Abstract

This chapter discusses the ways in which the ideological imposition of the Utopian Socialist vision of the city was fundamental to the Communist project of ‘moulding’ the new man for the new political system. It is suggested that the idea of this kind of city flourished in situations of economic, environmental and ecological crises. Starting from an analysis of Campanella's ‘Sun City’, it shows how in the twentieth century a romanticised conception of the Utopian city translated, in reality, into a system of cruelty, violence and infringement of moral norms. Firmly convinced of their pedagogic mission, the authorities ultimately denied people's participation in the political process through the implementation of such a devious project. The human resources involved were either recruited by means of ideological mobilization or came from the forced labour of the imprisoned dissidents who did not believe in such a mission.