Topographies of the future: urban and suburban visions in Edward Bellamy’s utopian fiction

Joseph M. Watson

Planning Perspectives, 2017, vol. 32, issue 4, 639-649

Abstract: In Looking Backward (1888) and Equality (1897), Edward Bellamy offered two distinct but interrelated visions of a utopian future. The first and more famous book was set in a luxuriant, centralized metropolis. The sequel detailed decentralized, suburbanized infrastructures. Within the literature on Bellamy these emendations have been treated as evidence of regressive anti-urbanism. This paper argues instead that Bellamy used correlations between topography and technology to mediate an evolving approach to social reform. The discrepancies between the two texts did not represent abandonment of the city but rather an expansion of the scale and scope necessary to ensure social progress. While Looking Backward has often been invoked in relation the Garden City and City Beautiful movements, a new reading of Equality offers opportunities to rethink Bellamy’s relationship to planning history.

Date: 2017
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DOI: 10.1080/02665433.2017.1350874

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