The New Town Movement: An Intellectual History

Type: 
Lecture
Audience: 
CEU Community Only
Building: 
Nador u. 9, Monument Building
Room: 
203
Monday, June 7, 2010 - 5:30pm
Add to Calendar
Date: 
Monday, June 7, 2010 - 5:30pm to 7:00pm

public lecture by

Rosemary Wakeman
Fordham University

The period from 1945 through the 1980s was the golden age of New Towns. This lecture will concentrate on the power of New Towns as utopian vision, how these projects invented and spread a modern ideal of the good life and urban form, and the political-economic context in which they worked. It will discuss how New Town architects and planners sought to promote their vision of the future.

Rosemary Wakeman is an Associate Professor of History and Director of the Urban Studies Program at Fordham University. She is the author of The Heroic City: Paris 1945-1958 (Univ. of Chicago, 2009) and Modernizing the Provincial City: Toulouse 1945-1975 (Harvard, 1998). She is also the editor of Themes in Modern European History, 1945 to the Present (Routledge, 2003). Wakeman also writes regularly for the Revue Urbanisme, most recently an article on the New York mega-region. She has published numerous articles on urban history and cities, including a special issues of French Politics, Culture & Society on "The Renovation of Les Halles" (2007). Wakeman is also co-editor of the Metropolitan Studies series published by Berghahn Press.