A New Future for Utopian Thought

With the relinquishment of utopias, man would lose his will to shape history, and there with his ability to change it.”
- Mannheim


The city of Sarajevo, scarred by the war, receives a thorough renovation. The city is re-integrated and distant Starigrad is reconnected with the city through the development of Centar.

The former Yugoslav army base is redeveloped to fulfil a societal function. The campus of the university which is already partly located in the old base is now sited here completely. These old Tito-era barracks are positioned in the middle of town and the development will re-connect the separated parts of the city. The airport will leave the city and replaced by the race track ‘Sarajevo Prix’ . An infrastructural master plan will ensure that bike paths are put in place all over town as will an agreeable and fast public transport system.

Cultural bottom-up initiatives emerge all over the city like mushrooms; a network of cultural entrepreneurs meets each other in coffee houses and grand cafés throughout the city. A new cultural elite emerges and cosmopolitanism takes hold in the city. Well-being goes up steadily and the quality of life will soon be equal to that of West European cities.

The reality is much coarser. The chance that Sarajevo in twenty years time will still be scarred by grenade craters – 'roses' in vox popular – poverty, and chaos is significant. Moreover, ethnic segregation is still present and corruption is engrained in society.

Indeed, there are plenty of ideas, and something needs to be done with them. This utopian vision of the city of Sarajevo outlined above emerged from the workshop Utopian City that the Danube Foundation gave in Sarajevo in April 2009. The event was part of a sequence of workshops given in capitals all over Europe and in where, after a presentation about Utopia and the city, local participants discuss their ideal city. They give form to their utopian city through a collage and present their narrative and utopian vision to the group.

Danube believes that utopian ideas should play a valuable role in our plans for the future. This oft-discredited concept is strongly associated with failed socialist or totalitarian utopias but presents us with the possibility of a vision for society. Danube plans to again employ utopian thought as an instrument, a tool generating visions for the future, for new visions for Europe.

In the presentation of the workshop a brief overview is given on the history of Utopian thought. The concept of Utopia refers to the equally named publication of Thomas More. Utopia as a compilation of Greek terms, having a double meaning: the ‘no place’ and the ‘good place’, so a place that does not exist and that is perfect. Both of these connotations are important in order to fully and correctly understand the function of Utopia. More’s utopian society was not a society he considered attainable. It was both a model for the ideal society and a critique on the society in which he lived: England in the early 16th Century. Ever since Plato’s Republic ideal societies are being sketched to fulfil these roles. Dystopia, , like the story of Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, is on-first-glance a contrary concept. But dystopias fulfil this same role of critiquing current societies, yet doing so by extrapolating relevant trends or elements of society.

Interaction between physical structure and social organisation has always surfaced in utopian models since More’s Utopia. This is a key reason why architecture has such an intense relationship with utopian thought. Modernism, where the belief in a creatable society has played a large role, was particularly keen on developing the idea of interaction between the physical structure and social organisation. Modernism, which celebrated its glory days in the late 19th and early 20th century, was partly a response to the effects of industrialisation and the social problems that came along with it. A new balance between man and nature had to be found.

A central theme was a rejection of history and tradition and a utopian desire to create a better world, to reinvent the world, accompanied by an enormous faith in the possibilities of technology. These principles joined with social and political ideologies, and gave art and design a large role in solving the problems of society. Modernistic master plans were both in the West as in the East packed with ideology and ideas about the new human. There was a broadly spread utopianism present, a belief in the possibility of a better future.

People actually believed a perfect endpoint was achievable: the Socialist Utopia, the Third Reich, or the Workers’ Paradise – each to their own was an obtainable society. With this belief one of the senses of Utopia, namely that of the ‘non place’, was lost and with that the totalitarian idea that violence was legitimate entered scene. For, if paradise is within reach, then the end will surely justify all means.

Today society is sceptical when it comes to grand visionary plans for a better world. The world has experienced totalitarian communism, the Holocaust and the gulags; utopian thought now mostly scares us. Hence the raise of postmodern thought: Postmodernism promotes a radical relativism and one could say this has led us to an empty pragmatism firmly present in the political culture. Postmodernism places individualism in opposition to universalism, chaos against order, reaction in oppostion to the masterplan, and intrinsic insecurity instead of rational solutions. With this rise of postmodernism grand narratives, visions, and direction disappeared.

These developments have taken vision away from Europe and left Europeans without dreams. Pragmatism might work well for technocrats but it does not lead to true coherence and meaning. Danube questions whether a society can actually function without a notion of utopia. Are dreams and grand visions not the necessary building block of society? Is this not exactly what current society is missing: visions and ideals with which it can fend off individualism and indifference?

Danube wants to overcome the problems of postmodernity and refuses be held back by scepticism and relativism. It is critical to dare to dream again and to again believe in something. Utopian visions, however, have to incorporate both connotations of the original Utopia concept: the ideal place and the no place. Utopian visions give us direction but are in definition unattainable.

Danube therefore stands for a new perspective. Cultural diversity is central to Europe and will not be captured in one grand narrative, in one vision, but it can be in a bundle of stories or visions. It will be an endless bundle of stories, where stories react to each other and have a new ending every time. These are not stories about Europe but stories of Europe. What we imagine is a continuing discussion, a continuous exchange of ideas. This dynamic offers Europe a future by continuously bringing in new subjects and perspectives to keep the discussion and exchange alive.

Danube gathers stories, dreams and ideals of young Europeans from all corners of Europe by means of these workshops. The dreams of the young Europeans in Sarajevo, Belgrade, Amsterdam and Berlin are captured and passed on. Following every workshop a local artist produces a work based on the winning concept. All the small stories together form a grand story and people reflect on the imagined utopian city as a model for the imagined society.

These bottom-up ideas about the imagined city together form imagined Europe. These ideas are fruitful because as this collection of ideas draws out alternatives, at the same time it points out what wrong with the current situation. These ideals ultimately establish a direction for policy. Architects have developed many projects which have never been realised and realisation was never the intention of many of them. They were ideas, partly spielerei, but they do give direction towards an ultimate goal that can never be reached, standing like a light house in the distance as a beacon of hope. Without direction we are helpless.