GEOGRAPHICAL SPACE IN UTOPIAS

Abstract

The concept of utopia, as presented by Thomas More in his Utopia, written in 1516, in the age of intensive geographical explorations (1450-1650), is almost as old as the history of humanity. Utopias have very wide, deep and rich meanings pertaining to the concepts of time-human-space and including all the processes of the past-present-future. There are, no doubt, utopias in every field. We observe that spatial descriptions, which can be evaluated from the aspect of geography in all the positive or negative versions, exist as absolute sources of knowledge in utopias. For geographical space is wide enough to provide diversity in the depiction of spatial design. Moreover, while there are subjects that can be presented as based upon many different geographical elements, there is also the possibility for great diversity in one single space. In this article, this subject has been analysed in three categories by taking into consideration the utopia-space relationship and each category has been exemplified with various works on utopias.