Pragmatists and prophets: planning history and the third millennium

The year 2000 and the idea of the third millennium have for long attracted the interest of planners. This paper is a review of some earlier thoughts about the possible nature of British cities in the year 2000 and beyond. These visions of the future are classified in terms of predictions based on trends already underway and in terms of less scientifically based utopianism. The reliability of both approaches is questionable, but the temptation to continue to speculate will prove irresistible in the rest of the 1990s.