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) 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 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) 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. 2728
www.lgc.amolad.net/heritage/index-3.htm
www.geog.ed.ac.uk/homes/tslater/AnitUrbanism.pdf