UTOPIA: Your Location

Your island of Utopia is set off the coast of New Zealand, and 200 miles broad, but it grows narrow at both ends. It looks like a half moon, the sea comes in eleven miles broad, and spreads itself into a great bay, which is well secured from winds (Sounds familiar?)

The entry into the bay, has rocks on one hand, and shallows on the other, but is very dangerous. In the middle of it there is one single rock which appears above water, and may therefore be easily avoided, and on the top of it there is a tower in which a garrison is kept; the other rocks lie under water, and are very dangerous. (Sir Thomas More, Utopia)

Only those living on Utopia know about the safe and dangerous channels, so if any stranger should enter the bay, without one of the natives to pilot the ship, would be in danger of wrecking.  This obviously offers great protection to your island Utopia.

On the other side of the island there are many harbors but the coast is fortified, both by nature and construction by the ancient indigenous peoples, that any great army could be easily thrown off by the small defensive group of the island Utopia.

There are twenty-four cities in the island, all large and well built: the manners, customs, and laws of which are the same, and they are all contrived as near in the same manner as the ground on which they stand will allow.

1901. New York: Ideal Commonwealths. P.F. Collier & Son. The Colonial Press. This book is in the public domain, released July 1993 by the Internet Wiretap. Prepared by Kirk Crady (kcrady@polaris.cv.nrao.edu) from scanner output provided by Internet Wiretap.

Hypertext Markup by William Uzgalis, September 1997

• Create a map of this area of the world and properly draw your Utopia in relation to New Zealand.  You must select where you want it to be located off of New Zealand but it should not be too close to it or Australia or any other body of land since you want to limit interaction with other nations and cultures to preserve your Utopia.

• You will need to give your Utopia a name.  This can be decided on by the founding group (your team) later but must be on all documents including maps by the end of the exercise.

• Make sure that it is proportioned correctly next to its nearest land mass

• Do a map of your island.  Name the harbor and all the twenty-five cities.  Be sure to locate and identify by name and symbol the capital city.  (You can create the names on a theme: for example often around Universities, it is names of famous schools such as Harvard or Stanford; even famous people such as Joyce, Twain and Murasaki)   You must also include land forms such as mountains, valleys, rivers, and lakes.  Don’t over do it: you don’t have that much land to work with.