The Garden City The Garden City MovementMovement

• WWhat were the principles on which The Garden City Movement were founded?

• To what extent did those principles

become applied in practice?

• In what ways was the Garden City Movement formative?

Ebenezer Howard 1850 - 1928

• Son of trades people

• Was quite well educated

• Expected to become a rural worker

• Became a shorthand writer for parliament

• Travelled to America – Nebraska and Chicago

What provoked Howard’s ideas?

• Rapid unplanned urban growth• Anti Urbanism • Improve living conditions for the

working class – George Cadbury – Lord Leverhulme– Joseph Rowntree

• Land ownership• Create a city that provides the people

within the city with what they need

The Garden City Proposal

• 6000 acres– 5000 for agriculture and 2000 people – 1000 in the city for 30,000 people

• Low rent on land - Agricultural• Dividends on the land would be paid

out• Create a place that combines city life

and rural life• Eliminate slums

“His garden cities were envisaged with much higher residential densities than the kind of urban expansion along traffic routes that became known as ‘suburban sprawl’. They were conceived as a cluster, separated by a green belt, around a central city providing those facilities that individual towns could not supply, in a poly-nucleated settlement pattern of city regions.”

Ward, C. (1993) New Town, Home Town, the lessons of experience, London: Calouste

Gulbenkian Foundation

Garden City Association

• Founded by Ebenezer Howard 1899 – Alfred Russell Wallace – Ralph Neville – George Cadbury – Lord Leverhulme

• He wanted to push forward his Garden City Idea

• Is now the Town and Country Planning Association

Unwin and Parker

• Employed as architects because no action was being taken

• Commissioned to prepare a plan of Letchworth based on their interpretation of Howards Proposals

Letchworth

• Low population – 1905 – population was 1400 – 1907 – population was 2800– 1908 – population was 5600

• Slow growth until munitions factory was built there in 1914

• Means the housing increases in value

Did Letchworth follow Howards proposals?

• 3800 acres• Less green space• Industry was on the outskirts• Not part of a network but still a start

“The British towns of the postwar period incorporated some garden city features but were nevertheless far removed from Howard’s original proposals”

Ward, S.V (1992) 1st ed. The Garden City, Past, Present and future. London: Chapman and Hall.

There was never a network created …

• 1917 manifesto written by the Garden Cities Association to get 100 more garden cities built

• 1918 Howard brought his own land and appointed Louis de Soissons to create the plan – Welwyn

The Barnetts

• Canon Leonard and Henrietta Barnett– Saw the “evils of poverty”

• Garden suburbs were a result of the Garden City Movement – Hampstead garden Suburb 1906

• Unwin and Parker were appointed architects.

• Suburbs weren’t seen to solve unemployment problems there for was a “betrayal” of the garden city ideal

Unwin and Parker.

• Cul-de-sacs

• Revived cottage style architecture

• Wanted to encourage a sense of community

Satellite Towns

• Residential areas without obvious local employment

• Based around garden city proposals • Helped with the suburbanization of

London• Unwin’s housing work for the Ministry

of Health who was still reinforcing the idea of the garden suburb

• Unwin was appointed chief advisor to the Greater London Regional planning committee

Satellite towns

• To be developed within a 12 mile radius of London

• Helped with decentralization

• Socially and economically self contained towns

• Influenced by Howard’s theories

Ideas maintained today.

• Low density housing– Cheaper due to lower road costs

and sewer system costs

• Block planning instead of street planning

• Combining urban and rural housing

Summary

• Ebenezer Howard proposes a new garden city to improve living conditions for the working class.

• Unwin and Parker are appointed architects.

• Letchworth and Welwyn were built – didn’t match the original proposal but were

inspired by it

• The Barnetts created the Garden Suburb.• This lead to the development of Satellite

towns.

References• Beevers, Robert, (1988) The garden city

utopia : a critical biography of Ebenezer Howard London : Macmillan

• Ward, S.V (1992) 1st ed. The Garden City, Past, Present and future. London: Chapman and Hall.

• Ward, C. (1993) New Town, Home Town, the lessons of experience, London: Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation

• Suburbs Or Satellite Towns The British Medical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3417 (Jul. 3, 1926), pp. 27-28

• www.lgc.amolad.net/heritage/index-3.htm• www.geog.ed.ac.uk/homes/tslater/Anit-

Urbanism.pdf