Built – Urban Utopias

Posted on April 30, 2021April 27, 2021 by Cassandra O'Donnell · 2 Comments

Heartland Utopias Part 6: Maharishi Vedic City

A white and yellow building marked as the "Capital of the Global Country of World Peace." Two flagpoles out front display the American and Iowa flags (on the left), and the GCWP flag (on the right, a yellow flag with a pink sunburst design).

In the southeast corner of Iowa, near the small town of Fairfield, lies the state’s newest utopian community. Here, followers of an Indian guru have built their own city, following ancient traditions with modern twists. 3,000-year-old Sanskrit texts guide everything from meditation to architecture, but solar panels are visible around almost every corner and an accredited university runs its film school out of the city. And all of this has developed in the last 70 years.

Posted on April 28, 2021April 25, 2021 by Cassandra O'Donnell · 2 Comments

Heartland Utopias Part 4: The Amana Colonies

The High Amana General Store, a low brick building.

Perhaps the most famous communal experiment in Iowa, the Amana Colonies are seven villages in eastern Iowa. Today, they are a National Historic Landmark and the Amana name is attached to home appliances, but for decades they were home to a religious community that explored a pragmatic and successful approach to communal life.

Posted on April 26, 2021April 25, 2021 by Cassandra O'Donnell · 2 Comments

Heartland Utopias Part 2: Icaria

The French Icarian Village near Corning, featuring the communal dining hall to the right, the Icarian schoolhouse, center, and the Icarian graveyard in the trees to the left.

Adams, in southwest Iowa, is the state’s least populous county. It’s also home to an exceptional piece of history: Iowa’s Icarian Colony, the longest-lived non-religious communal experiment in American history. The community, near Corning, was perhaps the most successful piece of a complex effort to build a society of “one for all and all for one.”

Icaria’s 50-year journey began in France and made stops in five states before its slow dissolution in the 1890s. Although there are few physical reminders of the movement, its impact is still felt in Adams County and every other place it touched.

Posted on September 1, 2019September 13, 2019 by Cassandra O'Donnell · 1 Comment

Arcology, Arcosanti, and Paolo Soleri’s Evolution of Cities

The iconic ceramics apse at Arcosanti, where wind-bells are made. Credit: By CodyR from Phoenix, Arizona, USA - arcosanti apse on Flickr, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3428917

About 110 km north of Phoenix, Arizona, in the middle of a semi-arid desert, you’ll find an odd sight: a community of rough concrete buildings sitting on a mesa. Inside, brass and ceramic wind-bells are cast and sold, construction on the development continues, and, in theory, all the needs of a modern city are met with minimal environmental impact. This is Arcosanti, the brainchild of Paolo Soleri, built to prove his vision of architecture and ecology working hand in hand. Read more

Posted on July 5, 2019 by Cassandra O'Donnell · 1 Comment

Detroit: The Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of the Motor City

In recent years, Detroit has become a byword for the decline of industrial cities in the United States. The community grew rapidly with industrialization in the mid-1900s, faced political, social, and economic turmoil through the rest of the century, and decayed into a disaster of infrastructure. Today, Detroit is finding its own way in the future of urban life, and it just might prove an example for all of the cities facing their own changing futures. Read more

Posted on June 15, 2019June 22, 2019 by Cassandra O'Donnell · 1 Comment

Le Corbusier’s Ideas on Display

Ministerial Buildings under construction in Brasilia, Brazil. Credit: By Unknown - Arquivo Público do Distrito Federal, CC BY 3.0,

While most of Le Corbusier’s realized work during his life was on private villas such as Villa Savoye, he – along with the planners who followed him – had a few opportunities to test out his radical ideas in planning, to varying success. Here’s a handful of those creations.

Posted on March 1, 2019February 15, 2019 by Cassandra O'Donnell · 2 Comments

South Korea’s Ubiquitous City: New Songdo

New Songdo City, South Korea has been in planning and construction since 2003. It is and has been many things: a truly global city, an aerotropolis supported by the nearby Incheon International Airport, a green city, a “ubiquitous city” with technology in every aspect of life, and the backdrop to scenes in the video for the hit song “Gangnam Style.” As an early and long-running smart city project, Songdo says a lot about what we want from our cities of the future – and about what we may actually get. Read more

Posted on February 15, 2019March 12, 2019 by Cassandra O'Donnell

Henry Ford’s Museum Town: Greenfield Village

The two plaques at the entrance to Greenfield. The top one reads, "In 1929, Henry Ford created Greenfield Village. Guided by the philosophy of 'learning by doing,' Ford not only paid tribute to his friend and hero, Thomas Edison, but also gave Americans a chance to experience history firsthand. His vision was realized by relocating and preserving an unrivaled collection of authentic historic buildings into an American village. "Today, Greenfield Village embodies the spirit of Henry Ford's bold vision. Farmers, artisans, inventors, writers, shopkeepers and railroad workers carry our their daily tasks throughout this changing landscape. The energy is unmistakeable as their powerful and inspiring stories bring 300 years of the American experience to life every day." The second reads, "Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village has been designated a National Historic Landmark. This site possesses national significance in commemorating the history of the United States of America. 1982. National Park Service. United States Department of the Interior."

As mentioned in my previous Henry Ford post, Henry Ford’s failures in Alabama were not the end to his development aspirations. Around the same time Ford was attempting to remake Muscle Shoals for the future, he was preparing to bring the past to Dearborn, Michigan. Read more

Posted on January 1, 2019January 11, 2019 by Cassandra O'Donnell · 2 Comments

Hiatus: Holy Land by D.J. Waldie

Authors Note: I’m taking a bit of a hiatus for January to get ahead on my researching and writing, as well as my classwork, but I didn’t want to leave nothing for a month. Here’s a little something about a book that I read last semester.

D.J. Waldie’s Holy Land describes a city that may not be of the future, per se, but was certainly a utopia to some. Waldie grew up and still lives in a tract home in Lakewood, California, a suburb of Los Angeles. Built in the years after World War II, Lakewood was the second “new” suburb in the United States, following in the footsteps of Levittown, New York. The book itself is a lyrical examination of a life in a place, and a place through the lives in it.

Posted on December 15, 2018December 20, 2018 by Cassandra O'Donnell · 1 Comment

Vienna’s Seaside City

Seestadt Aspern, literally the seaside city at Aspern, is home to Smart City Wien’s large-scale experiments. The planned community of 20,000 people in the northeast corner of Vienna will be completed in 2028. Much like Masdar City, Aspern aims to act as a “living laboratory” to prove various new technologies, from smart electric meters to entire smart energy grids. Aspern Smart City Research (ASCR), the company in charge of research in Aspern, sorts its projects into four “Smart” areas: Building, Grid, User, and Information and Communication Technology (ICT).