Territorial transformation of Europe

and US
Birth of new cities
ANSHUMAN DUBEY
HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE
 Effect of Industrial Revolution in
Europe
Year Percentage of
Demographics population lived in
cities
1801 17%
institutions politics 1851 35%
Industrial Revolution
Brought dramatic
1891 54%
changes in every
aspects of European One of the most profound effects of the
societies
Industrial Revolution, which developed rapidly
in England during 1750-1850 was to stimulate
Social the growth of cities.
structures Economics

The number of cities with populations of more

than 20,000 in England and Wales rose from 12
in 1800 to nearly 200 at the close of the
century.
Effect of Industrial Revolution
 The growth of cities led to horrible living conditions. The wealthy fared far
better than the industrial workers because they could afford to live in the
suburbs on the outskirts of the city.

 Urbanization, industrialization, and contamination, all formed part of this

significant period of time in European history.

 Around 1900, theorists began developing urban planning models to mitigate the
consequences of the industrial age, by providing citizens, especially factory
workers, with healthier environments.
Friedrich Engels observed the misery of mid-19th c. Manchester & wrote:
“ The Condition of the Working Class in England” (1844)

 worker oppression
 pollution
 overcrowding
 disease
 alienation
 display of status symbols in the landscape
Urbanization in America
 Cities have changed more since the Industrial Revolution than in all the
previous centuries of their existence.
 New York had a population of about 313,000 in 1840 but had reached
4,767,000 in 1910. Chicago exploded from 4000 to 2,185,000 during the same
period.
 Millions of rural dwellers no longer needed farms, flocked to the cities, where
new factories churned out products for the new markets made accessible by
railroads and steamships.
 In the United States, millions of immigrants from Europe swelled the urban
populations.
 The growth of cities outpaced the ability of local governments to extend clean
water, garbage collection, and sewage systems into poorer areas, so conditions
in cities deteriorated.
New York c. 1900: global immigrants
left: ‘Chinatown’
top left: Little Italy
top right: Hester Street (Jewish)
 The Immigrants
 U.S. population from 1790-1820
doubles through natural increase

 1815, immigration from Germany,

Ireland, Britain and Scandinavia
increases

 Immigrants come seeking land,

good pay, economic opportunity,
political and religious freedom
Urbanization in America
 Railroad tracks were driven into the heart of the city. Internal rail
transportation systems greatly expanded the radius of urban settlement:
 horsecars beginning in the 1830s, cable cars in the 1870s, and electric trolleys
in the 1880s.

New York 1859

Urbanization in America
 The industrial city still focused on the city center, which contained both the
central business district, defined by large office buildings, and substantial
numbers of factory and warehouse structures.

 Both trolleys and railroad systems converged on the center of the city, which
boasted the premier entertainment and shopping establishments.

 The working class lived in crowded districts close to the city center, near their
place of employment
Transportation in the United States
Urbanization in America
 The increasing crowding, pollution, and disease in the central city produced a
growing desire to escape to a healthier environment in the suburbs.

 The upper classes had always been able to retreat to homes in the countryside.
Beginning in the 1830s, commuter railroads enabled the upper middle class to
commute in to the city center.

 Finally, during the 1890s electric trolleys and elevated rapid transit lines
proliferated, providing cheap urban transportation for the majority of the
population.
The extraordinary growth of
Chicago in the 19th century was
a global marvel

1833 vs. 1870

 Urbanization in America
 The central business district of the city
underwent a radical transformation with the
development of the skyscraper between 1870
and 1900.

American architectures of modernity: steel-framed ‘skyscrapers’

The Home Insurance Building (Chicago, 1885); the Flatiron Building New York (1902)
 Skyscrapers reflect the dynamics of the real estate market; the tall building extracts the maximum
economic value from a limited parcel of land. These office buildings housed the growing numbers
of white-collar employees in banking, finance, management, and business services, all
manifestations of the shift from an economy of small firms to one of large corporations.

Nation’s Three Largest Cities by 1850

 New York, pop. 1,000,000 due to being a seaport and commercial center

 Philadelphia, pop. 565,529 due to industry

 Baltimore, pop. 250,000 due to trade with central U.S. and foreign markets.

 New cities emerge as a result of transportation routes.

Slums by railroad tracks.
Pictures of Slums, circa 1890’s
Wealthy live in mansions with access to
private parks

Reform Movement: Reasons
Problems arising from urban growth: Pressure for Reform
 Sanitation and public health
 The disappearance of urban open space
 Housing quality and overcrowding
 The ugliness and grimness of the nineteenth-century industrial
city (aesthetics)
 Traffic congestion
 The problem of providing urban populations with adequate
mobility and Infrastructure
Urban Public Health as a Focus of
Concern
Physician Benjamin Ward Richardson wrote Hygeia, City of Health (1876)
envisioning:

 air pollution control

 water purification
 sewage handling
 public laundries
 public health inspectors
 elimination of alcohol & tobacco
 replacement of the gutter with the park as the site of children’s play

such concerns motivated the Parks Movement

Frederick Law Olmstead: Parks
Movement
1822-1903
with Calvert Vaux (1847) won the
competition & went on to design:

• Prospect Park (1865-1873),

• Chicago's Riverside
subdivision
• Buffalo's park system (1868-
1876),
• the park at Niagara Falls
(1887)
Olmsted’s parks were not
natural but they were
“naturalistic” or “organic” in
form
This form was seen as uplifting
urban dwellers and addressing
the social and psychological
impacts of crowding

determinism
Riverside, Illinois
• designed by
Olmsted, 1869
• a prototype
suburb
• 9 mi. from
Chicago
• fashionable
location for the
wealthy to live
• often copied
Ebenezer Howard
Sir Ebenezer Howard is known for his
Publication Garden Cities of To-morrow (1898), the
description of a utopian city in which people live
harmoniously together with nature.

•no training in urban planning

or design
•1850-1928
•opposed urban crowding/density
•hoped to create a “magnet”,people
would want to come to

The publication resulted in the founding of the

garden city movement that realized several Garden
Cities in Great Britain at the beginning of the 20th
century.
 Garden Cities

• would combine the

best elements of city
and country
• would avoid the
worst elements of
city and country
• formed the basis of
the earliest suburbs,
 FEATURES OF GARDEN CITY OF HOWARD

 accommodate 32,000 people

 6,000 acres (2,400 ha),

 planned on a concentric pattern with open spaces, public parks and six radial
boulevards, 120 ft (37 m) wide, extending from the centre.
 The garden city would be self-sufficient and when it reached full
population, another garden city would be developed nearby.
7

 Howard envisaged a cluster of several garden cities as satellites of a central

city of 50,000 people, linked by roads and rails.
 depicts 3 magnets

1.advantages and
disadvantages of town life

2.advantages and disadvantages of

country life

3.town-country life, incorporating

advantages of town and country
life
 CONCEPTUAL LAYOUT OF A GARDEN CITY

•a compact town of 6000 acres, 5000 of

which is reserved for agriculture.
• It accommodates a maximum population
of 32,000. There are parks and private lawn
everywhere.
• Roads are wide, ranging from 120 to 420
feet for the Grand Avenue, and are radial
rather than linear.
•Within the town, functional zoning is 21

basic.
• Additional elements
include unified land
ownership .
•Central park contains
public buildings.
• It is surrounded
by shopping streets
which are further
surrounded by dwelling
units in all directions.
•The outer circle
contains factories and
industries.
•Rail road’s bypasses the
town, meeting the town
at tangent.
Thus the main components of Howard’s Garden city movement were :

1. Planned Dispersal

2. Limit of Town Size

3. Amenities

4. Town and Country Relationships

5. Planning control

6. Neighbourhoods 23
GARDEN CITY CONCEPT IN PRACTICE

1. The first Garden City evolved out of Howard’s principles is

Letchworth Garden City designed by Raymond Unwin and
Barry Parker in 1903.

2. The second one to evolve was Welwyn Garden City designed

by Louis de Soissons and Frederic Osborn in 1920.

3. Another example was Radburn City designed by Clarence

Stein and Henry Wright in 1928. 24
 LETCHWORTH, ENGLAND, UK

The first garden city developed in 1903 by

Barry Parker & Raymond Unwin after having
won the competition to build first garden city.

town planning and architecture

It is 34 miles away from London. It has an area
of 5000 acres with 3000 acres of green belt.

It had an agricultural strip at periphery to

check the invasion of urban area i.e. the
sprawling.

25
Its plan was based on population of 30000 with living area of 1250 acres and
2500 acres of rural green belt.

Communities ranged from 12000 – 18000 people, small enough which required
no vehicular transportation.

Industries were connected to central city by rapid transportation.

26
 WELWYN
Welwyn – It was the second Garden City founded by Sir Ebenzer Howard and designed by Louis De
Soissions in 1920 and was located 20 miles from Kings Cross. It was designed for 4000 population in
2400 acres. It was a town visually pleasing and was efficient technically and was human in scale.

•It started with area of 2400 acres and 4000 population

•Had a parkway, almost a mile long central mall

•Town laid out along tree-lined boulevards with Neo Georgian town center

•Every road had a wide grass verge

Garden City Legacy in the U.S.
 • Garden City idea spread rapidly to Europe and the United States
 • Under the auspices of the Regional Planning Association of America, the
garden-city idea inspired a “New Town,” Radburn, N.J. (1928–32) outside
NewYork City

• The congestion and destruction accompanying World War II greatly stimulated
the garden-city movement, especially in Great Britain.

• Britain’s New Towns Act (1946) led to the development of over a dozen new
 communities based on Howard's idea.

 • The open layout of garden cities also had a great influence on the development
of modern city planning.
 Failure of Garden Cities
 Letchworth slowly attracted more residents because it was able to attract 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 workers to live in.
 Although many viewed Letchworth as a success, it did not immediately inspire government
investment into the next line of garden cities.
 In frustration, Howard bought land at Welwyn to house the second garden city in 1919.
 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 until the end of the 1930s, Letchworth and Welwyn remained as the only existing
garden cities.

The movement succeeded in emphasizing the need for urban planning policies that
eventually led to the New Town movement.
-Concentric zone model (Burgess model)
 Sector model (Homer Hyot model)
Next
 Origins of the planning profession in the US
 New Town Movement
 The birth of land use zoning
 Giants of Planning: Edward Basset, Patrick Geddes, Lewis
Mumford
 Le-corbusior and Frank Lloyd Wright
Demand for new Architecture
 http://www.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=3753887
 https://www.britannica.com/art/Western-architecture/Late-
19th-century-developments