Ideal city

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The ideal city by Fra Carnevale, c. 1480–1484
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An ideal city is the concept of a

plan for a city
that has been conceived in accordance with a particular rational or moral objective.

Concept

The "ideal" nature of such a city may encompass the

Utopia
.

History

Caliph Al-Mansur's Round city of Baghdad, City of Peace, c. 8th century
The ideal city attributed to Luciano Laurana or Melozzo da Forlì

Several attempts to develop ideal city plans are known from the

Republic is a philosophical exploration of the notion of the 'ideal city'. The nobility of the Renaissance, seeking to imitate the qualities of Classical civilisation
, sometimes sought to construct such ideal cities either in reality or notionally through a reformation of manners and culture.

Leon Battista Alberti

Zamość in the 17th century

The

edifices
for private patrons or ecclesiastical purposes.

Alberti insisted on choosing the location of the town first, followed by careful setting up of the size and direction of streets, then location of bridges and gates, and finally a building pattern ruled by perfect symmetry.

World Heritage Site in Poland.[2]

The ideal town was seen as a utopia to be achieved by disregarding the reasonably regular planimetrics of real, historic towns for standards – geometric, aesthetic or otherwise – of ideal perfection. Therefore the debate about ideal towns has become isolated from the debate about real, historic towns. In fact, there has often been the temptation to superimpose and identify this debate with one about utopia and those town models often linked to the utopian concept.[3]

Examples

Plan of Sforzinda, Filarete, c. 1465

Examples of the ideal cities include

piazzas
.

Venetian Defensive Systems that are a UNESCO World Heritage Site.[4]

The cities of

Venetian Fortesses were built in the 1590s by the Venetian Republic, are considered to be practical examples of the concept of the ideal city.[5] Another notable example of the concept is Zamość in eastern Poland, founded in the late 16th century and modelled by the Italian architect Bernardo Morando
.

James Oglethorpe synthesized Classical and Renaissance concepts of the ideal city with new Enlightenment ideals of scientific planning, harmony in design, and social equality in his plan for the Province of Georgia. The physical design component of the famous Oglethorpe Plan remains preserved in the Savannah Historic District.[6]

Late nineteenth-century examples of the ideal city include the

Letchworth Garden City and Welwyn Garden City in England. Poundbury, Charles III's architectural vision established in Dorset
, is among the most recent examples of ideal city planning.

Built in 1950s Communist Poland, Nowa Huta, now part of Kraków, Poland, serves as an unfinished example of a utopian ideal city, and is still one of the largest planned socialist realist settlements or districts ever built and "one of the most renowned examples of deliberate social engineering" in the entire world.[7] Its street hierarchy, layout and certain grandeur of buildings often resemble Paris or London. The high abundance of parks and green areas in Nowa Huta make it the greenest part of Kraków.[8]

See also

References

  1. ^ Anthony Blunt, From "Artistic Theory in Italy, 1450‐1660". Chapter 1: Alberti. PDF file, direct download 192 KB. NEHAWU Archives.
  2. ^ Old City of Zamość. UNESCO World Heritage Centre 2014, United Nations.
  3. ^ European Educational Project: What city for man. Progetto Educativo Europeo Comenius Azione 1 Quale Citta' Per L'Uomo, in English.
  4. ^ Centre, UNESCO World Heritage. "The city of Bergamo - UNESCO World Heritage Centre". whc.unesco.org. Retrieved 2017-11-02.
  5. ^ Cosmescu, Dragos. "Nicosia". fortified-places.com. Retrieved 18 July 2015.
  6. ^ Wilson, Thomas D. The Oglethorpe Plan: Enlightenment Design in Savannah and Beyond. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2012.
  7. ^ "Nowa Huta – Krakow". www.inyourpocket.com. Retrieved 14 May 2017.
  8. ISBN 9781137303653
    . Retrieved 14 May 2017 – via Google Books.

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