological and the pastoral.

Industrialization created cities of Dickensian squalor that were crowded, smoky, dirty, and disease-ridden. By the beginning of the twentieth century, urban visionaries were looking for ways to improve both living and working conditions in industrial cities. In Invented Edens , Robert Kargon and Arthur Molella trace the arc of one form of urban design, which they term the techno-city: a planned city developed in conjunction with large industrial or technological enterprises, blending the technological and the pastoral, the mill town and the garden city. Techno-cities of the twentieth century range from factory towns in Mussolini's Italy to the Disney creation of Celebration, Florida.

Kargon and Molella show that the techno-city represents an experiment in integrating modern technology into the world of ideal life. Techno-cities mirror society's understanding of current technologies, and at the same time seek to regain the lost virtues of the edenic pre-industrial village. The idea of the techno-city transcended ideologies, crossed national borders, and spanned the entire twentieth century. Kargon and Molella map the concept through a series of exemplars. These include Norris, Tennessee, home to the Tennessee Valley Authority; Torviscosa, Italy, built by Italy's Fascist government to accommodate synthetic textile manufacturing (and featured in an early short by Michelangelo Antonioni); Ciudad Guayana, Venezuela, planned by a team from MIT and Harvard; and, finally, Disney's Celebration--perhaps the ultimate techno-city, a fantasy city reflecting an era in which virtual experiences are rapidly replacing actual ones.

Tabla de contenidos provista por Syndetics

• Acknowledgments(p. vii)
• Introduction: The Arc of Utopias(p. 1)
• 1 Neotechnics in the Garden(p. 7)
• The Marriage of Country and Town
• 2 Planning for National Regeneration(p. 25)
• Techno-Cities in the Interwar Years
• 3 Techno-Citta(p. 47)
• Technology and Urban Design in Fascist Italy
• 4 The Techno-City Goes to War(p. 67)
• America in World War II and After
• 5 Utopia Revived(p. 91)
• From Industrial Modernism to Community
• 6 The City of Disciplines(p. 113)
• Utopia Denied, Utopia Restored
• 7 Techno-Nostalgia and the New Urbanism(p. 131)
• Conclusion: The Fate of the Industrial Eden(p. 149)
• Notes(p. 157)
• Index(p. 187)

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CHOICE Review

Kargon and Molella (both, history of science, Johns Hopkins) examine the attempts in the 20th century to use new technologies to ameliorate the damages done by industrialization through urban planning. Beginning with the garden city movement of the late 19th century, urban planners and utopian thinkers tried to blend the benefits of the country with the efficiencies of the city. The authors draw on examples from Soviet Russia, Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, and both the New Deal and postindustrial capitalist US. The connections between utopian thinkers and the resulting experimental cities are not always linear, nor are the influences clear and defined; in many ways, this is the strong suit of the book. The complications between the initial ideals, urban designs, and final products make the case that there is no easy narrative in the techno-city planning of the 20th century. Yet the compelling similarities in the hopes, projected results, and ultimate failures in the various cities featured in this volume indicate an underlying need that transcended geography, nationality, and political theory. This is not a traditional work of urban history, urban planning, or intellectual history--and is a much greater contribution for that reason. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries. R. H. McCrory University of Washington