In its newest venture, IKEA has expended into designing are building entire communities of apartments that are furnishing with IKEA products, down to the kitchen gadgets and the bath towels. They are able to provide housing that is 25 percent less expensive than comparable units. The firm’s tendency toward social engineering informs every aspect of the design, from the community gardens to the cooperative governance. Many praise the developments, but some feel the concept will not work outside of Sweden. “The idea of building an ideal little street is quite laudable,” says Ruth Eaton, author of Ideal Cities: Utopianism and the (Un) Built Environment.
“But you can’t put the same thing everywhere. That’s where utopias go wrong. … You can’t take over the world, because conditions are too different, calling for different solutions. Yes for Stockholm, no for Timbuktu.”