In the article, the author mainly talked about his opposite idea from the general Utopia city plan. He thinks the Utopian top-down idea is idealism and it may destroy citizens’ anthropological life, and make the city like a machine without peace and love.
The author states his idea about “Collage City”, a cooperation between normal city and Utopia city. Because the time was after WWII, this idea is the best way for those countries’ developing.
In my opinion, for example, New York City. In Manhattan island, the architectures are always well modernized, but like places like Queens and Brooklyn, the buildings are closer to citizens. The book states this urban planning style as “complexity of city and society and provides the idea of co-existence and diversity”. Architect use this collage idea to combine utopia and modern city plan, so the city both has its place for citizens to live, and do economical things. And this idea is also similar to the idea in “the Pattern Language”, citizens are also part of the city. And I believe this is one of the major reasons why The New York city is the biggest city in the world.
But what I want to state is Utopia city plan is also not a whole idealism. I want to state Singapore as the most utopian city in the world in my opinion, its city is very new and clean. The citizens love their country, their houses are modernized, and the city plan is also very modernized. So as the opposite idea from the book, I still believe the Utopian city plan will work in our real world, but it needs a lot of money and a nearly empty foundation to build a new city. So, I think it will only work in future Africa, if their government can get a lot of money, because their cities are undeveloped as a blank paper for architects to do top-down design on that.
References:
Rowe, C. & Koetter, F., (1984), Collage City, the MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England
Alexander, Christopher, Murray Silverstein, and Sara Ishikawa. A Pattern Language , 1977.