>Finally, there is this insistence on calling these kinds of blueprints
>"utopian."
Because they seem invented largely out of thin air, in a "Wouldn't it be nice?" mode, rather than saying how the present set of institutions and associated forms of consciousnessness can be engaged and transformed. With these participatory planning schemes, you're telling people in a world of Wal-Marts that they'd have to go to meetings, which would excite their boredom reflex.
Doug