2026 Theses Master's

Lessons from the Ephemeral Cities of the 21st Century: Bonnaroo as a Case Study of David Harvey’s Dialectical Utopia

Kameli, Sarah

The current state of planning limits our capacity to imagine. Bureaucracy, liability culture, and the over-formalization of urban space have collectively narrowed the field’s vision of what cities could be, and in doing so, narrowed what we believe is possible both for the people who live in them and as the people who plan for them.

David Harvey identified this problem in Spaces of Hope (2000) and set off on a search for what he calls dialectical utopianism, a critical departure from prior utopian thinking that refuses to separate space from time, is rooted in present possibilities, and is grounded in real contradiction rather than harmonious fantasy. This thesis is an answer to that search.

Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival is a camping music festival held every June on a 700-acre farm in Manchester, Tennessee, known for its diverse lineup, devoted community, and unforgiving heat. Using Bonnaroo as a case study of dialectical utopianism, this thesis examines the formal and informal systems that sustain it, the spatial and social dynamics that emerge as attendees and institutions negotiate that space, and what those dynamics produce in the people who pass through it. It then examines how increasing commodification following Live Nation’s acquisition in 2015 has affected those conditions.

Drawing on Lefebvre, Foucault, Turner, and critical scholarship on urban informality, the thesis synthesizes data from 10 semi-structured interviews with festival attendees, 1 interview with the director of operations, 2 focus groups with Groop leaders, and an online survey yielding 255 responses.

The findings suggest that when the conditions are right, ordinary people access extraordinary capacities for self-governance, communal care, creativity, and imagination. This thesis is ultimately a search for the conditions that create hope, and an argument that those conditions are worth protecting, worth studying, and worth planning for.