À la recherche de l’"Eutopie"

In retracing an anthology of the history of Utopias, the historian of technology Lewis Mumford urges planners not to abandon the real world, but to root their approach in concrete space that unites the city, the space of socialization par excellence, with its entire surrounding territory. This unified conception of territory is directly borrowed by the American historian from his mentor, the biologist Patrick Geddes, who, throughout his life, fought for the creation of a “utopian realism,” the result of the synergistic interrelation of community histories and the specificities of the territories on which they are established. In this sense, Eutopia is a drama that “takes place”: a process rooted in a territorial perspective in which every action, every labor, every human production is inscribed. The article aims to examine this eutopian approach and analyze the main theoretical references that constitute it. In doing so, the text intends to highlight the relevance of this approach, reiterating that the territorial project must take into account the inseparable link between the city and the countryside, the urban and the rural, whose synergistic relationship is fundamental to its ecogenesis.