This vast panorama spans more than two millennia of Western attempts to invent the perfect city, cradle of the ideal society. Embracing not only architecture and town planning but also art, literature, philosophy, and politics, the book takes us through the imaginary environments of a wide variety of fascinating and often controversial movements and figures, including Plato, Filarete, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas More, Thomas Jefferson, Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, Charles Fourier, Etienne Cabet, Robert Owen, William Morris, Ebenezer Howard, Bruno Taut, Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright, the European Situationalists, the Japanese Metabolists, Archigram, Superstudio, and many more.

The ideal cities in this richly illustrated book exist for the most part in the domain of ideas. Ruth Eaton explores the ability of ideal cities to stimulate reflection and change, and she suggests under what conditions they might continue to exercise their vital function in relation to the urban environment of the future. While it is true that notorious attempts to cross the border into reality have greatly discredited utopianism, it is good to recall—with the famous historian of cities, Lewis Mumford—that "a map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at." 300 illustrations, 250 in color.