Rosemary Wakeman
Research project
An inquiry on the nature and practice of urban utopia in the second half of the 20th century, this project provides an account of one of the most significant urban planning movements to influence the way we imagine cities and metropolitan regions. Practicing Utopia: An Intellectual History of the New Town Movement lies at the intersection of the humanities, social sciences, and systems engineering. It is an interdisciplinary analysis of knowledge formation. The project assesses how an international network of architects and planners constructed a New Town world of dreams and desires, imagination, experimentation, and ideology. It evaluates how this world view encompassed both a powerful drive toward utopian ideals and the emergence of dystopian realities. It thus pioneers interdisciplinary research on the role of utopia and visionary thinking. The book will broaden our understanding of urban planning and policy from a comparative international perspective. It will provide a much needed analysis of late 20th century modernization. It will bring groundbreaking scholarship into the global political forces through which urban planners and intellectuals seek to define and to manage the future of the urban world.
Biography
Rosemary Wakeman is Professor of History and Director of the Urban Studies Program in the Fordham University, New York. She holds a Ph.D. in History from the University of California, Davis. She is currently carrying out an Urban Studies project on public space and planning in the Melrose neighborhood in the Bronx. She teaches courses on the European City, Maritime Cities, World’s Fairs and the Social History of Architecture.
Selected publications
‘Veblen Redivivus: Leisure and Excess in Europe’, in D. Stone (ed.), Oxford Handbook of Postwar European History, Oxford University Press, London, 2012.
‘Toulouse: d’une modernisation à l’autre’, Revue Urbanisme, Numéro spécial sur Toulouse, no. 40, 2011.
‘Le World Trade Center dix ans après’, Revue Urbanisme, no. 380, 2011.
‘The Fourth Republic’, in E. Berenson, V. Duclert and Ch. Prochasson (eds), The French Republic, Cornell University Press, Ithica, 2011.
‘Street Noises: Celebrating the Liberation of Paris in Music and Dance’, in A. Cowan and J. Steward (eds), The City and the Senses, Ashgate, Aldershot, 2007.
‘Le grand New York: une mega-région?’, Revue Urbanisme, vol. 368, 2009, pp. 77-78.
The Heroic City: Paris 1945-1958, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2009.
‘Fascinating Les Halles’, French Politics, Culture & Society, vol. 25, 2007, pp. 46-72.
Themes in Modern European History since 1945, (ed.), Routledge Press, New York, 2003.
‘Dreaming the New Atlantis: Science and the Planning of Technopolis in France’, Osiris, Journal of the History of Science Society, vol. 18, 2003, pp. 255-270.
Modernizing the Provincial City: Toulouse 1945-1975, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1997.
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