In the interwar years , the Moravian town of Zlín experienced an unprecedented development for the Czechoslovak Republic, a development closely related to the rise of the Baťa Company from a small busines s manufacturing footwear to a stock Corporation with global activities. But Zlín does not solely represent the familiar  story of a town's expansion by industrialization. Expansion and development of the town combined with openly utopical elements of the struggle for a "better" society. The present contribution, dealing with biographic, business-related, and architectonic and town-planning aspects of the development of Zlín, demonstrates the close interdependence between all these aspects and appraises Zlín as an experiment having a justified place in the history of utopical concepts for society in general and towns and cities in particular.