Позитивные изменения. Города будущего. Тематический выпуск, 2022 / Positive changes. The cities of the future. Special issue, 2022
Шрифт:
The medieval city ends with the advent of a new social class, the bourgeoisie. They are no longer peasants who farm the land and belong to the landlord, nor craftsmen who are enslaved through the shop and corporate system.
In particular, it was the urban bourgeoisie who participated in the events of the Great French Revolution: the city dwellers opposed the feudal privileges of the aristocracy and advocated the freedom of private property (Hobsbawm, 1999). A French politician known as Abbot Sieyes, a contemporary of the events, formulated the postulates of the third estate (all citizens except the clergy and nobility) as follows: "What is the third estate? – Everything. What has it been so far politically? – Nothing. What does it want to be? – Something." (Sieyes, 2003). After the revolution, the city became "something": the revolutionaries wanted to reflect the new values in the architecture as much as possible, the city dwellers developed a new approach: the palaces of the nobility were turned into public and trade spaces. The French Revolution gave birth to the city of the future: ideal cities were no longer abstract, but became subject to rational design (Romanova, 2015).
Thomas More’s Utopia used Plato’s ideas. The book is known for then-sensational proposal of abolishing private property and achieving complete uniformity.
More laid the foundations of utopia – a separate genre at the nexus of fiction and journalism. In the 19th century, Enlightenment ideas produced a new class of writers, i.e. utopian socialists, who focused separately on the city and how people’s coexistence could serve the purpose of moral development.
The Industrial Revolution revealed iron as a new construction material: it was used to build exhibition halls, train stations and pavilions, or, in other words, – public spaces (Benjamin, 1996). Covered shopping streets – passages – became a feature of Napoleonic-era Paris. It was in the passages that Charles Fourier saw the Phalanst`ere. The idea was to create a self-sufficient commune of about a thousand and a half people who would live in one phalanx house. Residential blocks are connected to the central multipurpose block by means of covered passage galleries, and the zoning is vertical: the underground level is allotted for utility rooms, and the upper levels – for living.
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