Utopian Prospect of Henri Lefebvre

Abstract

Utopia is the lynchpin of Lefebvre’s enterprise. Attempting to understand architecture and the city with Lefebvre but without Utopia impoverishes his theoretical construct. His ethics, his ideas on practice and the methods he elaborated, are fundamentally utopian. Although there might seem to be no place for Utopia in the present, Lefebvre reveals this as little more than a self-serving affirmation that “there is no alternative” to social and political detachment. Demanding the impossible may always end in failure but doing so is the first step toward other possibilities nevertheless. Ultimately, to think about Lefebvre is to think about Utopia, and thinking about utopia when thinking with Lefebvre is to make contact with what is most enduring about his project for the city and its inhabitants, and with what is most radical about it as well.