From Utopia to Retrotopia: The Cosmopolitan City in the Aftermath of Modernity

Bar-Itzhak examines the idea of the city as a cosmopolitan utopia and the changes it has undergone in the shift from modernity to liquid modernity. She argues that these changes can be explained by a shift from utopia to Retrotopia: from the projection of an imagined ideal social order onto a possible future, to the ability to imagine such an ideal existence only in a lost, unattainable past. Through a revealing case study—the changes in the literary depictions of the city of Haifa as a cosmopolitan utopia over the course of a century—she demonstrates how the hopes and longings put into the literary creation of possible and no-longer-possible cities can shed new light on contemporary societies’ ability to reimagine themselves and their futures.