The Micro-Utopian City

Abstract

Seventeenth-century plans of the city of London show us a mineral place of timeless dimension. It is a city that unites its destiny with a utopia that transcends the individual that inhabits it. Time seems to stand still; it does not come about, perhaps because its destiny—that of its utopias—transcends time itself. This city of London is followed by a new place, the city of machines and movement. It is a city that reunites individuals in moving rooms and by the time of itinerancy. Then the notion of time in dwelling emerges together with distance, as derived from the idea of velocity. In this city of movement and increasingly accelerated time, this place today has been transformed into a pop-up place. These places are places that we select as virtual points and whose emergence from a virtual reality we encourage. They are places that we link to a personal and imagined city. They are virtual places that we inhabit in an almost disjointed way and places that take us to other places, to other homes, to other times where we fulfil our small dreams and eventually our own micro-utopias.

Keywords: Eden, pop-up place, high-low tech city, micro-utopia.