My PDA

Utopia:

1. an imaginary and indefinitely remote place

2. a place of perfection especially in laws, governments and social conditions 

Utopia always meant people together. The Utopian impulse of a century ago was gregarious and altruistic; the hopeful and the radical didn’t want to just solve their own problems or save their own lives; they wanted to do it for all of us, everyone, everywhere, and all those in the eras yet to come. From the early days of the Russian Revolution to the late phases of the Black Panthers, they dared to dream big dreams, dreams that everything could be different, that human nature could be all but reinvented and suffering and injustice all but eliminated. They might have been amazingly wrongheaded about both means and ends, and most of us would disagree with their vision of paradise, but the hope and bravado are still inspiring. Few among us now are so confident that the world could be changed. These big utopias were never realized, though the world has changed in countless ways since, for the worse and for the better, partly by hopes and dreams acted upon. -Rebecca Solnit, Big Utopia, Little Utopias 

REFERENCES 

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/utopia

 http://utopiainfourmovements.com/about/

My PDA is an architectural device exploring and interpreting the nature and uses of public space. 

City:

noun 

1 a: an inhabited place of greater size, population, or importance than a town or village 

The city being a great host of public life, space and events is an appropriate place to begin to investigate the relationship between built spaces and society, for instance between political power, cultural belief structures and their built representation.  

“What is the city? How did it come into existence? What process does it further: what functions does it perform: what purposes does it fulfill? No single definition will apply to all its manifestations and no single description will cover all it’s transformations…(Mumford,1961,p.3)”

REFERENCES

•  http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/city
• Mumford, Lewis. (1961) The City in History, it’s origins, its transformations and it’s prospects. New York. Harcourt, Brace& World.