Christopher Alexander's Utopian Blueprint

Imagine a Federation of independent regions. Each of its cities is a mosaic of distinctive, self-governing neighborhoods, where "people can choose the kind of subculture they wish to live in, and can still experience many ways of life different from their own."

- By Jesse Walker

Homes and workplaces sit side by side, and those workplaces are a mix of owner-operated businesses and self-managed workshops. Bureaucracy is minimal, and services are administered in small offices without red tape.

Children roam the city freely, and the playgrounds are filled with raw materials for kids to build with. Instead of compulsory schooling, there are voucher-funded networks of learning: freelance instructors, shopfront schools, apprenticeships, and museums. Instead of conventional universities, there are scholarly marketplaces where anyone can offer classes to willing customers. The most important mode of public transportation is a jitney-style fleet of mini-buses. One part of town is a permanent carnival. There are public bandstands, so people can dance in the street.

It is one of the least sterile, most appealing utopian blueprints I have read-tucked away, improbably, in a book about architecture. The book is A Pattern Language, published in 1977. Six names appear on its cover, but the text is most closely associated with the first author listed: Christopher Alexander, who died in March at 85.