This year marks the 500^th anniversary of the publication of Thomas More’s Utopia, which gave that term its current meaning and reconnected with a literary genre begun by Plato –the detailed description of a society that is seen by the author as ideal. This utopia of More’s, which was highly regarded, particularly in Europe from the 17^th century onwards, became very influential and in subsequent centuries many authors have tried their hands at utopian proposals, applied in most cases to circumscribed territories. As Jean Haëntjens reminds us, this strain of utopian thought contributed greatly to fuelling the visions of towns and cities deemed desirable by the political actors and urbanists of the 19^th and 20^th centuries.