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Garden city movement

Urban planning movement

  • 17 min read
  • 7 chapters

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History

Conception

According to urban theorist Lewis Mumford, Howard's ideas had an antecedent in Leonardo da Vinci's proposal to separate Milan into ten smaller cities to relieve congestion and pestilence.

Inspired by the utopian novel Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy, and Henry George's work Progress and Poverty, Howard published the book To-morrow: a Peaceful Path to Real Reform in 1898 (reissued in 1902 as Garden Cities of To-morrow). His idealised garden city would house 32,000 people on a site of 9,000 acres (3,600 ha). Howard's diagrams present such a city in a concentric pattern with open spaces, public parks, and six radial boulevards, 120 ft (37 m) wide, extending from the centre. He makes it clear that the actual site planning should be left to experts. The garden city would be self-sufficient, and when it reached full population, another would be developed nearby. Howard envisages a cluster of several garden cities as satellites of a central city of 58,000 people, linked by road and rail. Howard's diagrams are quite similar to the urban planner and social reformer Adelheid von Poninska's suggestion of a "green ring" around cities a few decades earlier.

The success of Howard's book provided him with the support necessary to pursue the opportunity to bring his vision to life. Howard believed that all people agreed that the overcrowding and deterioration of cities were one of the troubling issues of their time. He quotes several respected thinkers and their disdain for cities. Howard's garden city concept combines the town and country to provide the working class an alternative to working on farms or in "crowded, unhealthy cities".

Howard envisions the garden city as a "third magnet" which will draw residents and small businesses from both the too-crowded city and the too-isolated countryside. He theorizes that it would thus shield people from the social ills of rapid industrialization through population and density limits, strict land use controls, and shared ownership with collective management.

First developments

To build a garden city, Howard needed money to buy land. He decided to get funding from "gentlemen of responsible position and undoubted probity and honour". He founded the Garden City Association (later known as the Town and Country Planning Association or TCPA), which created First Garden City, Ltd. in 1899 to create the garden city of Letchworth. However, these donors would collect interest on their investment if the garden city generated profits through rents or, as Fishman calls the process, "philanthropic land speculation". Howard tried to include working class cooperative organisations, which included over two million members, but could not win their financial support. Because he had to rely only on the wealthy investors of First Garden City, Howard had to make concessions to his plan, such as eliminating the cooperative ownership scheme with no landlords, short-term rent increases, and hiring architects who did not agree with his rigid design plans.

In 1904, Raymond Unwin, a noted architect and town planner, and his partner Barry Parker won the competition run by First Garden City Ltd. to plan Letchworth, an area 34 miles outside London. Unwin and Parker planned the town in the centre of the Letchworth estate with a large agricultural green belt surrounding the town. They shared Howard's view that the working class deserved better, more affordable housing. However, the architects ignored Howard's symmetric design, instead replacing it with a more 'organic' design.

Letchworth slowly attracted more residents because it brought in manufacturers through low taxes, low rents, and more space. Despite Howard's best efforts, the home prices in this garden city could not remain affordable for blue-collar workers to live in. The population comprised mostly skilled middle class workers. After a decade, the First Garden City became profitable and started paying dividends to its investors. Although many viewed Letchworth as a success, it did not immediately inspire government investment into the next line of garden cities.

In reference to the lack of government support for garden cities, Frederic James Osborn, a colleague of Howard and his eventual successor at the Garden City Association, recalled Howard saying, "The only way to get anything done is to do it yourself." Likely in frustration, Howard bought land at Welwyn to house the second garden city in 1919. The purchase was at auction, with money Howard desperately and successfully borrowed from friends. The Welwyn Garden City Corporation was formed to oversee the construction. But Welwyn did not become self-sustaining because it was only 20 miles from London.

Even into the 1930s, Letchworth and Welwyn remained the only garden cities in the United Kingdom. However, the movement did succeed in emphasizing the need for urban planning policies that eventually led to the new towns movement.

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