Letchworth & Welwyn Garden City

Submitted by- Jay Prakash

III sem, M.Arch
What is Garden City?
• “A Garden City is a town designed for industry and
healthy living; of a size that makes possible a full
measure of social life, but not larger; surrounded by
a permanent belt of rural land; the whole of the
land being in public ownership or held in trust for
the community.”
-C.B. Purdom, 1919
Introduction
• Letchworth is the world’s first Garden City, created
as a solution to the slum and poverty of urban life
in Britain in the late 19th Century. Based on the
ideas of Ebenezer Howard as published in his
book of
1898 “Tomorrow: A Peaceful Path to Reform”.
Letchworth Garden City inspired town planning
across
the globe.
• Howard’s company- First Garden City Ltd began
construction in 1903.
• The company appointed architects Barry Parker
and Raymond Unwin to design the masterplan for
the new community.
• This Garden City is located in North Hertfordshire,
35 miles north
of London which is spread over an area of approx.
5000 acres.
• Designed for a population of 35,000 people.
• Having reserved green belt of 1,300 acres.
Concept of Garden City
• The book ‘Garden cities of to-morrow’ by Howard offered a vision of towns free of slums
and enjoying the benefits of both town (such as opportunity, amusement and good wages)
and country (such as beauty, fresh air and low rents).
• He illustrated the idea with his famous Three Magnets diagram which addressed the
question 'Where will the people go?', the choices being 'Town', 'Country' or 'Town-
Country'.
• It proposed the creation of new suburban towns of limited size, planned in advance, and
surrounded by a permanent belt of agricultural land.
• Howard believed that such Garden Cities were the
perfect blend of city and nature.
• The towns would be largely independent, managed
by the citizens who had an economic interest in
them, and financed by ground rents on the Georgist
model.
• The land on which they were to be built was to be
owned by a group of trustees and leased to the
citizens.
Garden City principles
• The dwellings for all classes of people should be distributed about a large central court in
which public buildings would be located.
• The Shopping Centre to be located on the edge of the town.
• The employment facilities for all the people to be provided by starting a variety of industries.
• The industries to be located on the outskirts of the town.
• The city should have max. population of 30 to 35 thousand people in an are of 1000 acres.
• The city should have the advantage of both rural life such as fresh air, gardens, playfields,
cottages etc. and amenities of urban life such as schools, theaters, hospitals, recreational
centers etc.
• To eliminate the private ownership, whole of
the land is to brought under co-operative
basis or held in trust for the community in
order to have the control on finance and the
profit gained thereby be utilized for uplifting
the community.
• The city should be surrounded by a
permanent belt of agricultural land of 3 to
5 thousand acres.
Reasons to plan Letchworth
• London (and other cities) in the 19th century were in the throws of industrialization,
and the cities were exerting massive forces on the labour markets of the time.
• Massive immigration from the countryside to the cities was taking place with London.
• This situation was unsustainable and political commentators of all parties sought “how
best to provide the proper antidote against the greatest danger of modern existence”
(St. Jame’s Gazette, 1892)
• To Howard the cure was simple - to reintegrate people with the countryside.
• In trying to understand and represent the attraction of the city
he compared each city to a magnet, with individuals
represented as needles drawn to the city.
• He set about comparing the ‘town and country magnets’ but
decided that neither were suitable attractors for his utopian
vision.
• Instead he believed that “Human society and the beauty of
nature are meant to be enjoyed together” – hence giving his
solution “the two magnets must be made one.”
• "Town and country must be united, and out of this joyous
union, will spring a new hope, a new life, a new
civilization."
 The three magnets
TOWN COUNTRY
POSITIVE ASPECTS NEGATIVE POSITIVE ASPECTS NEGATIVE ASPECTS
ASPECTS
• Social opportunity. • Closing out of nature. • Beauty of nature. • Lack of society

• Isolation of crowds. • High rents & prices. • Land lying idle. • Hands out of work.
• Wood, meadow, forest. • Trespassers beware.
• Places of amusement. • Foul air and Murky sky.

• Fresh air. • Low wages.

• Chances of • Slums & gin palaces.
• Low rents. • Lack of drainage.
employment.
• Costly drainage. • Abundance of water. • Lack of amusement.
• High money wages.
• Bright sunshine. • No public spirit.
• Well-lit streets. • Need for reform.
• Palatial edifices. • Crowded dwellings.
• Deserted villages.
 TOWN-COUNTRY
COMBINATION OF BOTH ASPECTS

Beauty of nature- peace all-over the places.

Social opportunity- cumulative growth.

Fields and parks of easy access- equal chances.

Low rents- high wages.

Low rates- plenty to do.

Low prices- no sweating.

Field for enterprise- flow of capital.

Pure air and water- good drainage.

Bright homes & gardens- no smoke, no slums.

Freedom- Co-operation.
ConceptualLayout THE ORIGINAL GARDEN CITY CONCEPT BY
• Circular city growing in a radial manner or pattern. EBENEZER HOWARD, 1902.
• Divided into six equal wards, by six main
Boulevards that radiated from the central
park/garden.
• Civic institutions (Town Hall, Library, Hospital,
Theatre, Museum etc. ) are placed around the
central garden.
• The central park enclosed by a crystal palace
acts as an arcade for indoor shops and winter
gardens.
• Distance between each ring vary between 3- 5km .
• A 420 feet wide , 3 mile long, Grand avenue which
run in the center of concentric rings , houses the
schools and churches and acts as a continuous
public park.
• The streets for houses are formed by a series of
concentric ringed tree lined avenues.
• All the industries, factories and warehouses were
placed at the peripheral ring of the city.
• The municipal railway was placed in another ring
closer to the industrial ring , so that the pressure of
excess transport on the city streets are reduced and
the city is connected to the rest of the nation.
Welwyn Garden City
WELWYN
• Welwyn Garden City is a town
within the Borough of Welwyn
Hatfield in Hertfordshire, England.
• It is located approximately 19 miles
from Kings Cross and 24 miles from
London.
• On 29 April 1920 a company, Welwyn
Garden City Limited, was formed to plan
and build the garden city, chaired by Sir
Theodore Chambers. Louis de Soissons
was appointed as architect and town
planner and Frederic Osborn as
secretary.

.An Analysis
•
Land of 2378 acres
• Designed for a maximum of
40000 population
• In 15 years – developed with Welwyn Garden City- Arrangement from
10000 population & 50 shops, top.
industries.
• Streets are designed so
as to give the concept
of a Neighborhood unit.

• Separation of the
pedestrian walkways from
the main roads gives a
sense of natural beauty.

• Open and green spaces

are Given on a large
scale.

• Personalization of Homes
in Welwyn with varying
roofline, texture and
composition for each
house.
RADBURN, NEW JERSEY

• Radburn was planned by architects Clarence Stein and Henry Wright in

1928.
• It is America’s first garden community, serving as a world wide example
of the harmonious blending of private space and open area.
• Radburn provided a prototype for the new towns to meet the
requirements for contemporary good living.
• Radburn was designed to occupy one square mile of land and house
some 25,000 residents.
• However, the Great Depression limited the development to only 149
acres.
• Radburn created a unique alternative to the conventional suburban
development through the use of cul-de-sacs, interior parklands, and
cluster housing.
• Although Radburn is smaller than planned, it still plays a very important
role
in the history of urban planning.
• The Regional Planning Association of America (RPAA) used
Radburn as a garden city experiment.
RADBURN CONSISTS OF-
• Residential areas
• 149 acres of interior parks,
• Walkways.
• 2 swimming pools,
• 4 tennis courts,
• 2 playgrounds,
• Archery plaza and a school,
• 2 outdoor basketball courts
• A community center, which houses administrative
offices, library, gymnasium, clubroom and service
and maintenance areas.
ELEMENTS OF THE RADBURN CITY

• Park as backbone of the neighborhood.

• Specialized Highway system, Complete separation of vehicular and pedestrian
traffic with 21% of road areas.
• The Radburn planners achieved the separation of vehicular and pedestrian traffic
through the use of the superblocks, cul-de-sacs, and pedestrian-only pathways.
• Through the use of the superblock, houses in Radburn were uniquely designed to
have two fronts.
• The ‘back side’ of the house, what we would normally consider the front side,
faced the culs-de-sac and parking.
• The kitchen was normally placed in the back to provide visitors a place to enter the
house.
• The ‘front side’ of the house faced towards the green spaces or parks
encouraging pedestrian traffic.
• Since automobiles were given limited access to the ‘backs’ of the houses, the
‘fronts’ of the house were relatively quiet, therefore, the bedrooms were always
placed on this side of the house.
• The 2900 residents of Radburn share 23 acres of interior parks, which yield 345
square feet / person.
Housing blocks

Parks and greenbelt

Plaza building the shoping center

Conclusion

• Ebenezer Howard’s Garden City concept shows us a place where

genuine
urban activities are carried at human scale.
• The garden city introduced the use of greenbelts that have served many
uses including the preservation of agricultural and rural life, nature and
heritage conservation, recreation, pollution minimization, and growth
management.
• Garden city tradition endowed urban planning with a social and
community
dimensions.
• The garden city idea however, showed how both industrial estates
and collective retailing spaces could be used within a
comprehensive planning approach to serve public purposes.