Позитивные изменения. Города будущего. Тематический выпуск, 2022 / Positive changes. The cities of the future. Special issue, 2022

In particular, it was the urban bourgeoisie who participated in the events of the Great French Revolution: the city dwellers opposed the feudal privileges of the aristocracy and advocated the freedom of private property (Hobsbawm, 1999). A French politician known as Abbot Sieyes, a contemporary of the events, formulated the postulates of the third estate (all citizens except the clergy and nobility) as follows: "What is the third estate? – Everything. What has it been so far politically? – Nothing. What does it want to be? – Something." (Sieyes, 2003). After the revolution, the city became "something": the revolutionaries wanted to reflect the new values in the architecture as much as possible, the city dwellers developed a new approach: the palaces of the nobility were turned into public and trade spaces. The French Revolution gave birth to the city of the future: ideal cities were no longer abstract, but became subject to rational design (Romanova, 2015).

Thomas More’s Utopia used Plato’s ideas. The book is known for then-sensational proposal of abolishing private property and achieving complete uniformity.

More laid the foundations of utopia – a separate genre at the nexus of fiction and journalism. In the 19th century, Enlightenment ideas produced a new class of writers, i.e. utopian socialists, who focused separately on the city and how people’s coexistence could serve the purpose of moral development.

The Industrial Revolution revealed iron as a new construction material: it was used to build exhibition halls, train stations and pavilions, or, in other words, – public spaces (Benjamin, 1996). Covered shopping streets – passages – became a feature of Napoleonic-era Paris. It was in the passages that Charles Fourier saw the Phalanst`ere. The idea was to create a self-sufficient commune of about a thousand and a half people who would live in one phalanx house. Residential blocks are connected to the central multipurpose block by means of covered passage galleries, and the zoning is vertical: the underground level is allotted for utility rooms, and the upper levels – for living.