The Garden City Movement

What 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 Howards 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
Howards original proposals

Ward, S.V (1992) 1
st
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 werent 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
Unwins 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 Howards 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
didnt 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) 1
st
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