Traveling Urban Utopias and the Birth of Suburbia

Abstract

Abstract This article argues that the development of American-style suburbia is related to the European utopian longing for openness as expressed in William Morris's News from Nowhere. This European desire is here shown to be a reaction to an American utopian literary tradition, exemplified by Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward, a novel that celebrates dense urbanity. After having traveled back and forth across the Atlantic and reversed their respective visions of urbanity, utopian writings ultimately materialized as dystopian urban spaces.