Wentworth
Institute of Technology
Invented Edens : techno-cities of the twentieth century /
Tracing the design of "techno-cities" that blend the technological and the pastoral. Industrialization created cities of Dickensian squalor that were crowded, smoky, dirty, and disease-ridden. By the beginning of the twentieth century, urban visionaries were looking for ways to improve bot...
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| Format: | Electronic eBook |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Cambridge, MA :
MIT Press,
©2008.
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| Series: | Lemelson Center studies in invention and innovation.
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: |
Full text (Wentworth users only) |
| Local Note: | ProQuest Ebook Central |
| Summary: | Tracing the design of "techno-cities" that blend the technological and the pastoral. Industrialization created cities of Dickensian squalor that were crowded, smoky, dirty, and disease-ridden. By the beginning of the twentieth century, urban visionaries were looking for ways to improve both living and working conditions in industrial cities. In Invented Edens, Robert Kargon and Arthur Molella trace the arc of one form of urban design, which they term the techno-city: a planned city developed in conjunction with large industrial or technological enterprises, blending the technological and the pastoral, the mill town and the garden city. Techno-cities of the twentieth century range from factory towns in Mussolini's Italy to the Disney creation of Celebration, Florida. Kargon and Molella show that the techno-city represents an experiment in integrating modern technology into the world of ideal life. Techno-cities mirror society's understanding of current technologies, and at the same time seek to regain the lost virtues of the edenic pre-industrial village. The idea of the techno-city transcended ideologies, crossed national borders, and spanned the entire twentieth century. Kargon and Molella map the concept through a series of exemplars. These include Norris, Tennessee, home to the Tennessee Valley Authority; Torviscosa, Italy, built by Italy's Fascist government to accommodate synthetic textile manufacturing (and featured in an early short by Michelangelo Antonioni); Ciudad Guayana, Venezuela, planned by a team from MIT and Harvard; and, finally, Disney's Celebration--perhaps the ultimate techno-city, a fantasy city reflecting an era in which virtual experiences are rapidly replacing actual ones |
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| Physical Description: | 1 online resource (viii, 190 pages) : illustrations, maps |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references (pages 157-186) and index. |
| ISBN: | 9780262276733 0262276739 9781435662872 1435662873 9780262293938 0262293935 0262113201 9780262113205 |
| Source of Description, Etc. Note: | Print version record. |