A sweeping history of American cities and towns, and the utopian aspirations that shaped them, by one of America’s leading urban planners and scholars.

The first European settlers saw America as a paradise regained. The continent seemed to offer a God-given opportunity to start again and build the perfect community. Those messianic days are gone. But as Alex Krieger argues in City on a Hill, any attempt at deep understanding of how the country has developed must recognize the persistent and dramatic consequences of utopian dreaming. Even as ideals have changed, idealism itself has for better and worse shaped our world of bricks and mortar, macadam, parks, and farmland. As he traces this uniquely American story from the Pilgrims to the “smart city,” Krieger delivers a striking new history of our built environment.

The Puritans were the first utopians, seeking a New Jerusalem in the New England villages that still stand as models of small-town life. In the Age of Revolution, Thomas Jefferson dreamed of citizen farmers tending plots laid out across the continent in a grid of enlightened rationality. As industrialization brought urbanization, reformers answered emerging slums with a zealous crusade of grand civic architecture and designed the vast urban parks vital to so many cities today. The twentieth century brought cycles of suburban dreaming and urban renewal—one generation’s utopia forming the next one’s nightmare—and experiments as diverse as Walt Disney’s EPCOT, hippie communes, and Las Vegas.

Krieger’s compelling and richly illustrated narrative reminds us, as we formulate new ideals today, that we chase our visions surrounded by the glories and failures of dreams gone by.

"Provides us with a useful history of the influential ideals—some of them prophetic, some of them unrealistic, and others downright cruel and unjust—that have shaped American cities." - Wall Street Journal

"City on a Hill takes us on a bold, comprehensive journey through the history of American city planning—or rather a history of the American built environment, due to the anti-urban bias that has historically been pinned to American culture…In a time where the future looks darker than ever, Alex Krieger reminds us of how utopian dreams once galvanized American (city planning) history, and shows that our current worries—rather than dreams—require new utopias to be imagined." - ArchDaily

"From the Puritans via Jefferson, from millions of immigrants to the hippies and on through the builders of World’s Fairs, Epcot and Las Vegas, each generation has seen America as a utopia, a promised land. But each time those utopias have either ingrained privilege, failed utterly or proved the next generation’s nightmare. This is an extremely readable journey through the successive waves of building that exceptionalist place." - Financial Times

"Illuminating…Krieger’s historical analysis is perceptive and pointed, scholarly yet readable. He also speaks to the contemporary world, addressing the energy-wasting sprawl and leapfrog development that plague today’s metropolitan regions." - Chicago Tribune

"[A] carefully argued and cinematically sweeping history…In a field crowded with detailed histories of this kind, the book stands out as an invigorating study, rich in the history of ideas about what American urban settlements might have been and still may become." - Architectural Record

"A critically deep dive into the visions of utopia that have shaped American development, City on a Hill outlines the idealisms underlying various urban design movements, starting with the first wave of pilgrims looking for a new start. Krieger honors the grand ideas that have moved America and its cities forward over the centuries but also underwrites with a critical eye the lessons that can be learned as we move forward towards contemporary ideals of sustainability and smart cities today." - Architect’s Newspaper

"It’s very well done—a great sweep of material, grand ideas, full of complexity and nuance…A great achievement." - Times Higher Education