Utopias and energy environment. Contemporary urban utopia and the paradigm of dissipative structures

Abstract

Starting from the ideas of Mumford (1922) and Rifkin (1980), we can consider utopias as a projection of the potentialities and expectations of a certain energy environment as well as of the energy transformers of said environment, among which are both, technology and the social and political institutions. Returning to the metaphors of architecture as an organism or mechanism (Fernández-Galiano 1991), it is studied how each vision of the world will successively inspire the image of a utopian city: as an organism part of the natural ecosystem and in static balance with the territory, in the entropic paradigm of the pre-industrial era; progressively as a mechanism and a thermal machine (dynamic and out of balance), with the advancement of the mechanical paradigm; up to a current vision of the future utopian city as a cybernetic organism, in dynamic equilibrium with the environment, which will be the result of the current vision of the world, that is, the paradigm of an era of energy transition, which has in the theory of dissipative structures a reference to a new scientific paradigm (Rifkin 1980). Despite their shortcomings, we can value the new utopias for their ability to inspire a cultural change and influence our political decisions, thus constituting an effective feedback and self-control mechanism for society in order to achieve a more sustainable world.