Cities of Tomorrow: An Intellectual History of Urban Planning and Design Since 1880, 4th Edition

Cities of Imagination

Then I asked: “does a firm perswasion that a thing is so, make it so?”

He replied: “All Poets believe that it does, & in ages of imagination this firm perswasion removed mountains; but many are not capable of a firm perswasion of any thing.”

William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (ca. 1790)

Chr.: Sir, said Christian, I am a Man that am come from the City of Destruction, and am going to the Mount Zion, and I was told by the man that stands by the Gate at the head of this way; that if I called here, you would shew me excellent things, such as would be an help to me in my Journey.

John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678)

For we must consider that we shall be a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us, so that if we deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword through the world.

John Winthrop, A Model of Christian Charity (1630)

… on a huge hill,

Cragg’d, and steep, Truth stands, and hee that will

Reach her, about must, and about must goe;

And what the hills suddennes resists, winne so;

John Donne, “Satyre III” (ca. 1595)

1Cities of Imagination: Alternative Visions of the Good City, 1880–1987

“Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist”: thus Keynes, in a celebrated passage at the end of the General Theory. “Madmen ...