Slow City Movement is an Utopia of Livable City?

Abstract

The Slow Food and as an extension of it, Slow City (Cittaslow) Movement is born when these disadvantages are posed by modernity and globalization. Slow city is a way of life that cultural richness and quality of life are preserved and defended in the city's local scale. Also, it is an urban model which may be prevented in the standardization of lifestyles to achieve the environmentally-conscious and tourism-based of local development. Thus, it is aimed to improve the quality of life in cities and opposed the homogenization of cities. Slow City Movement is adopted day by day in terms of societal, cultural and social needs and as a model of local government. Slow city movement aims to create livable cities. It is important that how much of this discourse can be perform. This discourse contains similarities with the concept of "utopia" which was put forward for creating an ideal society and was effective for constructing the cities after the II World War. "Ideal urban designs" are asked for "ideal society" with design utopias that give the meaning of the conceptual contrasts of "Ideal location" (Eutopia) and "non-place" (Outopia). Does Slow City Movement, which suggests the new layout / space organization about the city and the society and approach from a critical perspective to the current plans, create the concept of "ideal city"? How will ideal societies and ideal spaces be meaningful and accessible when creating the ideal cities? In this study, the aims of creating livable city, similarities and differences of "utopia urban designs", which is developed as a design and a discourse, but not being successful in practice, and "Slow City Movement" are questioned. The main problematic of this study are how much the Slow City Movement performs the livable discourse and how much of it remains utopias.