THE

GARDEN CITY
 STUDIES IN HISTORY, PLANNING AND
THE ENVIRONMENT
Series editors Professor Gordon E. Cherry
University of Birmingham
Professor Anthony Sutcliffe
University of Leicester

1 The Rise of Modern Urban Planning, 1800-1914

Edited by Anthony Sutcliffe
2 Shaping an Urban World
Planning in the twentieth century
Edited by Gordon E. Cherry
3 Planning for Conservation
An international perspective
Edited by Roger Kain
4 Metropolis 1890-1940
Edited by Anthony Sutcliffe
5 Arcadia for All
The legacy of a makeshift landscape
Dennis Hardy and Colin Ward
6 Planning and Urban Growth in Southern Europe
Edited by Martin Wynn
7 Thomas Adams and the Modern Planning Movement
Britain, Canada and the United States, 1900-1940
Michael Simpson
8 Holford
A study in architecture, planning and civic design
Gordon E. Cherry and Leith Penny
9 Goodnight Campers!
The history of the British holiday camp
Colin Ward and Dennis Hardy
10 Model Housing
From the Great Exhibition to the Festival of Britain
S. Martin Gaskell
11 Two Centuries of American Planning
Edited by Daniel Schaffer
12 Planning and Urban Growth in Nordic Countries
Edited by Thomas Hall
13 From Garden Cities to New Towns
Campaigning for town and country planning, 1899-1946
Dennis Hardy
14 From New Towns to Green Politics
Campaigning for town and country planning, 1946-1990
Dennis Hardy

15 The Garden City

Past, present and future
Edited by Stephen Ward

Forthcoming Titles
The Domestic Environment
Alison Ravetz and Richard Turkington
Rural Change and Planning
Gordon E. Cherry and Alan Rogers
Planning Europe's Capital Cities
Thomas Hal!
 THE
GARDEN CITY
Past, present and future

EDITED BY STEPHEN ~ WARD

~~o?&~ra~~s~~:Up
LONDON AND NEW YORK
Spon Press,
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First edition 1992
Transferred to Digital Printing 2005
© 1992 Stephen V. Ward
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This book was commissioned and edited by
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 CONTENTS

Contributors xi
Acknowledgements xiii

1. THE GARDEN CITY INTRODUCED 1

Stephen V. Ward
Origins 2
Garden suburb revisionism 4
Towards the satellite town 9
Satellite towns 12
The first new towns 14
New towns outside Britain 16
Later British new towns 18
After the new towns 20
The other contributions 21
Garden cities: past, present and future 24

2. ENGLISH ORIGINS 28
Frederick H. A. Aalen
Howard's garden city 28
Howard and social reformism 32
Attitudes to the countryside and urban improvement c. 1880-1920 36
Howard's social message 39
Co-operativism 42
Land reform 44
Conclusions 48

3. THE FRENCH GARDEN CITY 52

Jean Pierre Gaudin
The garden city and industrial paternalism 53
Social democratic reformers and the garden city 55
Garden settlements and satellite suburbs 57
viii CONTENTS

Political dimensions: social control 60

Communitarian perspectives and urban reformers 63
Conclusions 67

4. THE JAPANESE GARDEN CITY 69

Shun-ichi Watanabe
Garden city on rocky soil: home ministry, 1905-08 70
Garden city studied: three scholars, 1906-09 72
Garden city as garden suburbs: architects, 1904-14 73
Garden city on sale: suburban developers, 1911-27 74
Garden city in planning legislation: planning pioneers, 1913-21 79
Later developments 81
Conclusion: the land question 83

5. THE NAZI GARDEN CITY 88

Gerhard Fehl
Problems of suburbanization 88
Howard and alternatives to suburbanization 89
The failures of planning in the pre-Nazi era 91
The Nazis and settlement patterns 93
Creating the ideal Nazi territorial order 96
Implementing the new territorial order 99
Folk order and territorial order 102
Epilogue and conclusions 103

6. THE AUSTRALIAN GARDEN CITY 107

Robert Freestone
Setting the scene: the nineteenth century 107
A garden city movement? 110
Ideals and principles 114
The garden city in practice, 1910-1930 116
Recession and epitaph: the garden city in the 1930s 119
Rediscovery: images of the post-war period 122
Coda 124

7. THE AMERICAN GARDEN CITY: LOST IDEALS 127

Daniel Schaffer
The garden city's decade in the sun 128
Changed landscapes 132
Changed political realities 134
An uncivilized city 137
Lessons from the garden city 140
Accessible language 142
Conclusion 142
 CONTENTS ix

8. THE AMERICAN GARDEN CITY: STILL RELEVANT? 146

Robert Fishman
The concentrated garden city 147
Changing patterns of decentralization 149
Post-war decentralization in America 151
The US new town initiative 156
The garden city: still relevant? 161
Beyond the new town 163

9. THE BRITISH GARDEN CITY: METAMORPHOSIS 165

Michael Hebbert
Building speculation 'on garden city lines' 165
Howard's garden cities and Shaw's prophecy 166
Private developers and postwar new towns policy 169
Private developers and new town building 173
From new towns to 'new settlements' 176
Planning policies and new settlements 180
Conclusions 181
Notes 183

10. THE GARDEN CITY CAMPAIGN: AN OVERVIEW 187

Dennis Hardy
Getting on the agenda 188
Garden cities around the world 193
Pressing the case 198
Ways and means 202
Postscript: garden cities of tomorrow? 204

Index 210
 CONTRIBUTORS

FREDERICK H. A. AALEN is Lecturer in the Department of Geography, Trinity College,

University of Dublin, Ireland. He has published extensively on the early planning
and housing history of Britain and Ireland.

GERHARD FEHL is Professor of Planning at the Rhine-Wesphalia Technische

Hochschule at Aachen, Germany. He has published many works on German plan-
ning history. The most important of his recent publications is a co-authored work
(with Franziska Bollerey and Kristiana Hartmann) on the German garden city
entitled Wohnen im Griinen - Planen im Bauen.

ROBERT FISHMAN is Professor of History at Rutgers University, New Jersey, USA.

His best known book, Urban Utopias of the Twentieth Century, compares Ebenezer
Howard with Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright. His current work focuses on
the history of suburbia and is the subject of his latest book Bourgeois Utopias.

ROBERT FREESTONE is Senior Lecturer in the School of Town Planning, University

of New South Wales, Australia. He has written widely on planning and urban
geography topics. His book Model Communities: The Garden City Movement in
Australia has become a standard work.

JEAN PIERRE GAUDIN works at the Laborataire Theorie des Mutations Urbaines en
Payes Developpes, Institut Franc;ais d'Urbanisme, Universite de Paris VIII. He has
written widely on the development of planning and urban policy in France. His
books include L'Avenir en Plan and Technopolis.

DENNIS HARDY is Dean of Humanities at Middlesex University, UK. He is author

or co-author of several well-known books on planning history, most recently the
two volume history of the Town and Country Planning Association, From Garden
Cities to New Towns and From New Towns to Green Politics.

MICHAEL HEBBERTis Lecturer in Planning Studies in the Department of Geography,

London School of Economics, UK. He has written widely on planning issues in
xii CONTRIBUTORS

Britain, Spain and Japan. Most notable of his recent publications is a co-edited
work British Regionalism 1900-2000.

DANIEL SCHAFFER is Assistant Director of the Center for Energy, Environment and
Resources at the University of Tennessee, USA. He is author of Garden Cities for
America: The Radburn Experience and has edited Two Centuries of American
Planning. He currently edits the journal Forum for Applied Research and Public
Policy.

STEPHEN V. WARD is Principal Lecturer in the School of Planning at Oxford Poly-

technic, UK. He has written The Geography of Interwar Britain: The State and
Uneven Development and many articles on aspects of planning and public policy
history. He is the current editor of Planning History.

SHUN-ICHI J. WATANABE is Professor of Urban Planning at the Science University of

Tokyo, Noda City, Japan. He is the author of a book (in Japanese) on American
city planning and its 'community ideal' which won the City Planning Institute of
Japan award in 1978 and on comparative planning in Japan, the USA and UK.
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

In his fine biography of Ebenezer Howard, Robert Beevers records that the crucial
meeting that led Howard to proceed with his second garden city venture at Welwyn
took place in a railway station. By a curious coincidence this book, which focuses
on the whole garden city tradition, has similar origins, though the stations and the
whole tone of the meetings were rather different. Thus Gordon Cherry and I met
to discuss our first ideas for an international conference and subsequent book on
this topic one hot summer's day in the buffet of Banbury railway station. In one
sense we were there under entirely false pretences since we had both driven from
our respective homes to a convenient mid-point. By contrast Howard had just
stepped off a Hertfordshire train when he met his potential backers at King's Cross
station, London in spring 1919. Moreover he was, recorded a foreign observer,
'more agitated than I had ever seen an Englishman'. Despite the excitement Gordon
and I felt at the prospect of a major international conference, I doubt whether our
quiet discussion could have produced any comparable observation.
Yet our endeavour was, in its own way, as fruitful as Howard's. The Bournville
Conference, as it became known, duly took place. This book is essentially derived
from the keynote addresses and three of the session papers presented there. How-
ever considerable rewriting and the addition of a great deal of illustrative material
has been necessary to mould it into what I hope the reader will find a coherent and
attractive volume. Many debts are incurred in such an undertaking. The editor
would particularly like to thank the contributors for meeting editorial requests
with good humour, and the editors of the series, Gordon Cherry, Tony Sutcliffe
and Ann Rudkin for their immense help and encouragement.
In addition I should like to thank several other individuals who directly con-
tributed in various ways to the completion of this book: Philip Henslowe and his
staff in the Public Relations Department of the Bournville Village Trust, Kumiko
Helliwell, Bob Lancaster, Michael Hughes, Angela Eserin and Rob Woodward. I
am grateful too for the financial assistance provided to the original Conference by
the Bournville Village Trust and related bodies and the City of Birmingham.
Throughout the collective encouragement of the School of Planning at Oxford
Polytechnic has been crucial, particularly the grant of leave of absence during 1991
which enabled me to complete the editing. Finally I thank my wife and children for
xiv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

their great patience and support throughout this undertaking; there have, I hope,
been some compensations.
Michael Hebbert adds his thanks to Andrew Bennett, Andrew Egerton-Smith,
Jacques Gordon, David Hall, Carol Heim, James Richardson, Marc Weiss and Mr
Zarney. Gerhard Fehl similarly wishes to acknowledge the contributions of Bruno
Wasser, Wolfgang Istel, Gert Groning, Franziska Bollerey and Kristiana Hartmann.

Finally, I and my fellow contributors acknowledge with thanks permission to re-

produce the following illustrations:
First Garden City Heritage Museum Letchworth: figures 1.1, 1.4, 1.6,2.7, 2.9, 3.3,
7.12, 10.1, 10.15;
Hertfordshire County Archives: figures 1.3, 2.5, 2.11, 10.8, 10.9, 10.10;
Osborn Collection, Welwyn Garden City Library: figures 1.9, 2.8, 3.1, 3.2, 3.4, 3.8,
3.9, 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, 7.4, 8.2, 8.3, 8.4, 8.5, 8.6, 8.7, 8.8, 8.9, 8.10, 8.12, 8.13, 10.5, 10.6,
10.11, 10.12, 10.13, 10.16, 10.17;
The Town and Country Planning Association: figures 1.5, 10.14;
Cadbury-Schweppes Ltd: figures 2.6 and 10.2;
Consortium Developments Ltd: figures 9.6 and 9.7;
Bradford Property Trust pIc: figure 9.8;
Olin Library, Cornell University: figure 7.9;
American Institute of Architects Archive: figure 7.7;
The Appalachian Trail Conference: figure 7.8;
CBS TV: figure 7.11.
All other illustrations are from the personal collections of myself and the
contributors.

Stephen V. Ward

THE GARDEN CITY INTRODUCED
Stephen V. Ward
During the late 1980s and early 1990s a re-
markable phenomenon has begun to emerge in
planning circles in several parts of the West:
the rediscovery and re-examination of the
garden city idea. Despite the prevailing thrusts
of Western politics in the 1980s away from
collectivist solutions and government planning
towards the market-led regeneration of existing
urban concentrations, the garden city has crept
back onto the planning agenda. In Britain there
has been an extraordinary surge of interest from
private housebuilders, together with a spate
of conferences, professional and propagandist
reports and official pronouncements. And, as
if to emphasize the seriousness of all these
moves, they have even been brilliantly evoked
and satirized by the distinguished and popu-
lar novelist, John Mortimer (1990). However
the scale of this British revival in the garden
city/new community movement is unique. In
no other country has it achieved the momen-
tum it has in Britain, though we can point to
some similar signs in other parts of Europe and
elsewhere.
Some of this can no doubt be dismissed as a
mere commercial appropriation of the garden
city movement's traditional credibility and
legitimacy to make money out of property de-
velopment. (Certainly John Mortimer's mythi-
cal Fallowfield new country town is largely
represented in this way.) Nostalgia for quaint
diagrams and phraseology also plays its part.
1
But beneath the explicit signs we can detect
something rather more fundamental that goes
beyond these superficialities. Reviewing the
emergent social and environmental agendas of
Western societies in the late twentieth century,
it is striking how many of the separate elements
of the garden city idea they embody. The pro-
gressive rejection of the big city; the desire for
small town living and working; the search for
real involvement in common affairs; and, not
least, the adherence to a new 'green' lifestyle
represent widely shared social values. Although
few people would explicitly articulate such
values in terms of the garden city, it is this or
something very close to it that their complete
realization implies.
If this line of reasoning proves to be even
partly correct then the garden city idea, whether
under its own or another name, is set to become
a much stronger element in the planning
debates of the 1990s than it has been for some
decades. The danger is that such debates will
be conducted with only limited awareness or
understanding of what the term garden city and
the diverse tradition which has derived from it
represent. Much propagandist vitriol has been
expended in past debates about the garden city
idea, largely contesting the legitimacy of this
or that interpretation. This book does not start
from such partisan premises and is intended to
inform and enlarge present debates by examin-
ing the development and diversification of the
2 THE GARDEN CITY INTRODUCED
garden city tradition on an international basis.
It is, to a large extent, a work of planning his-
tory though written with a strong sense of the
present and likely future.
Its themes reflect the tremendous historical
potency of the garden city as an idea about
urban and social reform. This introductory
chapter, as well as introducing the individual
contributions, explores the conceptual history
of the garden city. It shows how, despite the
apparent clarity and coherence of the original
vision, the garden city idea and the movement
which developed to advance it showed con-
siderable flexibility in practice. By 1910 it had
already proved to be an extraordinarily rich
source of concepts that were adopted and
technicalized by the newly emerging interna-
tional practice of town and regional planning.
The fact that the original garden city idea was
capable of being taken apart and applied se-
lectively was of huge significance in allowing
the idea to persist and spread. It permitted parts
at least of the idea to take root in widely
different economic, institutional, cultural and
aesthetic contexts. However this tendency to
diversity, although an important symptom of
the potency of the garden city idea, does not
alone explain it. It was the parallel persistence
of purer (though not necessarily pure) versions
of the idea that prevented a complete frag-
mentation of the movement and produced the
creative tensions that gave the tradition its
characteristic intellectual vigour. It is with the
original vision that our introductory survey of
the conceptual evolution of the garden city idea
begins.
ORIGINS
The origins of the garden city idea will be ex-
plored more fully in the next chapter, so we need
give only the bare outline here: the idea was
developed by Ebenezer Howard, an obscure
English stenographer and shorthand writer.
After much unpublished rehearsal during the
18905, Howard's proposals finally appeared in
print in 1898, in his book To-morrow: A Peace-
ful Path to Real Reform. What they offered was
a comprehensive vision of social and political
reform involving the gradual transformation of
the existing concentrated cities into a decen-
tralized but closely interrelated network of
garden cities, collectively called the social city.
Each individual garden city would have a
population of 30,000, with a further 2000 in the
surrounding agricultural estates. Development
would occur on the basis of co-operative action
and especially the collective ownership of land.
This would allow the increase in land values
that accrued from the development of the
garden city to be realized by the community as
a whole and used for the common good. How-
ever beyond this insistence on collectivism with
respect to land, Howard avoided any wider
rejection of industrial capitalism.
In general terms, none of the individual ele-
ments that made up Howard's ideas was par-
ticularly new. Howard fully acknowledged this,
referring to early work advocating industrial
and population migration, land reform and
model communities. He saw his distinctive con-
tribution as achieving 'a unique combination of
proposals' (Howard, 1898, p. 102). To-morrow
was largely concerned with the practicalities of
developing and administering the garden city.
Surprisingly, in view of what his idea soon came
to represent, it dealt with the physical environ-
ment of the town fairly briefly and used highly
simplified diagrams. However, more damagingly
for his larger purposes, it also said tantalizingly
little about the broad reformist goals which
garden city development was intended to fulfil.
Even before his ideas were published Howard,
presumably unconsciously, had made an im-
portant decision which assisted the subsequent
downgrading of his primary purposes and pro-
motion of the secondary elements. This was the
adoption of the label 'Garden City' instead of
his earlier choices 'Unionville' and 'Rurisville'
(Beevers, 1988, pp. 40-54).
 ORIGINS
The new term was not his own coinage and
there is some dispute about its origins. It was
certainly in use in the United States where
Howard spent five years of his early man-
hood. Pre-skyscraper Chicago was universally
known as 'The Garden City' at that time and
this has led many commentators, including most
recently Peter Hall, to claim that Howard al-
most certainly picked up the term from this
source (Osborn, 1965, p. 26; Hall, 1988, p. 89).
However Howard himself always denied this
3
Figure 1.1. Ebenezer Howard (1850-
1928), inventor of the garden city and
arguably the most important figure in
the international history of urban
planning.
(Beevers, 1988, p. 7). A more likely source was
the socialist and artist William Morris who was
using the term in the 1870s, laden with many of
the same utopian meanings that Howard now
proposed (Henderson, 1967, p. 144; Nasias,
1977). Some support for this comes from
Howard's view of Morris as one who (in com-
mon with Moses, Thomas More, John Ruskin
and the Russian anarchist, Peter Kropotkin)
failed only 'as by a hair's breadth' to give
expression to the garden city idea (cited in
4 THE GARDEN CITY INTRODUCED
Beevers, 1988, p. 17). But wherever the term
came from, there is no doubt that its direct-
ness, simplicity and potent imagery helped to
attract adherents when To-morrow was pub-
lished. However the beguiling vagueness of the
garden city label and its seeming emphasis on
environmental concerns certainly made it the
enemy of his wider purposes. Thus the possib-
ility of divorcing means from ends was already
apparent, and perhaps inevitable, even in the
first edition of the book.
GARDEN SUBURB REVISIONISM
The creation of the Garden City Association
in 1899 and the re-issue of Howard's book in a
Figure 1.2. Howard's alternative
to the concentrated big city, the
social city was a network of
garden cities around a slightly
larger central city. This diagram
was included in To-morrow but
shown only in a partial form in
Garden Cities of To-morrow.
slightly revised and re-titled form as Garden
Cities of To-morrow in 1902 further intensified
this subordination of social to environmental
reform. So too did the initiation of the first
garden city at Letchworth in 1903 (Miller,
1989a). While its power as a practical demon-
stration should not be underestimated, the
demonstration was largely understood as a
model environment not a model society. Serious
compromises were necessary in the practicalities
of developing the garden city and attracting
capital. Howard's vital principle of communal
land ownership was not implemented in a
manner that approached his own ideal. A spirit
of social experiment, evident in free think-
ing, vegetarianism, co-operative housekeeping
and pursuit of the 'simple life' persisted in
 GARDEN SUBURB REVISIONISM
Figure 1 .3. Section of the garden city in an unpublished
diagram from Howard's papers. It is mainly significant
because it shows that Howard seems to have envisaged
residential areas as rather conventional terraced rows of
housing.
5
Letchworth for some years, but it encouraged
Edwardian amusement rather than emulation
(Miller, 1989a, pp. 88-111; Pearson, 1988).
However this cranky image was to a large
extent counteracted by the increasing involve-
ment in both the Garden City Association and
Letchworth of influential business and profes-
sional interests, personified by the respected
London lawyer, Ralph Neville (MacFadyen,
1933,pp. 40-43; Buder, 1990,pp. 79-83). Such
interests brought money, organizational skills
and, above all, respectability to the movement.
The patronage of important industrialists such
as George Cadbury and the newspaper pro-
prietor Alfred Harmsworth was crucially im-
portant in the establishment of a bridgehead of
middle-class tolerance and sympathy (Sutcliffe,
1990, p. 262). They were immeasurably helped
by the sheer quality of the residential environ-
ment which was created at Letchworth. The
Arts and Crafts humanity of Raymond Unwin,
Barry Parker and the other architects showed
that the garden city idea, expressed at the level
of the home and the residential environment,
had a great deal to offer the kind of lower
middle-class suburbanites who read Harms-
worth's Daily Mail. Significantly, residential
development occurred on lines that were more
generous than Howard had originally envisaged
(Beevers, 1988, pp. 108-109). However he
firmly approved of the larger plot sizes and the
shift away from narrow-fronted terraced houses
that this allowed.
As can be appreciated, these shifts brought
further movement away from Howard's original
conception. Both the widening base of support
and the articulation of the physical form of the
garden city had the effect of intensifying the em-
phasis on the environmental dimension. As far
as private capital and respectable middle-class
opinion were concerned, this was altogether less
problematic than Howard's larger social reform-
ism. Moreover, the loving attention that the
architects gave to the residential environment
added a new micro-dimension to the garden
6 THE GARDEN CITY INTRODUCED

Figure 1.4. Early Letchworth was

pervaded by a spirit of social ex-
periment, attracting much ridi-
cule from respectable Edwardian
society. The lower part of the
cartoon includes three important
figures in Letchworth's early de-
velopment: Walter Gaunt, offer-
ing plots to let, Raymond Unwin
at his drawing board and Howard
Pearsall, engaged in cultivation.
GARDEN SUBURB REVISIONISM 7

Figure 1.5. The realities of creating Letchworth

were rather more prosaic than either Howard or
the cartoonists implied. The pace of early growth
was slow.

Figure 1.6. Two cheap cottage

exhibitions were organized to pro-
mote the town. This attractive
design is taken from the cover of
the catalogue for the second, the
Urban Cottages Exhibition, held
in 1907.
8 THE GARDEN CITY INTRODUCED
Figure 1.7. Attracting industry to Letchworth was also
a problem. Under Walter Gaunt (see figure 1.4) an active
promotional campaign was begun. This example dates
from c. 1909.
city idea that marked the beginnings of its con-
ceptual and practical fragmentation as a holistic
strategy. Thus the site and residential planning
ideas of Unwin and Parker began to acquire an
identity of their own, independent of the total
garden city package.
From about 1906, or perhaps even earlier,
this fragmentation began to be formally and
consciously pursued by the garden city move-
ment (Culpin, 1913, pp. 10-11). Increasingly the
efforts of the Garden City Association were to
be devoted to the application of garden city
principles to existing towns. The firm estab-
lishment of Letchworth was proving difficult to
achieve and the chances of creating more free-
standing garden cities seemed bleak (Purdom,
1963, pp. 11-30; Simpson, 1985, p. 35). In such
circumstances the garden suburb and garden
village appeared more realistic objectives, cap-
able of widespread application. Within a few
years many such projects were underway,
most famously at Hampstead Garden Suburb
(Creese, 1966, pp. 219-254; Ashworth, 1954,
pp. 159-164). These had the effect of drawing
the garden city idea directly into the important
arena of urban reform. In conjunction with
other organizations and individuals, the move-
ment began to play an important role in the
formulation and consolidation of the new prac-
tice of town planning (Sutcliffe, 1990).
Meanwhile another strand of diversification
arose through a growing international dimen-
sion. Translations of Howard's book and/or
interpretations of what were taken to be his
ideas soon appeared in France, Belgium, Ger-
many, Russia, Japan and elsewhere (Read,
1978; Smets, 1977; Hall, 1988, pp. 112-122;
Sutcliffe, 1981, pp. 41, 144-145, 149-150). We
have noted how soon diversification and gradual
change in the conceptual basis of the garden city
occurred even in Britain. The trans-cultural
transfer of the garden city understandably
brought even greater scope for change, particu-
larly since so much of Howard's wider reform-
ist project was implicit in the text. Moreover
we can readily understand why industrial gar-
den villages like Bournville and Port Sunlight,
which were incorporated into the garden city
message as their founders Cadbury and Lever
joined the movement, had a greater initial
impact than Letchworth. Their earlier and
more complete development in the earlier years
meant that they were more easily understood
by foreign visitors (see, for example, Beevers,
1988, p. 109). In Letchworth itself there was
disproportionate emphasis on the fragments of
 TOWARDS THE SATELLITE TOWN
development that had occurred rather than the
overall scheme.
In common with many British visitors, foreign
delegations were usually seduced by the quality
of housing and residential site layouts. A great
deal also depended on the imperatives of urban
reform as understood within the countries
receiving the garden city idea, as is well shown
in Chapters 3 to 5 of this book. There would
naturally be a tendency to receive only those
sections of the garden city idea which appeared
relevant. The general effect of what was ob-
jectively seen and what was subjectively under-
stood was an intensification of the revisionist
impulse that was gathering momentum in
Britain. Thus the usual models which were
adopted overseas were the garden suburb and
factory garden village, paying at least some
homage to the site planning of Unwin and
Parker. As several of the chapters here show,
the labels garden city, cite jardin, Gartenstadt,
den-en toshi, etc. were used freely.
However only one overseas development
captured the spirit if not exactly the letter of
Howard's ideas in their purest form (see,
for example, Buder, 1990, p. 137). This was
Hellerau, near Dresden, established in 1908
(Bollerey and Hartmann, 1980, pp. 151-154).
Superficially it was a factory village-cum-garden
9
Figure 1.8. Housing at Hellerau,
the 'Gennan Letchworth'. Though
smaller and less physically separate
than Letchworth, it was pervaded
by a similar spirit of social experi-
ment and refonn.
suburb linked to Dresden by a tramway. How-
ever it was and still is clearly separated from
Dresden (Hall, 1988, pp. 115-116). Moreover,
although it was initiated by a single industrial-
ist, development proceeded on a co-operative
basis quite independent of him. It was not
therefore a factory village in the usual sense,
particularly since the industrialist, Karl Schmidt,
operated William Morris-style craft workshops.
Overall therefore, although it did not display
the same high degree of self-containment and
economic diversity as Letchworth and aimed
at a population of only 15,000, it had good cause
to be seen as the German Letchworth. And,
like Letchworth, it was very unusual.
TOWARDS THE SATELLITE TOWN
By about 1910, therefore, the idea of the garden
city, though retaining some of the ideological
and practical integrity embodied in Letchworth
and Hellerau, had been extensively dismantled
and separated into its constituent conceptual
elements. Much the most promising for wide-
spread adoption were the parts that related to
housing reform and residential site planning and
it was these which were increasingly receiving
official endorsement, especially at the local
level. The notion of land use and density zoning,
10 THE GARDEN CITY INTRODUCED
which was also present in garden city planning,
was also widely adopted. However this was less
distinctively a product of the garden city idea
and is more properly associated with other
approaches to the emergent practice of town
planning, particularly in Germany and the
United States (Sutcliffe, 1981, pp. 184-185).
From about 1910 other conceptual elements
within the garden city idea began to be em-
phasized and developed. At about this time
Unwin and others began a subtle reworking
of Howard's idea of the decentralized social
city into a scheme of accommodating further
metropolitan growth in partially self-contained
satellite towns (Miller, 1989b, pp. 17-18). These
satellites would be physically distinct, with green
belts of farm, park and woodland separating
them from each other and the big concentrated
city. Superficially they had much in common
with Howard's original diagram of the social
city, which admitted the possibility that a larger
central city surrounded by garden cities would
be needed. However the 58,000 that Howard
had seen as the population of his central city
was clearly well below the contemporary popu-
lation of London or any of the great provincial
cities.
The emergent proposal for satellites effec-
tively accepted the continued existence of the
concentrated heavily populated big cities. Ini-
tially it was only the additional physical and
population growth that was to be diverted into
satellites. Later, in the 1930s, this was extended
to include overspill from older redeveloped
slum areas, though it was never intended this
would be on a scale sufficient to undermine the
big city in the way Howard had proposed. The
corollary of all this was a growing emphasis
between the wars on the self-containment of
the satellites, firmly to detach them from the
magnetism of the big city. Such a concept
of separation had not been so necessary in
Howard's social cities simply because the big
city no longer existed in the scheme he pro-
posed. He had intended local employment
development and service provision in each of
the garden cities, but he had also emphasized
the ease of movement between the different
elements of the social city network. His garden
city had implicitly offered the possibility of self-
containment, but had not explicitly stressed its
necessity, as the satellite and later new town
ideas increasingly did.
The satellite idea dominated garden city
thinking between the two world wars and was
an important intermediate stage between gar-
den city and new town. Although it differed
from Howard's original, it shared common
ground in emphasizing the wider strategic level
of the urban region. In this it drew on other
approaches to planning, notably the region-
alist approach propounded by Patrick Geddes
(Meller, 1990, esp. pp. 289-332) before the First
World War and formally incorporated into
planning practice by Patrick Abercrombie and
others during the 1920s (Dix, 1981, p. 107). But
during this conceptual refit, which was ulti-
mately to reunify the British garden city move-
ment, serious divergence started to appear. It
began near the end of the First World War,
amidst the formulation of national programmes
for reconstruction. There was a spirited reas-
sertion of the physical ideal of networks of free-
standing garden cities, though developed by the
state and called, for the first time, new towns
('New Townsmen', 1918; Hardy, 1989, pp. 197-
198). However Howard, though he had lent his
name to his proposal, then independently went
off, in 1919, to initiate Welwyn Garden City on
broadly the same private quasi-philanthropic
lines as Letchworth (Beevers, 1988, pp. 158-
167). Faced with the ignominious collapse of
the new venture if they left it to the rather
unworldly Howard, the erstwhile statist new
townsmen were forced to support their move-
ment's seer in order to make Welwyn a success.
However this was but a minor crack com-
pared to the major split that opened up between
the garden city/new town protagonists and
the garden suburb revisionists. Although the
 TOWARDS THE SATELLITE TOWN 11

potential for a split had been apparent before

1914 (see, for example, Purdom, 1914, pp. 124-
125), it had not really occurred, probably be-
cause the achievements of both camps had
seemed limited and not seriously unbalanced.
This was to change between the two world wars,
when mass low-density suburbanization oc-
curred on an unprecedented scale, encouraged
by government policy. No less a figure than
Raymond Unwin took a leading role in this
process during the 1920s. His mastery of the
design of small dwellings and residential site
layout (and the bureaucratic processes which
such actions inevitably entailed) had won him
a leading position in the creation and imple-
mentation of Britain's post-war subsidized
council housing programme (LGB, 1918). The
outcome of this was a vigorous programme of
municipal garden suburbs, providing over a
million good quality cottage dwellings broadly
on the lines of Unwin's twelve houses per acre
Figure 1.9. Clarence Perry's neighbourhood unit was
'garden city' residential development formula. one of several important American contributions to the
However there were no British qualitative garden city tradition in the 1920s.
innovations in the residential dimension of the
garden city comparable to Unwin and Parker's
major conceptual developments before 1914. planners sympathetic to the garden city idea,
The 19208 saw a shift to Georgian styling of perhaps because its promise of creating com-
municipal cottages, but little else that was new. munity by technicalized, physical means offered
The major developments took place elsewhere. a way of appeasing the ghost of co-operative
Of most profound importance was the ap- communitarianism that still haunted the move-
pearance of an active American garden city/ ment. Although, as the garden city was con-
regional planning movement in the 19208, which verted into an environmental reformist project,
moulded together the thinking of Howard and Howard's followers had rapidly divested them-
Geddes. Though its practical achievements were selves of this social reformist dimension, the
few, conceptually it made two linked contribu- pursuit of community as a goal endured. The
tions of fundamental importance to the garden neighbourhood unit provided planners with an
city tradition and to planning more generally. apparent means to pursue this goal.
The first was the concept of the neighbourhood The second idea, which embodied much of
unit articulated and developed by Clarence Perry's thinking about neighbourhood, was the
Perry from 1929 (Perry, 1939). This held that Radburn layout. Developed by Clarence Stein
community cohesion could be encouraged with- and Henry Wright in 1927-29, its name belongs
in defined residential areas by the conscious to a failed garden city in New Jersey (Stein,
provision of common facilities such as schools 1958, pp. 37-73). Only one neighbourhood was
and shops within easy walking distance. It ever completed but it represented a dramatic
was a concept which was readily adopted by advance in residential planning. It allowed
12 THE GARDEN CITY INTRODUCED
complete separation of pedestrians and vehicles
by use of culs-de-sac access for cars on one side
of the dwellings and vehicle-free pathways and
inner parks giving pedestrian access to shared
community facilities on the other. Radburn-
type plans were again used in conjunction with
neighbourhood plans at the three Resettlement
Administration satellite townships of Greenbelt,
Maryland, Greenhills, Ohio and Greendale,
Wisconsin developed from the mid-1930s as
part of Roosevelt's New Deal (Stein, 1958,
pp. 119-187). The programme was shortlived
and the townships lacked any significant em-
ployment and housed only a few thousand
people. However they were deeply imbued
with garden city thinking and had an impact on
the movement, not least because they offered
a glimpse of what the idea could potentially
achieve when linked with decisive national
government actions. Overall though the major
impact of Radburn was to allow the garden
city to enter the motor age.
There were also some important European in-
novations. In Paris the cites jardins initiated by
Henri Sellier took garden city architecture from
Figure 1.10. The physically
separate satellite town was in-
creasingly seen as a way of ac-
commcxlating big city growth in
the 1920s. An early example was
Ernst May's proposals for Breslau,
later implemented on a grand
scale in Frankfurt-am-Main.
pitched roof cottage styling to international-
style modernism, with a high proportion of flats
(Evenson, 1979, pp. 220-226; Read, 1978). In
pre-Nazi Frankfurt-am-Main, modernist Ernst
May, who had worked closely with Unwin
before 1914, now decisively rejected the Arts
and Crafts style cottage vernacular in favour of
flat roofed international style (Bullock, 1978).
This underlined an important aesthetic split that
was appearing between the traditionalist right
and the modernist left in the German garden
city movement and was to assume greater sig-
nificance in the larger frame of German poli-
tics during the 1930s. Modernism had little
impact on the British movement, though an-
other feature of May's work was of more im-
portance. This was his advancement of the
concept of the satellite town.
SATELLITE TOWNS
In Britain during the 1920s there was a ten-
dency to refer to some of the big municipal
housing schemes, especially the giant estates
built by the London County Council outside
 SATELLITE TOWNS
its boundaries (LCC, 1937, pp. 154-165), as
satellite towns (Purdom, 1925, pp. 35-37). In
practice though they fell well short of the
criteria Unwin had set down in 1910. Thus they
lacked even physical separation, except in the
early years before they were submerged in a
sea of private suburbia, let alone any real
measure of economic or social self-containment.
However the satellite concept was advanced
significantly by continental practice. May's work
was extremely important because, although
his publicly-developed satellites were not eco-
nomically or socially self-contained, they dis-
played an element of physical separation - a
narrow green belt - that was not yet present in
any British examples. The Parisian cites jardins
were less advanced in this respect, though
Sellier, like May, had been forced to com-
promise a more thoroughgoing decentralist
strategy that would have produced a ring of
physically separate cites satellites around Paris
(Purdom, 1925, p. 43).
By comparison British official thinking about
satellite towns developed rather more slowly.
Although, as early as 1920, Purdom was pro-
posing a ring of garden city-type satellites
physically separated from London, Unwin still
continued to conceive satellites as physically
separate residential areas, without any local
employment (Purdom, 1925, p. 48). Unwin,
Abercrombie and others proposed just this
solution in the South Wales Regional Survey
of 1921 as an alternative to pithead mining
villages (MH, 1921, pp. 37-41). But while May
was about to realize such a vision of residential
satellites in Frankfurt, Unwin's practical hous-
ing work at the Ministry of Health was still
effectively reinforcing the mass implementation
of the garden suburb model. However this
began to change from 1929, when Unwin was
appointed as Chief Adviser to the Greater
London Regional Planning Committee (Miller,
1989b, pp. 24-33). By then the scale of the
suburbanization of London and the associated
problems of traffic congestion were seen as
13
major issues. Accordingly there was a much
greater willingness to contemplate satellite
developments that were both physically separ-
ate and economically self-contained as a real-
istic option. This formed part of the brief given
to the Committee by central government and
it was fulfilled by Unwin in a series of reports
over the years 1929-33, particularly his 1931
report on decentralization (Miller, 1989b, p. 34).
In this he proposed three categories of new
settlement associated with a firm push to ac-
celerate industrial decentralization. Planned
suburban units, as self-contained as possible,
were to be developed on the outskirts. Physi-
cally distinct and economically and socially self-
contained satellite towns were to be developed
within a 12-mile radius of London. Finally,
completely independent industrial garden cities
were to be developed in the 12-25-mile ring
around London.
These constituted the most advanced official
proposals for planned metropolitan decen-
tralization anywhere in the world at that time.
Their actual impact was very limited, though
the associated proposals for metropolitan con-
tainment by means of green girdles were taken
up in a modified form by the newly Labour-
controlled London County Council from 1935,
forming the core of the London Green Belt
(Miller, 1989b, p. 37; Ward, 1991). However
they undoubtedly shifted the agenda and laid
the basis for the acceptance of Abercrombie's
proposals in the more propitious circumstances
of the 1940s. Rather more was achieved in
the provincial cities. Speke in Liverpool and
Wythenshawe in Manchester, the latter de-
signed by Unwin's former partner, Barry
Parker, set new standards in self-containment,
physical separation and social mix (Creese,
1966, pp. 255-272; Liverpool City, 1937, pp. 52-
57). Both were examined with approval by
the important Royal Commission on the Dis-
tribution of the Industrial Population, which
reported in 1940, providing further official en-
dorsement of planned decentralization (Barlow
14 THE GARDEN CITY INTRODUCED

Figure 1.11. Speke, Liverpool was one of the most advanced British examples of the satellite town before 1939
with its own local employment and social facilities.

Report, 1940, pp. 127-137). However both,
especially Wythenshawe, also illustrated the
limitations on local authority actions, particu-
larly the difficulties of developing satellites
outside their own boundaries (Simon and
Simon, 1935). This was crucial if such devel-
opments were to achieve the complete self-
containment which was increasingly being
emphasized as desirable. Ultimately it was this
kind of consideration which limited the effec-
tiveness of the satellite town as an instrument
of planned decentralization in the way it had
come to be understood by British planners in
the 1930s.
THE FIRST NEW TOWNS
The Second World War decisively changed the
willingness of central government to intervene
directly to achieve planned decentralization.
Against a background of massively increased
government intervention in all aspects of life,
physical planning assumed unprecedented po-
litical importance, particularly in the aftermath
of the bombing of the major British cities in
1940-41. Of the many wartime developments
that were relevant to planning, the one most
important for planned decentralization was
Abercrombie's Greater London Plan of 1944,
 THE FIRST NEW TOWNS
published the following year. This proposed
extensive urban containment and a planned
decentralist strategy that included ten entirely
new satellite towns (as he called them) to
be built outside London (Abercrombie, 1945,
pp. 30-38, 200). Most of these were to have
60,000 target populations, twice the size of
Howard's garden cities. In addition the planned
expansion of existing towns and some rather
limited peripheral development was to occur,
though a much enlarged green belt was to pre-
vent sprawl on the interwar pattern.
The postwar Labour government took up the
proposals with enthusiasm, setting up a Com-
mittee to report on the establishment of new
towns under Lord Reith in 1945 and passing
the New Towns Act the following year (MTCP,
1946a; 1946b; 1946c). Conceptually the early
new towns which resulted were different in
many important respects from the Howardian
garden cities, though there were some import-
ant continuities and similarities. Thus the new
towns were to be relatively small, free-standing,
planned, low-density and socially-balanced set-
tlements for living and working (Aldridge, 1979,
pp. 28-60). There would be full provision of
community facilities and great emphasis on
social development. The towns were not in-
tended to grow beyond an initially determined
target and green belts would limit their outer
expansion and prevent their coalescence with
other settlements. All this was at one with
Howard's theories.
However the early new towns incorporated
most of the conceptual drift away from Howard
we have already noted. They were conceived
to play roles of metropolitan decentralization
or regional restructuring, not the replacement
of the big city that Howard had wanted. Self-
containment was elevated to much greater
importance than Howard apparently intended,
though opinions differ on this (see, for example,
Thomas, 1985, pp. xviii-xx). In line with this
they were bigger, following Abercrombie's
proposed target of 60,000, rather than the
15
slightly lower optimum size proposed by the
Reith Committee (MTCP, 1946c, p. 9). This
reflected prevailing thinking about the realistic
population threshold for self-containment and
was soon revised upwards to 80,000 by the early
1950s. Their detailed designs were invariably
based on Clarence Perry's neighbourhood prin-
ciple (Osborn and Whittick, 1969, p.146). How-
ever Radburn layout principles did not begin
to appear until the 1950s when British car
ownership levels began to show signs of emu-
lating those in America (Osborn and Whittick,
1969, pp. 257-258, 378). Detailed designs had
by this time abandoned the Arts and Crafts
vernacular of Unwin and Parker in favour of a
typically plainer, very restrained modernism
with pitched roofs. The occasional tower block
punctuated the skyline in the manner of the
interwar Parisian cites jardins, but the over-
whelming majority of housing was provided as
individual dwellings, in semi-detached or short
terraced form.
However what was most dramatically dif-
ferent from the garden cities was the role of
the state. In place of Howard's co-operative
and participatory collectivism and the quasi-
philanthropic private companies at Letchworth
and Welwyn, there was a centrally-appointed
public development corporation. This had no
organic links to the frameworks of local demo-
cracy; it was run by central appointees and offi-
cials. However the development corporations
did ensure the essential Howardian principle
of the collective ownership of land, purchased
at existing use value, if necessary by compul-
sion. Thus the increments in land value that
arose from the development of the town did
not benefit any private interests. But neither
did they directly benefit the town's community;
they were returned to central government.
Howard, who died in 1928, had never come
to terms with the need to involve the state and
would probably have seen this as a serious
erosion of a key principle of community in-
volvement (Beevers, 1988, p. 155). By the 19408
16 THE GARDEN CITY INTRODUCED
however few in the movement doubted whether
it would be possible to locate and develop
groups of new towns on any kind of rational
basis without the powers of the state. Planned
location could not proceed by the methods of
stealth that Howard himself had used at Letch-
worth and Welwyn. However the later 1952
Town Development Act offered an alternative
mechanism for achieving decentralization that
gave responsibility to the local authorities.
Howard might well have preferred that, though
it proved less effective than the more centralist
New Towns Act mechanism (Thomas, 1985,
p. xxiii).
Figure 1.12. Stevenage, the first
New Town designated under the
1946 Act, embodied much of
the thinking of the garden city
movement, but there were some
crucially important differences.
NEW TOWNS OUTSIDE BRITAIN
Viewed internationally, the British new towns
were a uniquely powerful achievement, much
studied and visited. The gospel of the British
new town planning movement (as it was now
called; the term garden city had been super-
seded by this stage) was spread overseas, echo-
ing on a larger scale the earlier transfer of the
garden city idea itself. And, despite the air of
tremendous self-satisfaction that surrounded
the British new towns programme, their plan-
ners also looked abroad at the many new
communities that were appearing in Europe
 NEW TOWNS OUTSIDE BRITAIN
and elsewhere. However, as in the earlier in-
ternational transfer of ideas and practice, an
essentially selective process operated. To many
overseas visitors interested in metropolitan
strategies, the British goal of self-containment
in relatively small settlements appeared to offer
only a narrow and cramping lifestyle, wilfully
excluding the diversity and choices that were
possible in large metropolitan areas (see, for
example, Merlin, 1971, pp. 40, 245). However a
greater relevance of the British model was
identified in non-metropolitan locations where
new towns were to be developed in remoter
settings, notably to service new resource-based
industries. Thus Kitimat in Canada, developed
in association with a new aluminium industry
from 1952, with Clarence Stein as its consultant
planner, was an outstanding example planned
with authentic reference to the whole garden
city/new town tradition (Osborn and Whittick,
1969, p. 154).
But in metropolitan settings most European
countries further refined the semi-independent
satellite model, usually focused around trans-
port links with the metropolitan core. Import-
ant early examples were the satellites developed
around the Scandinavian capitals from the 1940s
and 1950s. Vallingby and Farsta outside Stock-
holm (Pass, 1973; 1978) and Tapiola Garden
City (a rare persistence of Howard's term) out-
side Helsinki were much admired (von Hertzen
and Speiregen, 1973; Aario, 1986); Albertslund
outside Copenhagen rather less so (see, for
example, Merlin, 1971, pp. 84-85, 89, 91).
Broadly similar patterns of new community
development within metropolitan frameworks
were soon apparent in West Germany and the
Netherlands, though in the latter the new town
developments on the Polders, notably Lelystad,
were intended to be more independent of the
metropolitan area, more on the British model
of self-containment (Constandse, 1978).
Outside Europe, Japan also followed a course
of what amounted to metropolitan peripheral
17
expansion loosely focused on rail-linked satel-
lites (Kurokawa, 1978). In North America, with
the exception of Kitimat already noted, there
was little that corresponded to any major part
of the garden city/new town agenda as it was
understood in the postwar period until the
1960s. In the United States there were a number
of private large-scale residential developments
with an emphasis on planned coherence in
social facilities, particularly the three Levit-
towns outside New York and Philadelphia
(1947-58) and Park Forest outside Chicago
(1947), though whether they deserved the place
sometimes allotted them in the garden city
tradition is, at the very least, dubious (Weiss,
1990; Jackson, 1985, pp. 234-238). However
proposals for rather different private settle-
ments appeared at Irvine, California (1960),
Reston, Virginia (1962) and Columbia, Mary-
land (1963) (Eichler and Kaplan, 1970; Brooks,
1974; Corden, 1977, pp. 155-179). These, par-
ticularly the latter, were to be authentic new
towns, developed privately and offering a con-
siderable measure of physical separation and
local employment together with generous neigh-
bourhood facilities and environmental amen-
ities. Even more remarkably they became the
model for the United States' first government-
sponsored, hugely ambitious (though ultimately
abortive) New Communities Program, adopted
in 1968 (Corden, 1977, pp.123-153; McLaughlin,
1978).
To British eyes, however, the most remark-
able developments in new town planning were
contained in the 1965 Paris Regional Plan
(Rubenstein, 1978; Merlin, 1971, pp. 146-165;
Evenson, 1979, pp. 340-359). This proposed a
radically different concept of the new town,
directly challenging the thinking of the whole
garden city tradition. In one sense it was an
extension of the by now familiar European
satellite principle, developing new settlements
along public transport routes, in this case the
new Reseau Express Regional (RER). But the
18 THE GARDEN CITY INTRODUCED
scale was completely unprecedented, intended
to provide for the growth of the Paris region
from 8.2 million in 1962 to 14 million by the
year 2000. The five new towns, all but one with
targets of 300,000 or more people, were in-
tended to give focus to the growth of Paris but
not be separate from it. Large existing settle-
ments on the periphery were incorporated in
the new town areas. And, though employment
growth and social facilities were to be en-
couraged, these new towns were to function as
an integral part of a massive and fairly con-
tinuous urban region. The divergence from the
thinking of the garden city tradition, at least as
it was understood by the keepers of the faith in
Britain, could not have been greater.
LATER BRITISH NEW TOWNS
British planning initially responded to such
foreign ideas with interest or surprise but little
emulation. In particular, the British concep-
tion of the self-contained new town distilled
from the garden city tradition remained largely
intact. However by the 1960s there were signs
that some of these ideas had been adopted.
After a partial eclipse of the new towns in the
Figure 1.13. Flats in Marne-la-
Vallee. The Parisian new towns of
the 1960s and 1970s demonstrated
a rather different approach to new
town building that challenged
many long cherished tenets of the
garden city tradition. at least as
understood by its British guardians.
Conservative-dominated 19508, the following
decade saw first Conservative and then Labour
governments designating many more (Aldridge,
1979, pp. 61-83). These showed more striking
divergence from Howard's original ideas, most
obviously with respect to size. Thus target popu-
lations at designation moved up sharply in most
cases, reaching 220,000 in the case of Telford,
250,000 in the case of Milton Keynes and a
massive 500,000 in the case of Central Lanca-
shire. Such examples included areas that already
had substantial urban populations (236,000 in
the case of Central Lancashire), but projected
expansion was still huge, almost Parisian in
scale. Moreover the accommodation of such
substantial urban areas into new towns was
itself a radical departure from previous think-
ing, too radical indeed for some of the move-
ment's stalwarts to accept them as such (Osborn
and Whittick, 1969, p. 403). Many of the new
towns were intend(d to function as regional
growth points, something which had been im-
plicit in the intended roles of some of the early
new towns, but which was now made explicit.
The sources of these conceptual shifts re-
flect the perceived priorities of the 1960s. High
(falsely high) projections of population growth
 LATER BRITISH NEW TOWNS
brought a promise and a requirement for higher
economic growth and raised important ques-
tions about how both were to be accommodated
in ways that were socially and environmentally
acceptable (see, for example, MHLG 1964, esp.
pp. 7-12). Given the prevailing political faith
in planning, this triggered a spate of regional
planning activity and many of the new town
proposals were closely associated with this work
(see, for example, SDD, 1963, p. 28; DITRD,
1963, pp. 26-27). A much more sophisticated
understanding of the urban region was now
apparent compared to the 1940s, and one in-
creasingly similar to that we have identified on
the continent, especially around Paris (Culling-
worth, 1976. pp. 200-202). Complete self-
containment was now felt to be illusory in the
increasingly mobile and complex society of the
1960s, though the concept was by now deeply
entrenched in British planning thinking and
19
Figure 1.14. Central Lancashire
New Town. The final wave of
British new town designations
also moved more sharply away
from the garden city tradition, as
usually understood.
displayed a remarkable resilience (Aldridge,
1979, pp. 105-131, 158-159). Instead of the
comparatively small settlements favoured by
Howard, Abercrombie and Reith, it was now
argued that larger new towns, more distant from
the older metropolitan areas, offered greater
scope for 'real' self-containment. Moreover they
offered the possibility of greater employment
diversity and thus promised a more diversified
social structure than the early new towns had
been able to deliver. And since most areas that
had the capacity to grow to the new higher
targets already had towns on them, it made
sense to use the New Towns Act mechanism to
facilitate the growth process. Such areas also
allowed more diversified housing markets than
were possible in overwhelmingly 'new' new
towns, again with positive implications for the
desired goal of social diversity.
However as many of the optimistic growth
20 THE GARDEN CITY INTRODUCED
forecasts of the 19608 began to evaporate in
the early 1970s, these plans and indeed the
whole conception of growth-oriented new town
planning began to seem less relevant. More-
over governments were less willing to contem-
plate the heavy front-end costs of new town
development in the worsening economic climate
(Aldridge, 1979, pp. 160-172). The weakening
economy began to affect seriously the inner
cities and their plight received official recog-
nition at this time. There were some criticisms
that the new towns were a partial cause of this
decline (Lawless, 1981, pp. 216-237; Aldridge,
1979, pp. 150-156). The critics could claim some
support in Howard's original strategy which had
both predicted and intended decline in London
and other big cities. However the always rather
limited role of the new towns in the overall
process of metropolitan decentralization sug-
gested that other more important forces were
at work. The new towns attempted to portray
themselves as part of a solution to the inner-
city problem and certainly the later ones were
less socially selective than their predecessors
and made strenuous efforts to take a higher
pro-portion of the unskilled, the old and other
less advantaged groups. But they were swim-
ming against the tide which was increasingly
bringing in policies for inner-city regeneration.
Early signs were the abandonment of Llantrisant
and Stonehouse New Towns in 1972-73 and
1976 on the grounds of their irrelevance to the
economic problems of existing urban areas
(Cullingworth, 1976, p. 202; Aldridge, 1979,
p. 65). Subsequently most of the other new
towns had their targets trimmed and there have
been no new designations (apart from the two
short-lived examples noted above) since 1971.
AFTER THE NEW TOWNS
The essentially 19408 British conception of the
new town submerged the garden city idea for
many decades. The very term itself had gone
out of use, except to refer to the pioneering
days in a kind of ritualized recitation that hon-
oured heroes and ultimately demonstrated the
inevitability of the new town. The British new
towns have of course been extraordinarily suc-
cessful for their residents, now numbering over
2 million. The early new towns in particular
exactly caught the aspirations of young skilled
working-class families, during the 1940s and
1950s, for a better life outside the big cities and
older industrial districts. The later new towns
slightly extended the social range, some more
successfully than others. Both also met the
requirements of developing manufacturers for
serviced sites for expansion with a suitable
labour force on hand. However from the per-
spective of the post-Thatcherist 19908 we can
see the new town itself as a period piece. The
new town plans stand almost as artefacts of a
bygone age, expressive of notions of state so-
cialism within a mixed economy and a univer-
salistic and classless welfare state.
From the point of view of our concern with
the garden city idea, we can see the new town
as just one possible interpretation that was
historically dominant for three decades from
1945. It rested, fundamentally, on the twin
pillars of a remarkably long postwar boom and
an almost equally long political consensus. The
disintegration of both during the 1970s and
1980s has encouraged the ever resilient (and
pragmatic) garden city movement to rediscover
itself, stripping away much of the conceptual
drift which has overlain Howard's original
thinking (see, for example, Hall, 1989; Holliday,
1990). As always distinctions, happily not fun-
damental ones, can be identified between those
who seek the legitimacy of 'pure' interpretations
and those who wish to fashion something 'new'.
Thus there have been a number of attempts
to reassert the anarchist, co-operative, com-
munitarian and anti-statist dimension of the
tradition; the social reformist message that was
so soon jettisoned by Howard's respectable
middle-class backers (see, for example, Ward,
1976; 1989). These attempts have drawn on
 THE OTHER CONTRIBUTIONS
the growing popularity of green ideas, the re-
surgence of self-build and the discovery of
community architecture in Britain and else-
where, allying with Howardian ideals (Hardy,
1991, pp. 172-192). Adherents see in them the
opportunity to enrich both environment and
society and to combat the social alienation and
apathy that has attended so many of the actions
of official planning. The Town and Country
Planning Association (as the Garden City As-
sociation is now known) launched a project
for a Third Garden City in 1979 and has spon-
sored the self-built Lightmoor community
at Telford that, in true Howardian fashion,
carries forward the idea by practical illustra-
tion (TCPA, 1979). Perhaps in returning to
Howard's social reformism a new 'combination
of proposals' is being forged.
Meanwhile Mrs Thatcher's enterprise culture
has generated its own conceptual refit of the
garden city idea in the form of new country
town and village proposals (Amos, 1991). In
reality such proposals from private developers,
most dramatically the now defunct Consortium
Developments Ltd, and private landowners
have much in common with the American
private new town schemes of the 1960s (see,
for example, Northfield, 1989). However the
private provision of something so close to the
environmental ideal of the garden city is new
to Britain. Although there are some near-
precedents, as will be shown in Chapter 9, none
of the recent wave has so far been built. The
developers' promises, which have proved rather
difficult to take through the planning process,
have not therefore been tested. However the
menu appears tempting, including a mix of
housing types set against a rural backcloth,
the development of community facilities and
shopping, the provision of parks and recrea-
tional facilities, local employment and a degree
of social diversity, all achieved with private
funding. The principle has been approved by
central government though the reality has
proved more difficult to accommodate. How-
21
ever, as David Lock has observed, such pro-
posals illustrate that 'the spirit to create new
communities is there' (Lock, 1989, p. 175).
Less obvious signs of this resurgence in
interest are also apparent in other countries.
For example Michel Rocard's new programme
for regenerating the Paris suburbs has prompted
the French planning journal, Urbanisme, to
celebrate Sellier's interwar triumphs and con-
sider the future relevance of the concept in a
theme issue entitled Le Retour des Cites-Jardins
(1990). Japanese development pressure in
Australia has also pushed the new settlement
idea back on to the planning agenda in the late
1980s, rather to the surprise of its planners
(Australian Planner, 1990). And in the Soviet
Union there are apparently proposals for an
Armenian 'Ararat garden city' to replace the
capital destroyed in the recent earthquake, and
some signs of a wider professional interest
(Spence, 1990). Throughout the West there
has been a mounting academic interest in the
assessment and re-examination of the garden
city/new town idea, reflecting this pervasive
sense of a decisive historical shift and the need
to understand and evaluate, which brings us
to the other chapters in this book.
THE OTHER CONTRIBUTIONS
Much has been written about the origins of the
garden city idea, usually based fairly directly
on Howard's explicit acknowledgement of the
inspirations of his own thinking, either in To-
morrow or such clues as he subsequently gave
to his confederates in the movement. Both
these sources have provided only a partial
picture and there has been a tendency until
recently for the same points to be repeated,
unrefreshed by original research. Beevers's fine
biography of Howard (Beevers, 1988) together
with the earlier work of Fishman (1977) have
now opened up Howard's thinking for deeper
investigation, but much remains to be done.
It has, for instance, long been recognized that
22 THE GARDEN CITY INTRODUCED

Howard's garden city was a project for social as great as that between Japan and Britain. The
reform with strong links to the land reform outcomes were, however, less unusual: inevit-
movement and was part of a reformist tradition ably the idea was seen as a prop for locally-
that addressed rural problems. However very derived and rather narrow reform priorities, and
little has been written about the exact nature their fullest implementation, such as it was,
of these reformist ideas, or their connection came within the realm of private garden suburb
with the garden city. Frederick Aalen's con- development.
tribution is a valuable one in this respect and In the following chapter, Robert Freestone
enables us properly to reclaim the social re- shows that significant divergence from the ideal
formist message that was so quickly jettisoned could occur even in a country where the cultural
as the garden city was converted into a project and linguistic distance from the British garden
for environmental reform. city heartland was much less. His account of
Something of the same theme of social the progress of the garden city idea in Australia
reformism is taken up in the next chapter. It is suggests the importance of geographical dis-
customary to dismiss the French cites-jardins, tance, particularly when ideas were largely
essentially Gallic garden suburbs, as only transmitted by the written word and received
nominal parts of the garden city tradition. They into an essentially professional milieu rather
are normally explained either as the failure of than being spontaneously generated within local
the garden city idea to be properly understood associations of the faithful. Once again the
in France or more subtly as a manifestation of garden suburb appears as that part of the gar-
conscious choice by a nation more culturally den city idea which transplanted most easily.
committed to the city than the British (see, for However he also underlines the importance of
example, Hall, 1988, p. 114). economic factors in understanding practical
However Jean-Pierre Gaudin takes the ex- outcomes. Thus the Australian movement gen-
planation rather further by exploring the polit- erated its own variant of the tradition in the
ical and social reform context for the reception form of the 'garden town'. This became an
of Howard's ideas. Though noting the appal- idealized settlement form for the intensification
ling misinterpretations visited on the idea by of Australia's resource and manufacturing
Benoit-Levy, Gaudin argues that it is important economy in the 1920s, a project which was
to look beyond the simple environmental level. truncated by the 1930s depression.
He suggests that Howard's social reformist But if France, Japan and Australia all showed
project found more of an echo than is normally serious drift from what is usually understood
recognized in the desire of French reformers as the English garden city idea, it appeared, on
to articulate an ideal notion of the cite as a the evidence of Hellerau, to have survived its
political and social entity. transference to Germany relatively intact. This
The theme of adaptation and change by in- makes all the more surprising the later perver-
ternational transfer is also explicitly examined sions of the garden city ideal at the hands of
in Chapter 4. Shun-ichi Watanabe shows how the Nazis, examined by Gerhard Fehl in Chap-
Japan's rapid modernization in the late nine- ter 6. He explains this paradox primarily in
teenth and early twentieth centuries generated terms of the increasing technicalization of the
a great interest in the garden city along with all concept, detaching it from its Howardian social
Western ideas. However he also graphically reformism in ways that paralleled and were in-
illustrates how difficult a process the under- formed by developments in Britain and else-
standing of such a relatively abstract idea can where. In Germany, however, this allowed
be when the cultural and linguistic distance is the garden city idea to be reoriented to serve
 THE OTHER CONTRIBUTIONS
extreme conservative and right-wing interests,
who saw it as a device for social and racial
stabilization. This ideological link with the right
was powerfully reinforced under the Nazis and
given ultimate expression in the SS schemes
for the Germanic resettlement and reagrarian-
ization of former Polish provinces.
This ultra-right support for the garden city
in Germany was unusual. In most countries the
garden city became a favoured project of liberal
and moderate socialist reformism. Thus in
Chapter 7 Daniel Schaffer shows this to have
been very much the pattern of the American
garden city movement, especially during its
key creative period in the 1920s. Moreover he
indicates that such progressivist sentiments
made headway even in the ostensibly unfavour-
able political and intellectual climate of a dec-
ade dominated by conservatism and business
ideology. In other words, he reminds us that
the garden city idea was not simply adopted
where it reinforced existing concerns: in the
hands of a committed group of protagonists, it
could help change that climate of thinking.
Schaffer gives his account an important if rather
pessimistic contemporary twist and makes an
unfavourable comparison between the 1920s
and the equally conservative and business-
oriented Reagan era of the 1980s. He detects
no comparable push in contemporary America
for the ideals that inspired Mumford, Stein,
MacKaye and their associates to challenge the
status quo in the 1920s.
The concern with present and future pros-
pects for the garden city idea in the United
States is continued in Robert Fishman's com-
plementary account in Chapter 7. The post-
1945 American engagement with the garden
city/new town idea is examined, particularly the
failure of the ambitious New Communities
programmes of the 1960s. As well as the
American suspicion of positive government in-
tervention, Fishman detects the fundamental
reasons for this failure in the increasing inap-
propriateness of the idea, particularly in its
23
latter-day incarnation as the new town, to
postwar American patterns of urbanization.
Thus the dramatic scale of metropolitan de-
centralization, far greater than Howard or his
later followers ever envisaged, and the frag-
mentation of the traditional idea of urban
community closed the option of networks of
self-contained new communities ringing the
metropolitan areas. Fishman believes America
needs to go beyond the new towns to reinter-
pret Howard's ideas within the context of the
older cities.
Michael Hebbert also looks beyond the new
towns in a British context, concentrating on
the growing interest of private developers in
initiating and developing sizeable new settle-
ments through an essentially market-led ap-
proach. Setting this in the context of history,
he argues that there are profound problems in
such an approach for essentially the same
reasons as those recognized by the early garden
city movement. Thus land acquisition would
soon become very expensive for private devel-
opers as hope values rocketed. Moreover their
intentions are often frustrated by a sophisti-
cated local planning system that did not exist
in Howard's day. The answer, Hebbert argues,
is not to return to the new town, but for de-
velopers to act in partnership with local au-
thorities. These would acquire land at near
existing use value in locations determined more
by planning than the mere willingness of par-
ticular farmers to sell. In turn local government
would retain control over how private devel-
opers actually built the town.
It remains to be seen whether such ideas
will be adopted, though certainly it would be
surprising if nothing of substance emerged from
the current resurgence of interest in creating
new communities, especially in Britain. Thus
Dennis Hardy's final chapter, which reviews the
garden city campaign as a whole, is written with
a keen sense of the continuing relevance of the
garden city idea in the later twentieth century.
Its major importance is to highlight the overall
24 THE GARDEN CITY INTRODUCED
historical significance of the garden city move-
ment in fonnulating, developing and publiciz-
ing an idea about refonning the way people
lived. What comes through is the creativity,
resilience, and resourcefulness of the move-
ment, pressing its case in the face of long
periods of discouragement. Not the least im-
pressive aspect has been the movement's ability
to make adaptations to match the vision more
closely to urban and political realities while still
keeping faith with the original.
GARDEN CITIES: PAST, PRESENT
AND FUTURE
We have seen how the social refonnism of
the garden city idea was quickly converted into
an environmental reformism which was in
turn technicalized and dissembled to form
part of the emergent professional practice of
town planning. As a collection of technical-
environmental planning concepts it was added
to, adjusted and reassembled in different guises.
The garden village, garden suburb, satellite
town and new town were international variants
that were built on the conceptual foundations
of the garden city. Other, specifically national,
variants can also be identified, like the Aus-
tralian garden town. The 'new country town'
may prove to be a further British variant of the
19908.
However, beyond the detail of a changing
tradition of planning thought, what comes
through even in this initial review is the tre-
mendous potency of the garden city idea
during the twentieth century. That it spread
so widely across the world and influenced the
thinking of planners and refonners in so many
countries, albeit in ways that were partial and
incomplete, remains extraordinary. Peter Hall
(1988, p. 87) is surely correct to see Howard,
the inventor of the garden city, as the most
important figure in the international history
of town planning. The ability of his conception
to withstand and indeed flourish, despite an
almost continuous process of mistranslation,
misunderstanding, misrepresentation and count-
less conscious and unconscious adjustments of
the idea in theory and practice, is eloquent tes-
timony to its coherence and robustness. Indeed
the vitality of the original conception has been
seemingly reinforced by its many hybrids, many
of which have made powerful positive con-
tributions to the quality of urban living. And
when such hybrids have run their course,
Howard's original stock always seems to have
been cap-able of generating others.
As regards present and future prospects,
opinions are divided. In America for example,
the pessimism apparent in Chapters 7 and 8
here is echoed elsewhere (see, for example
Buder, 1990, pp. 207-211). But from a British
perspective, things look very different. The late
19808 and 1990s have undoubtedly witnessed
another, continuing, round of conceptual hy-
bridization of Howard's ideas, perhaps as a
prelude to practical initiatives. Moreover as
Schaffer and Fishman (and Buder) readily
concede, the scope and need for such initiatives
are surely considerable. The social bankruptcy
of many big cities in the United States and
elsewhere in the West and the need for whole-
sale renewal of the social and economic in-
frastructure, most conspiciously in eastern
Europe, suggest the need for a revivified theory
and practice of new community development.
However those who aspire to achieve this re-
vival cannot hope to do so without rediscover-
ing and understanding the diversity and richness
of the garden city tradition, too long seen simply
as the prelude to the statist new town. The
chapters in this book fonn a contribution to
that rediscovery.
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 2
ENGLISH ORIGINS
Frederick H. A. Aalen
Ebenezer Howard's books To-morrow: A Peace-
ful Path to Real Reform published in 1898 and
Garden Cities of To-morrow, a slightly revised
version of the former published in 1902, are
among the most influential in the history of
modern town planning (Howard, 1898, 1902).
In these small volumes Howard introduced the
concept of 'garden cities' and described means
of establishing and multiplying them. Garden
cities are posed explicitly as an alternative to
the overgrown and congested industrial city and
the depressed depopulated countryside. Each
garden city would be carefully planned in a rural
setting and limited in area and population. It
was not a fusion of town and country that was
proposed, but a town in the country whose
citizens could enjoy the best qualities of town
and country life, with opportunity to work and
with ample space to live. Crucially, the garden
city would be built on land belonging to the
local community and designed and developed
in the public interest.
Howard, it must be emphasized, was more
interested in social change than in physical
forms. His garden city was not intended as an
improved frame for the existing socio-economic
system but as a vehicle of fundamental social
transformation; it was to be, in effect, an Hegel-
ian marriage of town and country out of which
would spring 'a new hope, a new life, a new
civilisation'. There was no doubt in Howard's
mind that the garden city was the path to a
higher plane of living, not merely 'a town on
a background of open country' as Raymond
Unwin later described Howard's physical ar-
rangement. These heroic social objectives were
rarely fully grasped, and often curiously ig-
nored. Howard's ideas have continued to re-
verberate in planning circles in many countries
but it is the practical dimensions of his work
that have been emphasized, while the vital
socio-political ideals were barely understood,
much less put into effect. Even the famous
garden city settlements, built at Letchworth
(1903) and Welwyn (1919) with the involve-
ment of Howard, diverged considerably from
the ideal (Beevers, 1988). The British new
towns of the postwar period incorporated some
garden city features but were nevertheless far
removed from Howard's original proposals.
This chapter seeks to re-examine Howard's
social objectives and explore the origins of his
thinking within various English reform move-
ments of the later nineteenth and twentieth
centuries, concentrating particularly on the
neglected dimension of rural reform.
HOWARD'S GARDEN CITY
The starting point of Howard's planning con-
cerns was the spectacle, especially conspicious
in his native London, of rapid, unplanned urban
 HOWARD'S GARDEN CITY
Figure 2.1. Cover of Garden Cities of To-morrow (I90Z),
designed by the socialist illustrator Walter Crane.
However its publication signalled a shift in emphasis
from social to environmental reformism.
growth caused by migration from the country-
side, leading to overcrowded and insanitary city
slums and the simultaneous decline of rural life.
What was urgently needed, he wrote, was a
solution of the burning question, 'how to back
the tide of migration of the people into the
towns and to get them back upon the land'.
Returning the urban masses to the land 'in a
great migratory movement' was the key condi-
tion in 'reconstructing anew the entire external
fabric of society,' and, he contended, migration
flows could be redirected by the magnetic at-
traction of his garden cities. Once garden cities
were established, Howard believed, there would
29
Figure 2.2. The Three Magnets diagram. The most
famous representation of Howard's reformist ideas. In
this as in so many other aspects of his proposals, the
published version was toned down. Thus the words
'Socialism not Regimentation' in an unpublished draft
were replaced by the less controversial 'Co-operation'.
be a 'spontaneous movement of the people from
our crowded cities to the bosom of our kindly
mother earth.' He envisaged the town and the
country in their existing form as two magnets,
each striving to draw the people to itself. The
garden city would be a third magnet, or town-
country magnet, a new attractive force over-
riding the traditional magnets (Howard, 1898,
pp.5-11).
Garden cities were to be small, thoroughly-
planned towns, each encircled by an inalienable
rural estate and interconnected by a rapid
transit system of electric railways. The popu-
lation and area of each settlement would be
firmly controlled. A population of 32,000 was
envisaged, with the city proper occupying 1000
acres and the surrounding rural estate 5000
acres. Although of limited size each garden city
would be socially and economically balanced,
30 ENGLISH ORIGINS
accommodating all classes and providing a
range of employment in primary, secondary and
tertiary activities. Howard envisaged regional
systems of garden cities, each focused on a
larger mother city with a population of per-
haps 58,000. These polycentric 'social cities'
indeed anticipate the modern concept of a
multi-centred city region divided by green belts
and served by integrated traffic systems.
Howard's physical plans for the garden city
are well known. The city is conceived, like many
utopias, on a circular basis and there is a clear
zoning system within it. Service activities and
public buildings are at the centre with a belt
of residential land around them and the rail-
way and factories are on the perimeter. Pub-
lic gardens, parks and tree-lined avenues are
prominent features. Six wide boulevards act
as radials, dividing the city into six equal and
self-sufficient parts, or wards, prefiguring the
planned neighbourhoods later developed in
British new towns. The rural surroundings con-
tain large farms, smallholdings and allotments,
and are used for agriculture, forestry, recreation
Figure 2.3. Garden City and
Rural Belt, showing the relation-
ship of the individual garden city
to the surrounding rural estate.
Howard envisaged that the rural
belt should potentially be capable
of meeting many if not all the
food requirements of his garden
citizens.
and miscellanous institutions such as hospitals,
asylums and convalescent homes. However,
despite such details, Howard's maps are clearly
diagrammatic and intended as flexible frame-
works, adjustable to particular sites, within
which individual taste and preference could be
given free expression, especially in architecture
and design. Sanitary arrangements were, how-
ever, to be strictly enforced and all sewerage
and town refuse would be utilized on the agri-
cultural portions of the estate.
That the land on which the garden city stood
must be owned by the community was of funda-
mental importance. This would ensure, first, the
social control of physical planning and espe-
cially the permanent delimitation of town and
country zones, and, secondly, that all increases
of land value brought about by development
would be put to public use. The resulting steady
improvement of amenities and services would
largely provide the magnetic properties of the
garden city.
In these new settlements Howard believed
that a greatly improved quality of life would be
 HOWARD'S GARDEN CITY
obtainable, including housing, work and leisure
conditions, but also transformed social relations
and even religious sensibilities. Capitalism and
co-operation could both flourish; only land uses
would be controlled. Rural as well as town
life would be enriched. Agriculture, for ex-
ample, would be stimulated by the presence
of local town markets and rural folk given
access to urban amenities. The attractions of
the countryside would everywhere be available
to the inhabitants as well as all the economic
and social opportunities of traditional cities.
31
Figure 2.4. The Letchworth es-
tate and the Proposed Town.
Although an agricultural belt
was provided, far less considera-
tion was given to agricultural
matters in the first garden city
experiment than Howard's writ-
ings had implied.
The fullest life, Howard maintained, could be
achieved only when human society and the
beauty of nature were enjoyed together. Along
with Edward Carpenter, William Morris, Her-
bert Rix, Robert Blatchford and many other
reformers, he believed that the potential of
human nature could only be fully realized in
contact with the natural world, through com-
munion with 'mother earth' (Fordham, 1908).
Howard's contention that basic social trans-
formation would emerge in a new physical en-
vironment produced by planning may now seem
32 ENGLISH ORIGINS
dubious, and his depiction of the polar quali-
ties of urban and rural life appears overdrawn
and even contrived, but these were his con-
sidered views and received doctrine in many
reforming circles of his time.
As a remedy for the problems of industrial
society the garden city in the form envisaged
by Howard is now regarded, perhaps correctly,
as little more than an historical curiosity.
Howard's ideas have by some been regarded
as highly advanced for his time, but by others
described as regressive and harking back to a
pre-industrial age. In fact Howard's book in-
tegrated many of the progressive reforming
currents of his time as well as drawing on the
latest technology. His major social objectives,
such as land reform, co-operativism, and the
reversal of migration flows from country to
town, were being widely debated and some
practical steps had been proposed and taken to
achieve them through voluntary and private
initiatives as well as government legislation.
Certainly in regarding rural and urban improve-
ment as a single problem Howard was no lone
prophet but a spokesman for many late Victo-
rian reformers. At the end of the nineteenth
century feelings of doubt about European ur-
ban civilization were advancing along a wide
front embracing economics, politics, culture,
leisure, manners and customs. The depth and
breadth of those misgivings are often forgotten.
There was much searching for a new way ahead
and many who hated and mistrusted cities
sought refuge in socialism or in nature, reviv-
ing the old idea that people lived the ideal life
closest to nature and that natural man was noble
not only in spirit but also in body (Blainey,
1988; Gould, 1988).
Understanding of the garden city thus re-
quires close consideration of urban and rural
conditions in England at the end of the nine-
teenth century and of the perceptions of social
issues by the reformers of that time. Exam-
ination of the social background, attitudes and
convictions of Howard himself is clearly needed
too, and recognition of the contributions of a
number of theorists and experimentalists prior
to Howard's time which were assimilated into
his writings.
HOWARD AND SOCIAL REFORMISM
Born in 1850, Howard was a Londoner by ori-
gin and upbringing, from a lower middle-class,
nonconformist background. His life was, on the
whole, rather ordinary and his career, as a short-
hand writer and official recorder of government
proceedings and commissions, undistinguished.
He won acclaim late in life through setting up
the Garden City Association in 1899 and his
subsequent efforts to build prototype garden
cities at Letchworth and Welwyn. In 1927 he
was knighted in recognition of these activities,
dying in 1928. From his youth Howard moved
in the circles of radical liberal and socialistic
reformers, making contact with, for example,
the Cadburys, W. H. Lever, Alfred Marshall,
Alfred Russel Wallace, Bernard Shaw, and
Sydney Webb. Through discussion and reading
he absorbed the long traditions of English dis-
sent and studied the various proposals made in
the nineteenth century for improved, utopian
communities to replace the industrial city and
capitalist society. His convictions were those of
moderate, common-sense socialism and he be-
came dedicated to social reform through peace-
ful methods. Marx is not mentioned in his
writings. Living in a society profoundly upset
by dynamic urbanism and class antagonism
Howard was concerned to achieve not a mere
compromise between powerful conflicting
forces but their reconciliation and combination.
At an early stage of his life the reconciliation
of religion and science interested him but his
major and enduring concerns were with social
questions. He sought not only a new balance
of town and country but harmonization of
human society with nature and reconciliation
 HOWARD AND SOCIAL REFORMISM
of individualism and socialism. In the new en-
vironment of the garden city he believed many
opposites and conflicting forces could be re-
solved and made to combine fruitfully.
Howard was not scholarly or very widely
read but, F. J. Osborn comments, he had 'a
sharp eye for anything floating around that
had relevance to his special interest' (Howard,
1946, p. 20). He was, moreover, capable of
weaving diverse ideas into an harmonious whole
and of placing his utopian vision within the
bounds of practical action by proposing a real-
istic mode of achieving his objectives. Osborn
tells us that in his spare time the young Howard,
a Congregationalist, 'moved in earnest circles
33
Figure 2.5. The Master Key. For
several years before To-morrow
was published, Howard saw this
diagram as the clearest repres-
entation of his reformist pro-
posals. Certainly it shows that
the garden city was not to be an
end in itself. However he chose
to omit this from the book, again
perhaps because some aspects
were potentially too controver-
sial, particularly the criticism of
parliamentary methods.
of nonconformist churchmen and less orthodox
religious enthusiasts, circles overlapping with
others of mild reformists who in those days
were largely concerned with the Land Question.
Henry George's Single Tax, Land Nationalisa-
tion, and many other proposals relating land
ownership and land values to the problems of
poverty and urban squalor, were the mental
food of such groups.' Nonconformism was
fertile soil for the late Victorian social gospel
(Babbington, 1979), and inspiration for ini-
tiatives as diverse as Congregationalist Minis-
ter Andrew Mearns's famous pamphlet The Cry
of Outcast London and the model settlements
of Bournville (Quaker), Aintree (Primitive
34 ENGLISH ORIGINS

Figures 2.6 and 2.7. George and Elizabeth

Cadbury. Howard was familiar with the Quaker
family's progressive ideas on community de-
velopment exemplified in their factory village
at Boumville (shown here c. 1914). George
and other members of the Cadbury family
gave much financial and other support to the
garden city movement, especially in the early
years.
 HOWARD AND SOCIAL REFORMISM 35

Figure 2.8. Sir William Heskerh Lever, seen here in relaxed mood with children from his factory garden village
at Port Sunlight. Like the Cadburys, Lever was one of many sources of progressive ideas for Howard and a provider
of material support for the movement.

Methodist), Port Sunlight (Free Churchman),
and Salvation Army rural colonies.
The idea of a carefully planned city, eco-
nomically, hygienically, visually and archi-
tecturally, Howard derived from Benjamin
Ward Richardson's Hygeia, or the City of Health
(1876) and James Silk Buckingham's imaginary,
model city of Victoria set in a large agricul-
tural estate (1849). On the common ownership
of land he followed the great Victorian phi-
losopher Herbert Spencer and the eighteenth-
century radical Thomas Spence (Rudkin, 1927);
on the securing of unearned increment or rent
for the financial support of the city rather than
private uses he is indebted to the land reformer
and economist Henry George (1879). Edward
Bellamy's best-selling utopian novel Looking
Backward (1888), with its vision of an ideal
planned future attained through the building
of new improved cities, provided the catalyst
for Howard to write his own proposals for the
creation of a new civilization. Howard ac-
knowledged that though his views corresponded
closely to those of E. G. Wakefield and Alfred
Marshall he had not read them when he wrote
To-morrow. He may simply have imbibed their
arguments and attitudes from his social circle.
Wakefield, earlier in the century, had argued
for the planning of migration and settlement
in the new colonies to achieve a balance of town
and country, industry and agriculture (Wake-
field, 1849). John Stuart Mill suggested similar
36 ENGLISH ORIGINS
Figure 2.9. Edward Bellamy, the American author of
Looking Backward (l888), the utopian novel which
greatly influenced Howard. Its British publication was
financially guaranteed by Howard.
ideas in his well known Principles of Political
Economy (1848), a book which Howard had
studied. Marshall in the 1880s emphasized the
possibilities of deconcentrating the cities at
home through the organized dispersal of in-
dustry and use of new modes of transport
(Marshall, 1884).
P. J. Waller, noting the derivative nature of
Howard's thought, rightly observes that the
list of influences can be extended to a quite
pointless length (Waller, 1983, p. 176). What
most needs to be identified and understood
is a reforming zeitgeist, a preoccupation with
the problems of life in large industrial cities,
rural revitalization and land reform, of which
Howard's work is a characteristic expression.
ATIlTUDES TO THE COUNTRYSIDE AND
URBAN IMPROVEMENT c. 1880-1920
Howard's idea of a garden city fusing the best
qualities of town and countryside was an almost
natural outgrowth of a body of reforming ideas
current in the late nineteenth and early twen-
tieth centuries. In this period attitudes to the
countryside strongly influenced both the way
reformers viewed national and urban problems
and the solutions they proposed for them. In-
deed it is often insufficiently emphasized that
many of the very reform organizations which
directly generated the town planning movement
were at least as concerned with the salvation
of the countryside and rural life as with urban
improvement. The predicament and problems
of late Victorian cities have been much publi-
cized and they were clearly of importance in
Howard's thinking. But in order fully to appre-
ciate the import of the garden city it is crucial
to understand contemporary belief in the piv-
otal place of the countryside in national life,
the main aspirations of rural reformers, the key
ideas in their thinking, and the achievements
of rural legislation.
Concern for the countryside was prompted
by diverse considerations. These included the
agitation of various rural interest groups, rang-
ing from agricultural trade unions to the Irish
Land League (Dunbabin, 1974). There were
also demands for intensified agricultural pro-
duction, often associated with fears about the
growing dependence of the nation on overseas
food supplies and the disastrous consequences
if the country were blockaded. Intensive cultiva-
tion on smallhoidings seemed to many prefer-
able to the trend towards extensive livestock
pastures (Dunbabin, 1974, p. 258; Collings,
1914). A certain pastoral nostalgia or emotional
attachment to the countryside prevailed among
some city dwellers which seemed to strengthen
as the urbanized proportion of the population
swiftly increased. Associated with this was a
revival of folk song and dancing, traditional
 ATIITUDES TO THE COUNTRYSIDE AND URBAN IMPROVEMENT c. 1880-1920 37
arts and crafts and vernacular architecture, and
the prevalence of a semi-religious belief in the
spiritual values of rural landscape and natural
beauty, perhaps partly a substitute for the de-
cline of Christian belief (Williams, 1973; Marsh,
1982,p. 6; CJould, 1988,pp. 15-28,50-51).Prob-
ably most influential, however, was the belief
that growing concentration of population in
congested, unhealthy cities was leading to dan-
gerous social unrest and physical and social de-
generation of the nation (Hansard, 1889; Wohl,
1983, pp. 329-413; Aalen, 1989). City growth
was accompanied by depopulation of agricul-
tural districts, threatening the rural way of life
which was believed to be healthier and more
wholesome and to enshrine the best moral and
social values inherited from the past. Country-
bred people tended to be seen as inherently
superior to city dwellers in health, strength,
temperament and morals. Large-scale urban-
ization was thus believed to be damaging the
welfare of the British people generally, seri-
ously impairing their capability to compete with
great power rivals on commercial and military
fronts. There were those who saw land reform
and rural welfare as vital to the international
role of Britain.
Many reformers worked to save and
strengthen rural life, proposing, for example,
schemes for checking migration from the land
or resettling city people on smallholdings in
the countryside (Collings, 1914; Miller 1892;
Prothero, 1888; Rowntree, 1911). City growth
could thereby be restrained, the slums relieved
and, simultaneously, more intensive patterns of
food production encouraged. Some believed
that the potential of rural development was so
substantial that overall rural redress could be
found for growing urban ills. 'Back to the land'
became a familiar, if rather futile slogan (Marsh,
1982). The idea had little appeal to the working
class; only a small element of the middle and
upper classes moved to the countryside (as dis-
tinct from the suburbs), usually people averse to
the elaborate social conventions of the period
and in search of a new, free, natural outdoor
life. Edward Carpenter illustrates the fashion
and W. B. Yeats spoke eloquently for it in 'The
Lake Isle of Innisfree'. It was fashionable to
love the countryside and believe that, given a
free choice, most people would live there.
Some reformers, while convinced that chronic
urban poverty and overcrowding posed a danger
to the state, were more concerned to promote
emigration to the colonies than resettlement in
the English countryside, believing that this
would reduce pressure at home and simultane-
ously strengthen the Empire. After visiting the
slum areas of east London in 1895 Cecil Rhodes
proclaimed that 'if you want to avoid civil war
you must become imperialists' (Semmel, 1960,
p. 6). Even the Marxist leader H. M. Hyndman
was a strident imperialist, believing that the
colonies were 'the special heritage of our work-
ing class' (Tsuzuki, 1961, p. 29). Some proposed
that the urban poor could provide a useful la-
bour force in the Empire especially on farms.
Others campaigned for the emigration of ex-
cess rural population directly to the colonies
before it could be corrupted by English city
life. Britain simply wished to export a problem
but the colonies of course preferred enterpris-
ing people with some means. No clear sustained
policy on emigration emerged. There were too
many uncertainties and disturbing questions.
For example, did rural migrants perhaps invig-
orate British cities whose resident population
was debilitated by overcrowding and industrial
jobs? Were the poor in the cities new rural
migrants or people who had slowly degener-
ated in an urban setting? Could emigration, if
too strongly encouraged, be dangerously se-
lective, draining away the vigorous and enter-
prising and creating race degeneracy as surely
as urban overcrowding did? (Collings, 1914).
The connection between the eradication of
ill-health and economic and military efficiency
was frequently adduced in the nineteenth cen-
tury, the idea reviving strongly after the un-
successful British campaigns in the Boer War.
38 ENGLISH ORIGINS
Around the turn of the century there was a
growing belief in the application of scientific
principles to social policy and the creation
thereby of a more rational and efficient social
order (Bellamy, 1888; Wells, 1905; Semmel,
1960; Searle, 1971). Social hygiene, later known
as social medicine, was part of this, character-
ized by Greta Jones as a broad movement which
emphasized the role of medicine, health, the
diet in improving the quality of the race (Jones,
1986). The movement included a strong eugenic
component and the mental sciences, and had
its origin in the Victorian public health and
sanitary reform movement, the hereditarian
ideas of the late nineteenth century and con-
temporary efforts to encourage physical edu-
cation and domestic science. Howard makes
no explicit reference to eugenics. However,
Voigt (1989) points out that the houses and
asylums for certain fringe groups, such as in-
ebriates and epileptics, shown in the rural sur-
roundings of Howard's garden cities (figure 1.2)
were for exactly those people which eugenists
wished to exclude from society and from further
propagation.
There was a significant anti-urban, pro-rural
bias in eugenics, and social hygiene generally.
R. A. Fisher, geneticist and secretary of the
Eugenics Society (1901), linked urbanization to
racial decay. Eugenicists generally shared the
early town planners' belief in rational, scien-
tific control of urban development and the
desire for rural preservation; and at national
and local level there was much overlapping
membership between town planning, conser-
vation and eugenist groups, illustrated in the
cases of Patrick Geddes, Seebohm Rowntree,
the Earl of Meath, and the Cadburys and
Chamberlains of Birmingham (Garside, 1988).
The People's League of Health (1917) advo-
cated social hygiene as the basis of economic
and imperial strength and its Vice-President,
the Marchioness of Aberdeen and Temair, was
an admirer of Geddes and an enthusiastic ad-
vocate of town planning and the smallholding
movement. The New Health Society begun by
Sir William Arbuthnot Lane aimed to teach
the laws of health and diet and 'to resettle
people on the land and thereby relieve the
misery and hardship due to the overcrowding
of big towns.' Resettlement on the land was
intended to allow a more natural diet and to
produce a healthier, hardier and independent
race (Jones, 1986, p. 29).
Social hygiene and the cult of national effi-
ciency were sometimes tinged with racist ideas.
Notions of social hierarchy and race merged
(Jones, 1980, pp. 148-149). The British, it was
acknowledged, were mixed racially but perhaps
some strains were unfitted to modern indus-
trial life and hence became the poor and un-
employed. Upper class and country folk were
believed to be fairer and taller than the in-
dustrial sectors of the population (Fleure, 1918;
Wetham, 1927). Did the weakest and inferior
tend to migrate to towns? Was there a racial
component involved, the short and dark going
to the cities, the fair and strong staying in rural
areas? Scientists also speculated whether the
fair type died earlier in the cities to be replaced
by the dark type, so that the British nation
would become progressively darker and less
able (Haddon, 1921; MacBride, 1924, pp. 243-
250). Such argument could easily buttress the
view that the British class system was also a
racial system. Further, if the inadequacy of the
poor rose from some deep-seated ineradicable
hereditary flaw this might justify their super-
vision and control by an elite rather than their
education and enlightenment. The Labour
movement certainly had strong reservations
about social hygiene, seeing it as something
advocated by aristocrats, churchmen and pro-
fessionals as an alternative to serious social
amelioration.
Belief in the superiority of rural life encour-
aged an interest in preserving the English
countryside from the effects of uncontrolled
urban and industrial growth (Abercrombie,
1926; Ranlett, 1983). It also reflected in planned
 HOWARD'S SOCIAL MESSAGE
decentralization of cities and the remodelling
of urban settlements on rural lines, for ex-
ample by introducing trees, open spaces, parks,
gardens, rural vernacular building styles and
village-type suburbs (Gaskell, 1980; Malchow,
1985). The poor in congested cities, it was
argued, urgently needed contact with nature
for their moral and physical welfare. The enter-
prise of London's Metropolitan Public Gardens
Association (1882) well illustrates the point.
Lord Rosebery said of the Earl of Meath, the
Association's devoted chairman, that, uncon-
trolled, he would have happily razed London
and created a large garden in its place (Aalen,
1989). H. M. Hyndman, revolutionary marxist
and founder in 1881 of the Democratic Fed-
eration, believed that socialists once in power
would have to depopulate the vast centres of
overcrowded cities where the physique of the
masses was deteriorating both materially and
physically (Howard, 1898, p. 121). Underlying
new thinking about the reorganization of settle-
ments was awareness of enlarged possibilities
for relocating residences and jobs through the
application of new technology, especially elec-
trification and the motor car, to transport, indus-
try and agriculture (Kropotkin, 1898; Marshall,
1884).
Preoccupation with rural questions thus
characterized much of the important reforming
and planning thought in Howard's time. The
fortunes of rural and urban areas were seen
as intertwined, their problems could not be
solved separately. In the 1880s Peter Kropotkin,
a considerable influence on Howard, still be-
lieved the agrarian question to be the most
critical of all, a view encouraged by his study
of Ireland (Miller, 1976, p. 186). Later, how-
ever, Kropotkin placed emphasis on the plight
of city workers as well, maintaining that the
social crisis of the time was a total one affecting
both city and countryside, industry and agri-
culture. He argued for decentralization of in-
dustry and more intensive cultivation. Industry
and farming side by side would lead to regional
39
economic self-sufficiency, a pre-requisite for
the self-governing, co-operative communities
which he believed must be the setting for future
civilization.
Mumford mistakenly maintained that in
treating rural and urban improvement as a
single problem Howard was far ahead of his
age (Howard, 1946, p. 33). But Howard wrote
emphatically in the introduction to To-morrow
that there was well-nigh universal acceptance
of this interrelationship by men of all parties
'not only in England but all over Europe and
America and our colonies.' He was obviously
exaggerating the extent of support for these
ideas, but such a claim reminds us that he was
essentially a synthesizer of pre-existing modes
of thinking rather than a lone original thinker.
Indeed G. B. Shaw initially thought that the
garden city was old hat merely and dubbed
Howard the 'garden city geyser' pedalling
familiar utopian wares. His scepticism was,
however, subsequently replaced by admira-
tion, especially of the practical efforts to build
garden cities.
HOWARD'S SOCIAL MESSAGE
Peter Hall and Robert Beevers have recently
reminded us of Howard's fundamental interest
in social change rather than in physical forms
(Hall, 1988; Beevers, 1988). The garden city
was an instrument, a peaceful path to real
reform, and in Howard's famous illustration
of the 'The Three Magnets' the final words on
the third town-and-country magnet, namely
'freedom and co-operation', were not rhetoric
but at the heart of his plan. His garden city
was to be 'a healthy, natural and economic
combination of town and country life, and this
on land owned by the municipality.' Citizen
ownership, self-government, and local man-
agement and planning of the land were crucial.
But other than the common ownership of
land there was no major restraint on individual
action. Economic and social pluralism would
40 ENGLISH ORIGINS
reign subject to no municipal control. In the
field of housing, where many reformers fav-
oured municipal enterprise, Howard favoured
housing co-operatives. However, he envisaged
that a wide range of community services, for
example churches, schools, hospitals and banks,
would be municipal undertakings. There is no
hint of paternalism or large-scale, central-state
intervention. Co-operatives could flourish and
so could private enterprise but not trade union-
ism and state socialism. The garden city was to
work on the basis of 'associated individualism';
it thus aimed, in typical Howardian style, to
reconcile two opposing social philosophies as
well as the best qualities of town and country.
In believing that men were, in considerable
measure, inherently co-operative and egalitar-
ian, Howard sided essentially with Kropotkin
and against the Social Darwinists. This, Osborn
tells us, was the essence of Howard's optimistic
outlook (Howard, 1946, p. 20). But the optim-
ism is measured. 'In every man there is some
regard for his fellows,' 'some measure of the
reforming spirit;' the social and economic en-
vironment must harness and amplify these in-
clinations (Howard, 1898, p. 139). In the flexible
and unregimented garden city, men would be
able to develop their faculties fully and freely.
Men love combined effort, but they love indi-
vidual effort too and would be discontented in
a rigid socialistic community. Human inde-
pendence, self-seeking and initiative must be
recognized and accommodated: 'The bounds of
freedom may be widened, and yet all the best
results of concert and co-operation gathered in
by a happy people' (Howard, 1989, p. 10).
Howard believed in the experimental method.
His new communities, based on compromise
and sweet reasonableness, would attract sup-
porters through their success and thus multiply;
they were to be 'the vehicles for progressive
reformation of capitalist society into an infinity
of co-operative commonwealths', spreading
eventually into remote areas (Hall, 1988, p. 87).
Howard envisaged, in effect, a third socio-
economic system destined for ultimate triumph,
made up of voluntary, semi-co-operative, self-
governing communities rooted in the land, a
system superior to Victorian-type capitalism
and bureaucratic centralized socialism. This
aspiration, characteristic of the reforming spirit
of the time, had only a short period of vitality
before being submerged by its rivals.
To replace the existing capitalist and cen-
tralized state where authority came from above,
with a new 'social' state where ultimate power
rests with the people associated in locally auto-
nomous natural units, was a wish of many
anarchists such as Proudhon, Bakunin, Reclus
and Kropotkin (Backstrom, 1974, p. 64; Joll,
1964). All argue for voluntary association and
political non-intervention, rejecting private and
state ownership as well as political action and
prophesying a world harmoniously united by
voluntary, decentralized federations of workers'
cooperatives and communes, where men could
develop their creative faculties freely. Howard's
thinking is unmistakably allied to this anarchic,
utopian tradition. So is his rejection of revolu-
tion and his resolve to work with experimental
communities and co-operatives.
For various reasons a rural setting was con-
genial, indeed indispensable, to these ideal
societies. Their desire for a fresh start de-
manded a clear break with the industrial city,
and the quest for economic self-sufficiency re-
quired access to agriculture, forestry and water
resources. Furthermore, small rural towns and
villages seemed best suited to self-government
and harmonious social relations while permit-
ting a wholesome contact with nature essential
for full, balanced development of the human
spirit. The anarchist geographer Elisee Reclus
(1830-1905), for example, argued that rela-
tionships between man and nature must be
harmonized, but that a prerequisite was the
creation of human communities living in free-
dom and harmony.
But how could small autonomous units scat-
tered over the countryside survive in modern
 HOWARD'S SOCIAL MESSAGE
industrial society? Surely they would need to
be unified in some way for purposes of over-
all coordination and national advantage? E. V.
Neale favoured a federal system for the coop-
erative communities he advocated, as did
Proudhon and Bakunin for theirs (Backstrom,
1974, p. 64). Critics of Howard's garden cities
may well have felt that the schemes were in-
operable without centralized government and
a firm regional planning authority. Would par-
liamentary powers and bold planning not be
necessary for the extension of the garden city
network just as they had been for the exten-
sion of railway enterprise? Howard argued that
problems were involved but they were no
greater than attempting to adapt and improve
old cities. Massive movement of population to
the countryside would reduce densities and land
values in the overcrowded cities and facilitate
their complete reconstruction. Slums could
be pulled down and converted into parks,
allotments and gardens. But no clear picture
emerges of how, eventually, national and re-
gional government and planning could oper-
ate along with the multitude of autonomous
communities.
Howard's thinking may well have been in-
fluenced by his experiences in America. He had
a brief adventure as a frontier farmer and a
four-year stay in Chicago, a city famous for its
public parks (Creese, 1966, pp. 150-157; Hall,
1988, p. 94; Beevers, 1988, p. 7). But his garden
city seems closest to the numerous com-
munitarian experiments in rural mid-nineteenth
century America. Only in America, Bestor
maintains, did the religious socialism of the
seventeenth century evolve without break into
the secular socialism of the nineteenth (Bestor,
1950) at which time, Kumar reminds us, there
was probably more genuine communism prac-
tised in America than in any society, at any
time, beyond the hunting and gathering stage.
Whether religious or secular, these commun-
ities generally aspired to transform society, be-
lieving themselves to be the key to America's
41
future - 'they were convinced that, if the world
could but see a successful experiment, it would
hasten to duplicate and reduplicate it - until
whole nations were covered with such com-
munities' (Kumar, 1987, p. 95). Kumar points
out that such confidence was not wholly de-
luded. At mid-century most American settle-
ments were still small, about the size of the
proposed communities and at a broadly com-
parable technical and economic level. By the
end of the century, while the communities
continued, the large scale of American indus-
trial and commercial enterprise was making any
idea of their ultimate dominance increasingly
untenable. Bellamy's Looking Backward (1888)
offered an utopia equal to the growing scale
and complexity of post-bellum America. The
small-scale experimental community, itself the
product of European theory, was displaced in
favour of the new European model of national
scientific socialism - only this could counter the
triumphant capitalism of the time. Howard was
much influenced by Bellamy, but advocates,
nevertheless, a very different utopia - small-
scale, in a rural setting and unregimented.
Communities, formed by utopian or agrarian
socialists, sectarians and anarchists, also de-
veloped in nineteenth-century Britain. Hardy
refers to approximately thirty in England alone
(Hardy, 1979). The bulk were in rural locations
and involved the working of the land. They
were small, generally short-lived, and never
became significant in practice. Communitarian
experiments were especially numerous in the
1890s, including the simple-life colonies of
the English Tolstoyeans and the Fellowship of
the New Life whose members attempted 'to
live socialism'. But the ventures soon collapsed
and veterans of the groups transferred their
allegiance to Letchworth which appeared to be
a more highly organized and promising version
of the earlier abortive schemes. The repeated
failures of utopian socialist ideas perhaps made
Englishmen particularly sceptical about them.
What was needed was a successful example.
42 ENGLISH ORIGINS
E. V. Neale found his favourite model in Guise
in France where Godin organized a famous
co-operative factory in the 1870s (Backstrom,
1974, p. 146). Many reformers admired Oneida
in New York and the Shakers, but the eccen-
tric sexual ethics of these communities (in the
former too free and in the latter too ascetic)
were unsuited for English consumption. A more
practical model was needed, acceptable to the
no-nonsense attitude of Victorian England -
something that would not 'scare the horses'.
Howard tackled this credibility problem. His
relaxed ideological approach was not too alien
to the conventional pragmatism of mainstream
English political tradition. No single principle
was pushed too far and the practical schemes
for building garden cities also won over scep-
tics such as Bernard Shaw. These things, I sug-
gest, commended the garden city to Englishmen
before any of the other numerous utopian
schemes which emerged after about 1870.
Figure 2.10. Many earlier com-
munitarianist movements trans-
ferred their allegiances to
Letchworth in the early years.
The associations with the Simple
Lifers and Food Reform move-
ments were a selling point of this
establishment (see also figure
1.4).
CO-OPERATIVISM
Beevers maintains that in his emphasis on land
as a source of wealth, on co-operation and
community, Howard harked back to a pre-
industrial age when these concepts had a real
basis in the social and economic relationships
of an agrarian economy (Beevers, 1988, p. 184).
Co-operativism, however, was widely advo-
cated and sometimes successfully practised in
nineteenth-century Britain, and believed by
many reformers to be a force with potential
eventually to squeeze out private enterprise.
By mid-century, co-operative stores were effort-
lessly multiplying in the industrial areas of
Lancashire and Yorkshire, following the ex-
ample of the Equitable Pioneers at Rochdale
and inspired by the messianic ideals prescribed
by Robert Owen. The Pioneers were initially
committed to advancing the cause of socialism
and the establishment of utopian communities.
 CO-OPERATIVISM 43

Figure 2.11. The rural estate at Letchworth. The co-operative experiments in agriculture were shortlived and
generally the undercapitalized garden city made rather less contribution to thinking about rural development than
its origins would suggest.

But this commitment soon faltered and faded
and the movement became essentially a con-
sumers' movement controlled by 'shopkeeping
capitalists', despite the sustained efforts of
E. V. Neale to restore the old socialist ideals
(Backstrom, 1974, p. 6).
Support for co-operativism came from vari-
ous directions. The Christian Socialist move-
ment, founded in alarmed reaction to Chartism
and aiming to Christianize socialism and so-
cialize Christianity, tended to promote a non-
political attitude to social reform and favoured
co-operativism and associationism as an alter-
native to capitalism and socialism (Christensen,
1962; Norman, 1986). Indeed Neale, Christian
Socialist and General Secretary of the Co-
operative Union, well represents the tendency.
Christian Socialists also showed considerable
interest in rural life and agriculture, often ad-
vocating the provision of allotments, small-
holdings and rural co-operatives. Frederick
Dennison Maurice, whose powerful book
Kingdom of Christ initiated the Christian So-
cialist movement in 1838, adhered to small-scale
co-operative enterprise and allotments for the
poor, believing that small-unit cultivation
elicited important moral virtues, especially in-
dependence. For Stewart Headlam, founder in
1877 of the Guild of St. Matthew and a disciple
of Henry George, land reform was the root
question for Christian Socialists, a cause which
he promoted with Frederick Verinder, later
General Secretary of the Land Restoration
League. Many felt that co-operatives could be
44 ENGLISH ORIGINS
beneficial for the rural poor and this proposal
was often coupled with demands for land re-
form and the provision of holdings in areas left
unproductive by landowners.
During the nineteenth century there were
many experiments in land colonization and co-
operative farming. In the high farming era of
the 1850s and 1860s they had little appeal, but
in the depressed 1880s a growing body of
opinion proposed labour colonies to train and
reform the dependent unemployed. Especially
at the end of the century, when Howard was
writing, farm colonies were a widely canvassed
solution to the problem of surplus city labour
and co-operative colonies were particularly
favoured (Hobson, 1895, pp. 102-135; Gould,
1988; Harris, 1972, pp. 124-141). Normally, the
main intention was to restore urban workmen
permanently to the land but ulterior religious
and moral objectives existed. Two distinct
strands are recognizable in the movement; one
utopian hoping for a new political and moral
order, the other disciplinary and advocating
penal places for 'misfits'. The labour colony
idea, although taken up by the Salvation Army,
never received the desired support of the state
and remained insignificant in practice.
During and immediately after the First World
War various efforts were made by the state to
settle ex-servicemen on the land in colonies
of smallholders employing some co-operative
methods. The Small Holdings (Colonies) Act
of 1916 and its 1918 amendment, an outcome
of the Verney Committee, envisaged farm
communities of 100 tenant farmers, each with
a director to supervise farming and business
organization, and the co-operative organiza-
tion of marketing, machinery and credit. The
Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries was
authorized to acquire land and establish farm
settlements for ex-servicemen either in the form
of groups of smallholdings associated with a
central demonstration farm, or on large profit-
sharing farms on which the ex-servicemen would
provide the labour force. It was very minor
legislation with a very modest outcome. By 1921
some 25,000 acres was involved and approach-
ing 1000 workers (Parliamentary Papers, 1921).
Co-operation was also mentioned in the Irish
Land (Provision for Sailors and Soldiers) Act
of 1919, but the schemes to establish large
co-operative colonies of ex-servicemen on small-
holdings all over Ireland were never imple-
mented (Aalen, 1988).
In England practical co-operation in eco-
nomic life was most successful in retailing, that
is the co-operative store. Contrary to Howard's
hopes and expectations, co-operative activity
made little headway in Letchworth and Welwyn.
The modest initiatives in co-operative agricul-
ture and housing were short-lived. It was soon
found that economic development depended
on the attraction of capitalist enterprises and
that this would not occur unless the garden
city enterprise was decisively separated from
socialism. In effect the Howardian ideal was
soft-pedalled, undermined, and, ultimately, sub-
merged by the weight of practical considera-
tions of survival (Beevers, 1988).
LAND REFORM
Howard's key aim of restoring people in large
numbers to the land in improved settlements
and on smallholdings could hardly be achieved
without land reforms. He wanted a new system
of land tenure with the municipality owning the
land leasing it to the citizens whose rents would
be used in the interests of the municipality. Dis-
cussion of this issue indeed occupies the main
part of To-morrow. Howard's approach is close
to that of the eighteenth-century radical Thomas
Spence who had argued that rents should every-
where be levied by the local community, not
the state. It was the marxist H. M. Hyndman,
founder of the Democratic Federation, who,
under Henry George's inspiration dug out and
republished Spence's work in 1882 (Hyndman,
1882). Howard acknowledged his debt to
Spence but differed from him in his proposed
 LAND REFORM
method of introducing tenurial change. Spence
wanted the new system introduced at once by
government fiat. Howard, characteristically,
wanted incremental, voluntary change.
Demand for land reform had persisted, with
varying intensity and for different reasons,
for centuries. It was pressed for example by
the seventeenth-century Levellers, by Thomas
Spence, the Chartists and the Anti-Corn Law
League in the 1830s and 1840s and John Stuart
Mill's Land Tenure Reform Association of
1869. In the 18805 the whole land question came
to the fore with the onset of the Great De-
pression (Dunbabin, 1974, p. 258; Read, 1979,
pp. 472-475; Douglas, 1976). The general trend
towards less intensive cultivation, from arable
to pasture, was regarded by many as disastrous
and immoral, coinciding with quickened mi-
gration from country to towns, which not only
reduced the financial capacity of rural landlords
to undertake improvements but swelled the
pools of casual labour in towns thus generally
alarming urban workers, adding to housing
shortages and aggravating slum conditions.
'Grass in the country and slumdom in the towns
are cause and effect' wrote Jesse Collings, Lib-
eral MP and a leading voice on rural affairs
(Collings, 1914, p. 135). Simultaneously, Ireland
came to the boil with landlordism at the centre
of the unrest, while Scotland and Wales also
saw vigorous land reform movements con-
cerned with Highland crofting and the tithe
issue, respectively. Intertwined with national-
ism, land reform had major and disturbing
political implications. Among many social re-
formers the 'land question' was perceived as
critical to the fortunes of cities and the country-
side. Numerous inter-related problems seemed
to stem from the land, including the recovery
of farming, provision of land for rural employ-
ment schemes, rural repopulation in general,
and ordered urban development, indeed the full
requirements of town and country planning.
Many reformers believed that superfluous la-
bour could be successfully placed on underused
45
land, especially if co-operative efforts were
involved.
Ideas for rural reform surfaced in consider-
able variety and were sometimes incompatible.
Peasant proprietorship was to the fore in Ire-
land but not by any means the only idea in
circulation there. In Britain the main notion of
the reformers which gained particular currency
was communal ownership of land, a doctrine
which developed in contrasting ways. Three
main kinds of rural demand are recognizable.
First, for allotments to supplement the wages
of rural labourers; secondly for smallholdings
or co-operative farms making their owners
independent of the neighbouring farmers, and,
thirdly, wholesale division of the land extin-
guishing traditional rights. Those seeking ex-
treme forms of intervention divided into several
groups: some sought nationalization; others
municipalization; some conceded compensation,
others not. With the publication of Progress
and Poverty in 1879 Henry George's ideas,
not of nationalization strictly but rather state
appropriation of economic rent (the unearned
increment created not by the effort of land-
owners but by society at large), were much
debated, influencing Howard and a wide spec-
trum of reformist thought.
Orthodox Georgist ideas were propagated in
England by the Christian Socialist-inspired
English Land Restoration League (first called
the Land Reform Union) established in the
early 1880s. They sought a single reform, the
land tax ('the taking of all ground rent for
public purposes '), which they believed would
itself transform society (Douglas, 1976, p. 46).
Howard himself, though he was interested
in (and drew on) all strands of land reformist
thinking, had the closest affinity with the ideas
of the nationalizers. He was well acquainted
with Alfred Russel Wallace, the eminent sci-
entist who became the principal ideologist of
the nationalizers and moving spirit in the for-
mation of the Land Nationalisation Society in
1881. Howard was attracted by the mixture of
46 ENGLISH ORIGINS

N·3.

Figures 2.12 and 2.13. The land reform associations of Howard's ideas are strongly suggested in rhe unpublished
draft of one of the diagrams ftom his books (figure 2.12). Notice the emphasis on land economics in the original
and the slogan 'Go Up and Possess the Land', which echoes the semi-religious character of much land reform
activity. All this was omitted in the published version (figure 2.13).

gradualism and radicalism that Wallace and his
followers proposed (Beevers, 1988, pp. 37,71).
And in turn the nationalizers were attracted
to Howard's concept of the collectively-owned
garden city. Thus the Land Nationalisation So-
ciety provided an initial nucleus of members
for the Garden City Association when it was
formed in 1899. The Association also received
much early support from the Society, including
the provision of its first premises and secre-
tarial assistance. Overall then the role of the
Land Nationalisation Society in the early his-
tory of the garden city idea was particularly
important and warrants closer examination.
Land nationalization could simply mean
compulsory acquisition of portions of land by
public authorities for immediate use as allot-
ments, parks or roads. But it had a broader
application, namely the extinguishing of private
ownership altogether. This was the cause cham-
pioned by Wallace and the Land Nationalisa-
tion Society. Wallace had started his career as
a surveyor working on parish surveys for tithe
commutation, railways and enclosure schemes
which he described as an 'all-embracing system
of land robbery' which should be legally rec-
tified (Wallace, 1908, p. 84). His ethnological
researches and increasing sympathy for the so-
cialist ideas of Robert Owen (and later Edward
Bellamy) led him to condemn the western con-
cept of private property in land, notably at the
end of his book Malay Archipelago, published
in 1869 (Wallace, 1908, pp. 319-322). John
Stuart Mill was impressed and recruited him
into the short-lived Land Tenure Reform As-
sociation in 1870.
Wallace's political interest in land reform
was subsequently strengthened by the great
debate on Irish landlordism in 1879-80. He
opposed the Irish Land League's proposal that
the government should buyout the landlords
and convert existing tenants into peasant pro-
prietors, since it would simply leave all the land
in the possession of a privileged farming class,
disinheriting the rest of the population. Instead
he proposed a practical method to implement
land nationalization in 1880. All land would
gradually revert to the state but improvements
 LAND REFORM
or increased value would be paid for by new
state tenants at fair valuation. The state would
collect a ground rent and state tenants would
be as free as the freeholder had been. Several
reformers (such as A. C. Swinton, G. B. Clark
and R. Estcourt) were attracted to these pro-
posals as a method of applying Herbert Spen-
cer's great principle, redressing the inequity of
private property. As president of the new Land
Nationalisation Society, Wallace was instru-
mental in the formulation of a full programme
of measures and authored an important hand-
book entitled Land Nationalisation; its Neces-
sity and its Aims (1882) which went through
several editions.
Like the Georgists, Wallace long believed
that land reform of the kind he proposed was
enough; if achieved no other fundamental re-
forms were possible or necessary. The plentiful
provision of rural plots that would accompany
land nationalization would cause people to
flood back to the country from the town, strik-
ing at the very heart of both rural and urban
problems. Such thinking was of course entirely
typical of many of the land reformers and found
strong echoes in Howard's project for the gar-
den city. However Wallace's thinking changed
when he read Edward Bellamy's book Look-
ing Backward in 1889. This book, which had a
huge impact on Howard's own ideas, intensified
Wallace's already increasing engagement with
socialism and convinced him of the need for a
thoroughgoing reorganization of society. Hence-
forth land nationalization was to be a part,
albeit a key part, of a wider programme of
radical reform. Again there are striking parallels
with Howard as his own thinking on the gar-
den city idea crystallized in the late 1880s and
1890s.
The Land Nationalisation Society, like the
Land Restoration League, was essentially an
urban-based movement concerned with rural
conditions, sending its lecturers out into the
countryside. At first few people perceived how
radical land reform could be applied to the
47
cities, but the introduction of representative
local government increased public interest in
local affairs and brought such questions to
prominence. In the late 1880s the idea of urban
land reform became one of general interest as
rising urban land values provoked anti-landlord
feeling and municipalities needed to increase
revenue to meet their growing investment in
public utilities and other works (Waller, 1983,
pp. 261-263). This more direct linkage of land
reformism and urban problems was also im-
portant in giving a wider potential relevance to
Howard's ideas.
Overall then the various land reform move-
ments, particularly the land nationalizers, had
an important influence on the early develop-
ment of the garden city idea. The 1880s were
a crucial decade in the development of land
reformism as the vaguer ideas of earlier years
were translated into realistic programmes of
action, partly as a response to the enfranchise-
ment of rural labourers under the third Reform
Act of 1884. Important items from the land
reform agenda such as the provision of allot-
ments and smallholdings were enacted in legis-
lation in 1887 and 1891, respectively. Although
Conservative political domination limited the
impulse for further legislative successes until
the post-1906 Liberal governments, the land
reformers continued to be in the forefront of
reformist thinking into the new century, espe-
cially in their new engagement with the urban
land question. In the long term it is clear that
land reform never achieved its apparent poten-
tial. Even the Liberals, who espoused land
reform with great enthusiasm after 1900 (Briggs,
1961; Emy, 1971), failed to enact the key ele-
ments of the land reform programme in the
years before the First World War. After 1914
land became an altogether more peripheral
reform issue. But for Howard, whose garden
city idea was formulated in the heyday of land
reformism, it was entirely natural to base his
proposals to change the world mainly on a
gradual re-ordering of land tenure within a rural
48 ENGLISH ORIGINS
setting. As such it was a vision which inherited
many of the conceptual and practicallirnitations
of the land reform movement, again necessit-
ating early compromises in its implementation.
CONCLUSIONS
The last two decades of the nineteenth century
were years of considerable social and adminis-
trative progress in many spheres, brought about
by government legislation, 'municipal socialism'
and voluntary effort. Three major strands of
reform - housing, social, and rural or land re-
form - came together, making the period a
pivotal one in the history of environmental
regulation and planning. Perhaps the least in-
vestigated and understood strand is the rural
one. But concern with rural questions deeply
influenced the whole tenor of late Victorian and
Edwardian radicalism.
Howard's garden city proposals strongly re-
flect the preoccupations of contemporary re-
formers with revitalization of rural life and
repeopling of the countryside as a means of
ameliorating city problems, improving national
vigour and efficiency and creating a new and
superior civilization. Land reform, land nation-
alization and taxation, allotments and small-
holdings, co-operative endeavour, autonomous
rural communities controlled in size and care-
fully planned, all of these elements were the
common currency of rural reformers and are
found in Howard's thinking. If, as has been
widely maintained, Howard is the key figure in
modem British town planning, then the begin-
ning of the movement clearly lies not only in a
response to the conditions of the late Victorian
city, but to the plight of the countryside and
belief in the interconnections of urban and rural
fortunes.
The impact of rural reformers on the English
countryside was very modest. Agitation for rural
reform and renewal, despite its vigour, had
surprisingly little influence. F. M. L. Thompson
remarks that alone among the great Victorian
movements the land reform campaign pos-
sesses no great monuments (Thompson, 1965,
p. 23). This indeed may account for our fre-
quent under-estimation of the importance at-
tached to rural issues in Howard's time.
Rural reforms could be blocked effectively
by the landed classes with whom political power
rested far into the rise of modem society. More-
over, in England the demand for reform was
largely generated by intellectuals and politicians
and received only modest support from rural
people among whom there was no violent dis-
content. Rural reformers often based their
policies on misunderstandings about rural con-
ditions and the causes of rural depopulation.
They ignored or underemphasized the fact that
rural housing was generally inferior to urban,
urban wages higher, and urban working hours
shorter. To young people the perceived social
advantages of the towns were normally deci-
sive. On economic grounds the allotments and
smallholdings policy was dubious. Even in co-
operatives or with public credit it was question-
able whether peasant proprietors could exceed
the productivity of large tenant farms.
In Ireland and Highland Scotland, where
peasant attachment to the soil was still power-
ful and industrialization slight, the situation was
very different. Land reform was a highly charged
political issue resulting in major legislation. The
significance of Irish solutions to England was
theoretically tempting but hardly realistic, since
rural land in England was not remotely a revo-
lutionary issue.
During the great period of change between
1880 and the First World War reforming move-
ments which emphasized the importance of
the countryside in national life were soon out-
moded by the very pace of economic and so-
cial development. By the end of the nineteenth
century the English masses were already re-
conciled to the cities and urban life steadily
transmuting older habits and attitudes. Socialist
opinion ran strongly against utopian and back
to nature sentiments, with which it had earlier
 CONCLUSIONS 49

sometimes been allied, and increasingly ac-

cepted the need to reform life in the industrial
city along Bellamy's lines rather than Howard's.
Facilitated by tram and railway the suburban-
ization of the countryside had begun in earnest,
blurring the old distinction between urban and
rural life which had been so central to Howard's
thinking. Moreover, with massive growth and
consolidation of the British industrial/urban
system, agriculture declined markedly in ab-
solute importance and the idea of any general
rural redress for national urban problems gen-
erally lost credibility. Throughout the interwar
period, however, there was in some circles a
lingering interest in rural development as a
solution for unemployment problems in Eng-
land (Herbert, 1935; Briggs, 1961). The con-
cerns of town planners came to focus on the
cities and in particular their suburbs; country-
side problems tended to be separated from
urban and relegated to a subordinate status.
Even at Letchworth and Welwyn, although the
fostering of smallholdings was discussed' espe-
cially under the stimulus of Thomas Adams
(Adams, 1905), there was a failure to develop Figure 2.14. Thomas Adams (1871-1940) was the first
any positive policy for the surrounding farm- estate manager at Letchworth. Though personally very
land, and agriculture as an integral part of interested in rural reform questions, other priorities
garden city economy was lost sight of; in its meant he made little headway.
place there arose the concept of the buffer
green belt. Howard saw with regret that the
new framework of local government divorced planning movement, or at least some influential
town from countryside and was unsuited to his members of it, a visionary quality and sense of
solution of the city's problems. Future admin- purpose which never quite evaporated. English
istrative units, he felt, would have to embrace rural society was eventually transformed but
both urban and rural aspects of the region. not in the way envisaged by reformers, indeed
The garden city, at least in its full Howardian land and agrarian reforms had little part in
form, soon became an anachronism, resting it. Paradoxically, it is probable that the main
as it did on notions of a transformed society legacy of the rural reformers was in the town
produced by a union of town and country and planning movement, in garden city ideals and
by cooperative endeavour about both of which the zeal for introducing rural elements into the
the twentieth century has been largely in- towns and suburbs, such as trees, gardens,
credulous. Even at Letchworth and Welwyn parks, parkways, and green belts. City gardens
Howard's ideas were far from realized and the became a reality, but not the garden city.
social aspects almost completely ignored. How- Despite its deeply English pedigree the
ever, Howard's high social aims gave the town garden city soon became international currency,
50 ENGLISH ORIGINS
interesting and inspiring planners in very varied
contexts and emerging in many guises. Unfor-
tunately, both in England and abroad the term
'garden city' was frequently applied loosely to
mere housing developments of an open or
planted character, especially those in suburban
extensions. Such usage was highly imprecise,
since few of these developments had any serious
resemblance to Howard's original concept.
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 3
THE FRENCH GARDEN CITY
Jean Pierre Gaudin
Since the late nineteenth century, the growth
and outward expansion of French towns had
typically followed a high-density pattern, mod-
elled on the Parisian immeuble de rapport
(apartment house). However in the immediate
aftermath of World War I, many politicians and
professionals believed that the circumstances
created opportunities for a new urban pattern.
At the time France, in common with other
European countries, was facing a serious hous-
ing problem. A considerable pre-existing short-
age was worsened by wartime destruction and
disruption of normal building activity. The
bourgeois dominated governments of the period
believed that low-cost housing developments
would be a politically acceptable response to
the problem that would not seriously com-
promise private interests. In this context the
garden city idea, which had become known in
France before World War I, began to have a
marked impact on French housing and plan-
ning policies.
Superficially the impact of garden city
thinking on French practice was rather limited.
Thus the cites jardins which were developed
around Paris bore only a limited relationship
to Howard's original ideals or the examples that
were being developed in Britain and elsewhere.
However, rather than simply accepting and
perhaps regretting such conventional judge-
ments, it is important to examine the processes
of understanding and misunderstanding of the
garden city idea in France. Two main levels can
be envisaged for this. The first involves asking
what the garden city movement physically
achieved in France. Answering this involves
investigating the movement's French supporters
and the way they understood Howard's ideas
and/or adapted them to their own concerns and
to the French context. This involved the inter-
national diffusion of ideas, intellectual relations
and the way the ideas were exported from their
point of origin. However it also depended very
much on economic and social constraints, par-
ticularly those specific to the French situation.
This kind of analysis however remains par-
tial unless garden city theory is also related to
the political perspectives and trends during the
Third Republic in France. In moving to this
second level of analysis, it becomes possible to
identify the garden city as a matrix for social
regulation. Essentially it can be understood as
a settlement scheme allowing both control of
the working class and confirmation of a rising
middle class. Overall however the garden city
model appears as a strong community pattern
that contributed some broader perspectives
to the emergence of statutory planning. It also
stimulated some significant local challenges
within French political life. Overall, therefore,
this chapter seeks a more sophisticated under-
standing of the French engagement with the
garden city idea, linking together urban history
and political science.
 THE GARDEN CITY AND INDUSTRIAL PATERNALISM 53

THE GARDEN CITY AND INDUSTRIAL

PATERNALISM

The garden city model soon became known

in France, both through Howard's book and
the first experiments in Britain and the United
States. Two rather different social and political
groups made up the early supporters. On one
side were important industrialists and advocates
of paternalist schemes of social improvement.
On the other were moderate socialists who were
concerned to find the 'peaceful path to real
reform' promised by Howard in the subtitle to
To-morrow. Pursuing their own concerns and
objectives, both these groups adapted or trans-
formed Howard's reformist project in ways that
related more closely to their own perceptions
of the French situation.
One of the main supporters associated with
the paternalistic industrialists was the reformer
Georges Benoit-Levy. Along with other mem-
bers of his family, Benoit-Levy was very inter-
ested in developing cheap and popular loans
to encourage home ownership. These and other
urban reform interests attracted him to the
garden city idea, though he adopted what, by
British standards, was a wide and rather lax Figure 3.1. The charming cover of Georges Benoit-
Levy's La Cite Jardin, originally published in 1904. This
definition. Nonetheless his articles and books,
second edition appeared in 1911.
notably La cite jardin originally published in
1904 (Benoit-Levy, 1911) and Les cites jardins
d'Amerique (1905) were amongst the first founded in 1894 (Sutcliffe, 1981, pp. 148-150).
French discussions of the garden city idea This had brought together civil servants, poli-
(Sutcliffe, 1987). He soon became leader of the ticians and industrialists in one of those re-
Association Fran{:aise des Cites Jardins, and was forming clubs that are unique to the French
successively its Secretary and President. tradition. Their concern was the gathering of
The Association had been founded in 1903 comprehensive information about industrial
by two prominent social reformers and advo- relations, popular housing and working-class
cates of co-operation, Charles Gide and Charles life. The Musee Social had sponsored much of
Rist. As an organization it always looked wider the earliest interest in the garden city idea in
than the purist ideal of the garden city and was France and had financed Benoit-Levy's early
generally interested in the emergent activity study visits to Britain and the United States
of town planning. Thus it took part in the im- that formed the basis of his books on garden
portant exhibition, La cite moderne, at Nancy cities.
in 1913. Its formation owed much to an older Other prominent members of the Musee
established organization, the Musee Social, social who later became associated with the
54 THE FRENCH GARDEN CITY
Figure 3.2. Georges Risler (1853-1941), a retired in-
dustrialist and social reformer, was one of the leading
French pioneers in applying garden city ideas to plan-
ning and social housing.
French garden city movement were Georges
Risler and Jules Siegfried. Risler, a cotton
manufacturer with a great interest in working-
class housing, was a co-founder of the Asso-
ciation Fran(:aise des Cites Jardins. He became
one of the leaders of the movement for urban
planning in France and was president of the
Commission Superieure de l'Amenagement des
Villes. He was also closely involved in building
societies as president of the Societe Centrale de
Credit Immobilier.
Jules Siegfried was an extremely influential
industrialist reformer. As Mayor of Le Havre he
had brought some of his industrial philanthropy
to local administration. Later he had been ac-
tive in national politics and was responsible for
Figure 3.3. Advertisement (c.1912) for Ma Bicoque, a
garden city-inspired co-operative society set up to de-
velop a settlement of cottages with individual gardens
in former chateau grounds at Orly.
many early initiatives in the provision of low-
cost housing (habitations a bon marche) in-
cluding the 1894 housing legislation and the
establishment of the Societe de Credit des
Habitations a Bon Marche (Risler, 1937, p. 5).
Siegfried was also the first President of the
Musee Social and was responsible for the set-
ting up of a special Section d'Hygiene Urbaine
et Rurale of the Musee in 1908 to discuss the
emergent agenda of town planning and urban
reform. The Section provided an important
setting for the advancement of these topics
and was intensely active, covering a wide range
of subjects including green belts, public re-
coupment of betterment and public amenities.
Before 1919 discussions and proposals focused
 SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC REFORMERS AND THE GARDEN CITY 55

particularly on the destruction and future use

of the Paris fortifications and the new legisla-
tion on town planning then being discussed in
Parliament.
Figures such as Benoit-Levy, Siegfried, Risler
and their associates in the Musee SociaL were
attracted to the garden city idea as a pattern
for urban housing. The idea permeated their
discussions about the improvement of urban
living conditions. The garden city's emphasis
on low-density housing for factory workers
seemed to them to retain many of the advant-
ages of rural life within an industrial setting. In
effect, they saw the garden city as the natural
heir to the paternalistic experiments of some
steel and textile industrialists in the nineteenth
century. To them it appeared to offer great
advantages in the ordering of working-class
living, placing great emphasis on family values
and morality and setting high standards of
public hygiene and health. However another
set of reformers were attracted to the garden
city for somewhat different reasons.
Figure 3.4. The socialist, Henri Sellier (1883-1943), was
SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC REFORMERS AND the driving force behind the Parisian cites jardins and is
particularly associated with Suresnes.
THE GARDEN CITY
An important element of support for the garden of Suresnes throughout virtually all the inter-
city came from a group of moderate left-wing war period. In 1936 he became Minister of
local and national politicians. Less formally Health in the Popular Front government.
organized than the paternalists of the Musee Sellier represented the social democratic wing
SociaL, they were dominated by the socialist of the French socialist movement, a wing which,
mayors from the industrial suburbs of the main as Sellier's own career suggests, adopted a very
conurbations. Much the most important figure positive attitude to involvement in local politics.
of this group was Henri Sellier, who achieved At the beginning of the twentieth century two
international prominence by his membership divergent tendencies on the question of local
of the International Garden Cities and Town self-government became apparent within the
Planning Federation. Originally a trade union- many socialist movements then existing in
ist, Sellier became an active local politician. France. One tendency, led by Jules Guesde
At various times he was a member of the Seine and the Parti Ouvrier Franrais, adopted class
departmental council (Conseil GeneraL de La struggle and organized its strategy towards the
Seine) for the commune of Puteaux, in the conquest of the central state. They showed very
western suburbs of Paris, and became one of little interest in questions of city administration
the socialist leaders of that council. He was also and local politics. However the other tendency,
mayor of the neighbouring suburban commune which developed into the social democratic
56 THE FRENCH GARDEN CITY

reform movement, was very concerned about

local collective consumption issues, housing and
co-operatives. This group, some of them sig-
nificantly calling themselves the possibilistes,
began to win local elections at the turn of the
century and became very active in questions of
social housing and town planning. This period
marked an important crossroads between ac-
tion and doctrinal conceptualization for these
politicians and militants. The choices between
a pursuit of radical social reforms and the more
gradualist and pragmatic route implied by town
planning were important options that were
being considered and tested at this time. Within
this context they also adopted and transformed
the garden city model, not so much in theory
as in practice.
Auguste Bruggeman, for example, was the
'guardian of the temple' of garden city theory.
He was very close to Henri Sellier and very
much his follower in the teaching and plan-
ning fields. During the 1920s he became first
general secretary then Professor at the Institut
d'Urbanisme de Paris. Later he became a mem- Figure 3.5. Sellier and his associates linked their inter-
ber of the EcoLe Superieure d'Art Public. This pretation of the garden city to a new model of com-
was a school for training in town planning munity and citizenship for the chaotic Paris suburbs, in
founded during World War I with the involve- effect preferring Howard's social reformist message to
ment of many refugee architects from occupied the usual environmental prescription, Particular emphasis
was placed on educating the young to appreciate their
Belgium who played an important part in the place in the wider world,
diffusion of German and British experiences
(Uyttenhove, 1990). On the basis of his activities
in these roles and as a member of the board
of the International Garden City and Town during the research and discussion of the mas-
Planning Federation, Bruggeman's teachings ter plan for the Paris region, the so-called Prost
and writings remained very close to Howard's PLan, initiated in 1932 (Evenson, 1979, pp. 332-
book. 336). Nor was this the only practical compro-
Such attitudes were not unique among the mise of the garden city model evident in France.
left wing propagandists of the garden city idea Thus nowhere in local planning exercises was
in France. In practice however politicians such the cite jardin employed with any reference to
as Sellier and other socialist mayors of the in- the radical solutions of the land and better-
dustrial suburban communes moved the garden ment questions that were integral to Ebenezer
city model firmly into the existing municipal Howard's original garden city project.
framework. Sellier himself played a key role in In fact the leftist celebration of the cite jardin
this process in his capacity as a key member of in France paradoxically remained dissociated
the Conseil GeneraL de La Seine, especially from those reformers who were interested in
 GARDEN SETTLEMENTS AND SATELLITE SUBURBS
land nationalization (or municipalization) and
in the public recoupment of betterment. Some-
what different professional and political alle-
giances were apparent amongst those who
proposed such land reformism. They included,
for example, Augustin Rey, a member of the
Musee Social, an architect and hygienist who
worked for the Rothschild Foundation in Paris
on its social housing projects. Rey had been a
delegate to the major London town planning
conference (organized by the Royal Institute
of British Architects) in 1910 and author of a
book published in 1928 entitled La science des
plans de villes. Another prominent supporter
of land reform of rather different political per-
suasion was the socialist militant and socio-
logist Maurice Halbwachs, a professor at the
University of Strasbourg who had written a
thesis in 1908 on land prices in Paris since the
Haussmann period. However although such
bourgeois reformers and the more radical so-
cialists were drawn into moves for land reform,
there was little practical interest from the
moderate social democratic reformers who were
so attracted to the garden city project. This im-
portant dissociation was a sign of pragmatism
rather than because such elements in Howard's
thinking were overlooked or forgotten. To
understand the roots of this it is necessary to
examine how the cite jardin was implemented.
GARDEN SETTLEMENTS AND
SATELLITE SUBURBS
The relatively few examples of cites jardins
developed in France between the wars reveal
serious distortions of Howard's model. These
were caused either by the strength of the pater-
nalist settlement pattern among conservative
ranks or by the pragmatic limits of the pro-
gressives' municipal initiatives. The paternalists
were attracted particularly to the idea of garden
housing which the garden city model offered.
Thus Benoit-Levy, the importer of the garden
city idea, soon made contact with the promoters
57
of jardins ouvriers (allotments). This was a
movement which wished to bring a garden to
each worker, within plots grouped near apart-
ment dwellings, making the garden comple-
mentary to the home. In this context, the most
appealing aspect of the garden city idea was
obviously its emphasis on garden housing, which
was what attracted Benoit-Levy, Risler and
many social catholics, ,,:ho sought reforms to
protect traditional family values. In typical
paternalist fashion the garden was supposed to
stimulate welfare with the self-production of
vegetables and morality, spending time in the
garden rather than in less uplifting leisure
pursuits.
Underlining this viewpoint, some social hous-
ing agencies, notably the Comite Departemental
des Habitations Ii Bon Marche de la Seine, pro-
moted competitions to develop green cites jardins
on such lines. As an approach it had much in
common with some nineteenth-century indus-
trialists in steel and coal mining who had built
company towns in the north and east of France.
The same pattern was continued, with closer
reference to the garden city tradition, by the
large railway companies until the middle of this
century (Sellier and Bruggeman, 1927, pp. 53-
60). Thus the Compagnie du Nord for example
built large green cites for its employees de-
signed by the engineer Raoul Dautry, who in
1945 became Minister of Reconstruction and
Planning.
In the 1913 town planning exhibition, La cite
moderne, at Nancy, noted above, cites jardins,
understood as garden settlements, were evident
in many city planning projects. The Commission
de [,Extension de Paris, working from 1911 to
1913, which was the first attempt to consider
the overall pattern of development in Paris and
its suburbs together, also made similar pro-
posals (Cohen and Lortie, 1989). After the
war the reconstruction plans for the medium-
sized industrial towns, such as Reims, typically
included several cites jardins. In Reims itself,
where paternalistic catholic ideas were very
58 THE FRENCH GARDEN CITY
powerful, some of these proposals were imple-
mented (Vaxellaire, 1981). Rentals of cite jardin
dwellings were typically linked to employment
in specific firms. In such circumstances the
paternalist version of the French interpretation
of the garden city appears as a strategy to
maintain the model of the semi-rural worker.
The garden city question was soon seen to
have a particular relevance for the Paris region
(Bastie, 1964). The sheer size of the conurbation,
the intensity of migration into the suburban
areas and the horrors of the lotissement (sub-
division) system, whereby individual working-
class and lower middle-class families built
simple houses or hovels on unserviced lots pur-
chased from speculative land companies, were
obvious recommendations for a theory that
offered a more ordered approach. In 1919 the
public competition for a Paris extension plan
served to highlight proposals for satellite cities.
Figure 3.6. The garden city
cottage ideal as embodied in
the architects' impressions of
Les Lilas, one of the earliest
Parisian cites jardins developed
by the Office Public des Habita-
tions a Bon Marche de fa Seine,
in the early 1920s. Most of the
285 houses were demolished in
1973 because of constructional
problems.
The winning project designed by the architects
Raoul Dautry and Marcel Auburtin proposed
such a development for La Courneuve, in the
north eastern suburban fringe of Paris. However
there remained a problem over who would
implement such ambitious plans for new garden
cities around Paris. Sellier was frank about his
own pragmatic approach, even as early as 1920:
'The objective,' he wrote then, 'is not the real
garden city but new districts planned in order to
fight high population density' (Nicoulaud, 1987).
The Conseil General de la Seine became the
main implementing agent of this kind of plan-
ning and housing policy, on account of its
important earlier purchases of land. In the
1920s, small garden settlements such as Les
Lilas and Draney were designed and developed
in a manner very reminiscent of Raymond
Unwin's approach. However the pattern shifted
and by the 1930s larger cites jardins like
 GARDEN SETTLEMENTS AND SATELLITE SUBURBS 59

Figure 3.7. Drancy was developed at the same time as Les Lilas. The closeness of the French interpretation of the
garden city idea in these years to Unwin's garden suburb model is clearly evident in this view taken in 1991.

Chatenay-Malabry and Plessis-Robinson were attention to the provision of communal fa-

being developed. These dramatically diluted
the Unwin-style informality in the Arts and
Crafts tradition with more formalist designs that
derived from the Beaux Arts approach, while
also incorporating elements of Modernism.
Rather higher residential densities of ninety or
more units per hectare were produced, partly
in blocks of flats. Nearly 14,000 such flats were
built during the interwar period, especially in
the 1930s.
Overall even the most complete examples fell
well short of 'real' garden cities. As well as the
retreat from the pure pattern of low-density
cottage housing, there were fundamental short-
comings apparent on account of the absence of
local employment and the inadequacy of pub-
lic transport links. On the other hand, careful
cilities and amenities was evident, and public
ownership of the land ensured that betterment
was retained in collective hands. However the
development of the cites jardins remained very
constrained by lack of funds, especially during
the Great Depression, and the overall level of
public intervention remained very limited. More
far reaching intervention was also prevented
by the political opposition of conservative forces
within Parliament and the courts, especially the
Conseil d'Etat (Gaudin, 1985). Overall there-
fore these cite jardin experiments appear as
modestly planned suburban areas with partial
reference to the garden city model.
We must now attempt to locate the garden
city movement and its particular outcomes
within the French political situation of the time.
60 THE FRENCH GARDEN CITY

Figure 3.8. Low-density cottage cites jardins were also developed between the wars by Habitations it Bon Marchi
offices in provincial France. This example is at Troyes, completed in 1933.

POLITICAL DIMENSIONS: restrictive because the garden city idea also

SOCIAL CONTROL
We have seen that the transformations, distor-
tions and misunderstanding of the garden city
idea in France were considerable. Such shifts
are, of course, not uncommon when the export
and international diffusion of ideas is involved.
However the drift away from the original model
appears more serious in France than among
European neighbours such as Germany or
Belgium (Smets, 1977) or even some distant
countries like Australia (see Chapter 6), if less
serious than in Japan (Chapter 4). But we
should not make the mistake of seeing the
garden city as merely a design reference in
France. In fact the diagnosis cannot be so
found a place in the larger political debates at
the beginning of the century, when different
public policies were being considered to regu-
late urban life.
Thus as statutory planning emerged in France
references to the garden city were often put
forward. The two ideas of the cite jardin and
town planning were often associated, the first
as a pre-condition for the second (Risler, 1912).
After the Cornudet Act on compulsory town
planning was passed in 1919 a new generation
of professional urbanists, mostly architects and
surveyors, often planned cites jardins in their
projects. So the original model of social reform
(Iaurif, 1978) soon reformulated as a number
of variants of housing design, gave way to some
 POLITICAL DIMENSIONS: SOCIAL CONTROL 61

Figure 3.9. The northern industrial areas saw a good deal of cite jardin development before and after World War
I, building on a strong tradition of industrial paternalism. This example in Douai was developed between the wars
by the office of the Habitations a Bon Marcile du Nord.

interesting experiments especially in the Paris
region. These included street design, Arts and
Crafts architecture, landscape planting etc. The
garden city reference was also a useful way to
legitimate functional zoning within French town
planning. In addition, it was a way to justify
housing segregation (and especially workers'
settlements) as a hygienic and social improve-
ment, as is noticeable in some of the plans
elaborated by the Union Urbaniste (Gaudin,
1988).
But the impact of the garden city model did
not only involve shaping the evolution of hous-
ing and town extension. As an ideal, its em-
phasis on localism and local solidarities as the
basis of a new fabric of society provided im-
portant support for those reformers who were
seeking new social directions in early twentieth-
century France and who saw such opportunities
in the dimension of the local community. As-
sociated in practice with single-family garden
housing, such an approach could either lead
to classic regulatory control of populations or
inspire new, more democratic, projects. At the
point when French reformers encountered the
garden city idea, French social housing, which
had developed out of philanthropic paternalism
and social catholic or protestant movements,
was imbued with a social control logic. And
even after the First World War, French housing
reformers and public agencies continued to
dream of single-family detached or semi-
detached houses with private or shared green
space, even if there was no mass programme
on the British pattern (Swenarton, 1981).
This kind of view was apparent, with some
adjustments, in many French cites jardins. With-
in these settlements, social control operated
through family surveys and housing design.
Dwellings were allocated to individual families
62 THE FRENCH GARDEN CITY

Figure 3.10. Higher density

cites jardins soon began to ap-
pear around Paris. One of the
first was at Suresnes. This per-
spective of one of the earliest
sections shows a mainly flatted
development with a few Eng-
lish-style cottages. It is dated
1919, and construction began
in 1921.

Figure 3.11. A 1930 plan for the development of the whole cite. Notice the impressive community facilities and
large areas of individual housing proposed for the south and north west. In the event the community facilities were
actually provided, though there were far more flats than originally intended.
 COMMUNITARIAN PERSPECTIVES AND URBAN REFORMERS 63

Figure 3.12. A 1991 view of Suresnes, showing mixed apartment and cottage development. An extensive and
impressively sympathetic rehabilitation programme was underway.

after thorough social inquiries and question-
naires, filtering out or discouraging unsuitable
applicants. Broadly, the aim was to accustom
the workers to the social standards of respect-
ability and modern comfort and to foster the
emergence of a new middle class of employees
and civil servants (BurIen, 1987). However
social relations are not merely regulated within
the domestic sphere, so it is important to be
aware of the wider community dimension of
the garden city idea.
COMMUNITARIAN PERSPECTIVES AND
URBAN REFORMERS
Although the cite jardin served as a source of
design concepts and legitimation for planning
itself, there were fewer links between the
garden city idea and statutory planning in
France than in Britain (Sutcliffe, 1986). In fact
French reformers seemed to be less concerned
with the ways and means of garden city plan-
ning than with the ideal of a new polity model,
of a cite understood as a community pattern
and citizen matrix. It was these aspects of the
garden city idea, the parts that were most
rapidly jettisoned elsewhere, that most excited
French interest, as part of this wider debate.
The work cite appeared over and over as a
leitmotiv in the first French exhibitions, hand-
books and readers on urban planning. The word
first appeared in the professional planning press
in 1912 and became more frequent in the 1920s.
It represented a kind of renaissance because
the word itself had become old-fashioned,
evocative of medieval times or the Athens
64 THE FRENCH GARDEN CITY
Figure 3.13. Private initiatives also continued to pro-
vide cites jardins between the wars, though on a limited
scale. Orgemont, comprising over a thousand dwellings
in the northern industrial suburbs of Paris, was unusual.
It was financed by a corporation of thirty-five firms
intending to create housing for sale.
democracy. However the use of the word and
its relationship with the emergent idea of plan-
ning is very significant in the French context.
Thus within the milieux of the bourgeois
reformers it seemed necessary to fight against
urban disorder, to move factories away, to im-
prove the lotissements and reform the cite as a
more coherent expression of the urban polity.
It was supposed that such a rationality of urban
life would help prevent and control the excesses
wrought by industrialization. Coming as it did
before the appearance of economic planning in
French public policy, town planning suggested
Figure 3.14. Apart from a few blocks of flats, most of
Orgemont was developed as small semi-detached houses
and bungalows. Despite their modest size, the Depres-
sion undermined the plans to sell these houses and most
were initially rented.
the possibility of a self-regulating urban society,
in the manner of an organism controlling its
own growth and change. Such thinking based
on urban organicism, which was central to the
work of the British sociologist-planner Patrick
Geddes (Meller, 1990), was also widespread
amongst leading French urbanists such as Risler,
Donat, Alfred Agache and Georges Hottenger.
In such approaches the plan was considered
as a way to control the future, by introducing
a chronological framework to develop and
strengthen forecasts, create new amenities and
invest public funds. Such practical contributions
 COMMUNITARIAN PERSPECTIVES AND URBAN REFORMERS 65

Figure 3.15. Houses of the type shown in figure 3.14, photographed in 1991. The cire remains a well kept and
popular residential enclave. Its gardens provide an ideal habitat for that seemingly indispensable member of the
Parisian family, the dog.

to good municipal housekeeping appeased those
critics who were accustomed to the traditional
pattern of administration in public affairs, which
since the early nineteenth century had em-
phasized permanence, patrimony and financial
stability. The first urban planning activists in
France were convinced that good planning
legislation would immediately move munici-
palities in this direction. Thus they confidently
expected a rapid French emulation of the same
kind of public intervention in the land market,
provision of public amenities and planning that
they believed was systematically being adopted
in Germany, Britain and Belgium.
Thus bourgeois reformers, faced with a crisis
of traditional philanthropy, searched for new
principles of social coherence. In the face of a
strengthening workers' movement, comprising
socialist parties as well as trades unions, spraw-
ling, chaotic conurbations and political instab-
ility, younger politicians of the Third Republic
looked for new reformist propositions. Two
main perspectives emerged which involved
firstly the development of socialwelfare schemes
and secondly the promotion of town planning.
These perspectives were not mutually exclusive
and were linked together through the provi-
sion of more public incentives and more social
services (Rabinow, 1989). Much of the concern
of these new reformist stances was captured in
the rhetoric of the cite with its emphasis on the
restoration of urban community, especially in
the urban centres.
Some of the moderate socialists agreed with
such perspectives. However they believed
fundamentally that progress in planning was
66 THE FRENCH GARDEN CITY

Figure 3.16. By the later 1930s the publicly developed cites jardins were overwhelmingly flatted
schemes. Plessis-Robinson in the southern subutbs of Paris was an important example. Photo-
graphed in 1991, large parts of the estate were experiencing serious problems of structural
decay though extensive rehabilitation had begun.

Figure 3.17. 'La Butte Rouge',

the cite jardin at Chatenay-
Malabry, developed from the
1930s to the 1950s, provides a
good example of a later cite jardin,
with planting and apartment
blocks together creating a very
fine landscape. Photographed in
1991, it was also undergoing ex-
tensive rehabilitation.
 CONCLUSIONS
interwoven with better city management and,
more generally, with local self-government with-
in a larger framework of local co-operation
(Gueslin, 1987). This kind of political ideal,
supported by left forces including mayors,
trades unionists and co-operative leaders,
formed part of a 'municipalist' campaign that
was rather worrying to conservative interests.
Associated with demands for more public inter-
vention it gave rise to what was termed social-
isme municipal. However it meant that, even
remote from the nostalgic rural imagery and
essentially environmental focus that usually
signalled a sympathy with garden city ideals,
there was a powerful empathy with Ebenezer
Howard's underlying communitarian and social
reformist message.
We can see echoes of such thinking in the
proposals of some French planners, in the
interwar period, to link technical town sur-
veys and local civic teaching. And a few local
politicians intended to create ambitious local
socialist movements by gathering community
associations and trades unions around municipal
projects and more basic social co-operative
movements (Gaudin, 1988). Thus Sellier's own
commune of Suresnes, which contained one
of the best known of the Parisian cite jardins,
exhibited instances of such wider educational
and community linkages (Cornu, 1990). In
this kind of emphasis on the communitarian
rather than the environmental dimensions of
the garden city idea, Howard's (and, to some
extent, Geddes's) influence was meeting and
reinforcing French ideological traditions of
local self-government, rooted in the utopian
socialists and the theories of Proudhon.
The principle of the communal recovery of
betterment, integral to the garden city idea, was
also attractive. Thus, while urban planning
attempted to legitimate an approach to public
intervention that would be ideologically toler-
able for the landowning classes, it was also
claimed to have a redistributive function based
on the recovery of betterment produced by
67
development. The hope was that public funds
could act as the catalyst for an almost self-
sustaining process. German, Swiss and Belgian
communes had all experimented with these
possibilities, and they were integral to the
garden city idea. 'Development must pay for
development': this adage was asserted very
clearly, stressing the need to conserve public
funds and also make the tax burden fall on
landownership. However the practice was al-
ways much more limited than the intention. The
fate of the proposals for rather 'purer' garden
city development that came out of the 1919
Paris Region Master Plan competition (Sellier,
1920) was a case in point. The Conseil General
de la Seine was thwarted by the opposition of
the Senate, one of the chambers of Parliament,
which prevented land purchases.
CONCLUSIONS
Overall, therefore, the impact of the garden city
idea in France was limited, but not as limited
as is often implied. Moreover it is misleading
to understand the impact of the idea solely or
even mainly in terms of the environmental
impacts. Although the idea of the garden city
as a repertoire of environmental imagery and
planning practice was seen as increasingly im-
portant in the British context, it was not only
these parts of the garden city message which
were received into France. Accordingly, we
should not judge the impacts of the idea only
by reference to the physical and environmental
characteristics of the cites jardins. Although the
jardin element was important within Howard's
vision as understood in France, this was in some
respects overshadowed by the garden city's
larger potency as a model for the cite. Thus the
familiar environmental characteristics of the
model were but one facet of a more far reaching
reformist project for citizenship and the urban
polity.
The garden city offered an ordered and
organic model of the cite, attractive both to
68 THE FRENCH GARDEN CITY
bourgeois and social democratic reformers. It
took bourgeois reformism beyond the limita-
tions of industrial philanthropy without seri-
ously threatening middle-class sensibilities. In
the event, however, the idea was carried for-
ward practically and theoretically by the social
democrats. To such interests the appeal of
Howard went beyond that of the cite. Thus
Howard's communitarianism and essentially
localist approach to urban and social reform
appealed greatly to the forces of moderate
socialism which were typically dominant in the
working-class industrial suburban fringes of
Paris and elsewhere. In that respect Howard
was refreshing an indigenous French tradition
of local utopian socialist and anarchist thought.
The practical results of all this were also dis-
tinctly limited at the time, although they have
continued to echo and influence French think-
ing about locality and local government.
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Bastie, J. (1964) La croissance de la banlieue
parisienne. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
Benoit-Levy, G. (1905) Les cites-jardins d'Amerique.
Paris: Jouve.
Benoit-Levy, G. (1911) La cite jardin, 2nd ed. Paris:
Cites-Jardins de France.
Burien, K. (1987) Science du logement et gestion
des populations, in Burien, K. (ed.), pp. 97-116.
Burien, K. (ed.) (1987) La banlieue-oasis: Henri
Sellier et les cites-jardins. St. Denis: Presses Univer-
sitaires de Vincennes.
Cohen, J. L. and Lortie, A . (1989) Un systeme de
projets Parisiens d !'ere de la metropole. Paris:
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Cornu, M. (1990) Suresnes: La modernite d'une ecole
de civisme. Urbanismes et Architecture, No. 242,
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urbanistes et cie: situations d'expertise et projets
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of the twentieth century. International Journal of
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Gueslin, A. (1987) L'invention de l'economie sociale.
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de la Region lIe de France) (1978) Les cites jardins
de L'Ile de France (Cahiers de L'institut
d'amenagement et d'urbanisme de la region de
L'IIe de France, No. 51). Paris: laurif.
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de la recherche architecturale, No.8). Paris:
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ist and City Planner. London: Routledge.
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moderne, in Burien, K. (ed.), pp. 125-136.
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Press.
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Musee Social.
Risler, G. (1937) Better Housing for Workers in
France. Paris: Centre d'lnformation Document-
aires.
Sellier, H. (1920) La cite-jardin du grand Paris. La
Vie Urbaine, No.5.
Sellier H. and Bruggeman, A. (1927) Le probleme
du logement: son influence sur les conditions de
l'habitation et l'amenagement des villes. Paris:
Universitaire de Paris/Carnegie Foundation.
Smets, M. (1977) L'avenement de la cite-jardin en
Belgique. Brussels: Pierre Mardaga.
Swenarton, M. (1981) Homes Fit for Heroes. Lon-
don: Heinemann.
Sutcliffe, A. (1981) Towards the Planned City: Ger-
many, Britain, the United States and France, 1780-
1914. Oxford: Blackwell.
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politique urbaine: la naissance de l'urbanisme
officiel en Grande Bretagne, 1900-1914, in Gaudin,
J. P. (ed.), pp. 8-14.
Sutcliffe, A. (1987) Le contexte urbanistique de
I'reuvre de Sellier: la transcription du modele
anglais de la cite-jardin, in Burien, K. (ed.),
pp.67-80.
Uyttenhove, P. (1990) The garden city education
of Belgian planners around the first world war.
Planning Perspectives, Vol. 5, No.3, pp. 271-283.
Vaxellaire, A. (1981) Du controle des lotissements
a la production des villes nouvelles (Cahiers de la
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la Recherche Architecturale.

THE JAPANESE GARDEN CITY
Shun,ichi Watanabe
In Japan, the English expression garden city
is translated as den-en toshi. This has been
an established Japanese expression for nearly
seventy years and is now used in everyday
conversation. Very few Japanese know the
expression originated with Ebenezer Howard
(1898; 1902), but some know it came from
England. Many more people associate the ex-
pression with some desirable image of the city,
although the concrete image may differ from
person to person. However, if we look at the
expression carefully, it can be seen to be a
mistranslation. The word toshi is a proper
translation for city, but there is a problem with
den-en. Den-en arouses a great nostalgia for the
countryside in most Japanese. It suggests images
of wide green paddy fields, quiet rural villages,
and a comfortable breeze. Thus Beethoven's
Symphony No.6, Pastorale, is translated as den-
en. In fact then the Japanese word den-en is the
equivalent of the English country or country-
side. It often represents non-urban or even anti-
urban values. Actually, garden city should have
been translated as tei-en toshi.
An important research topic concerning the
history of the international diffusion of urban
planning is the process of how a planning con-
cept, such as the garden city, which originated
in one country is understood, misunderstood
or distorted, and then assimilated, modified or
rejected in another country. Perhaps the first
stage in the process is the translation of original
4
expressions into the language of the receiving
country. Following this, in progressive order,
are, secondly, the stage of understanding the
ideas correctly (objectively) in terms of context
of the country of their origin, and 'introducing'
them in these terms; thirdly, rephrasing, or
'interpreting' these in terms of the context of
one's own country (a somewhat subjective
process); and fourthly, 'critically evaluating'
these ideas in terms of their desirability and
chances for implementation in the context of
one's own country. Naturally, efforts to imple-
ment or actualize the ideas based on the present
understanding which has been achieved in the
third and fourth stages will sometimes lead to
new 'interpretations' and 'evaluations'.
In this chapter we examine the process by
which the British garden city was assimilated
into pre-war Japan. Most Japanese planners
were captivated by the garden city idea during
this period so that to trace this process back is
simultaneously to trace the contact between
Japanese and Western urban planning. In this
sense, it is an important theme in the history of
Japanese urban planning. However it also has
wider and more contemporary implications
for understanding the relevance of the British
garden city idea in the context of developing
countries. Namely, it must be asked whether
or not the garden city was just a product of
the fortunate circumstances of early twentieth-
century Britain. And further, whether or not
70 THE JAPANESE GARDEN CITY

there is anything universal for developing

nations to learn from garden city theory or the
movement it spawned. These wider questions
are not directly answered in this chapter. How-
ever, by focusing on the historical development
of garden city theory in Japan, it is hoped that
peculiarities and universalities can be brought
out. In other words, it is hoped that by means
of a 'relativization' of the theory, hints towards
answers to the above questions can be gleaned.

GARDEN CITY ON ROCKY SOIL:

HOME MINISTRY, 1905-08
Sometime between the autumn of 1905 and the
beginning of the following year, a book with
'Garden Cities' on the spine, sent from a Brit-
ish book store, arrived at the Local Bureau of
the Home Ministry (Watanabe, 1978). Com-
prising two volumes amounting to over 1400
pages and containing over 300 illustrations, it
was an impressive publication which appeared
to be the authoritative source on garden cities.
Thus began Japan's encounter with the garden
city, not with Ebenezer Howard, but with
A. R. Sennett's book Garden Cities in Theory
and Practice (1905). At the time, the Bureau,
with its head Tomoichi Inouye at the centre,
was going forward with its 'Local Improvement
Campaign.' As a domestic policy after the
Russo-Japanese War, this aimed to trans-
form traditional village communities into 'self-
governing bodies for the sake of the country'.
To further this campaign Inouye was devoting
special attention to collecting and publishing
data on local administration both from Japan
and overseas. He immediately decided to
prepare a book like Sennett's and began the
task of translation by mobilizing some young
people from within the Ministry. Roughly two
years later, in December of 1907, a book titled
Den-en Toshi was published by the Home
Ministry (Home Ministry, 1907). Surprisingly,
however, only about the first two chapters of
the fifteen-chapter book dealt with garden
Figure 4.1. Tomoichi Inouye. He was the leading figute
in the group of officials at the Local Bureau of the Home
Ministry who first introduced garden city ideas into
Japan.
cities. For the most part the book was con-
cerned with examples and photographs from
the West of various social works, improve-
ments in living conditions, and enlightenment
of the public. This book was not an introduc-
tion to Howard's garden city theory, nor was it
yet a translation of Sennett.
One of the problems which troubled Inouye
and his group was how to translate garden city
into Japanese. The translation which first found
its way into print in September 1906 was den-
en teki toshi (country-like city) (Sennett, 1907).
Following this, in November of the same year,
kaen toshi (flower garden city) (Inouye, 1906a
pp. 20-26) and in December, den-en toshi
appeared in translations (Inouye, 1906b, pp. 9,
 GARDEN CITY ON ROCKY SOIL: HOME MINISTRY, 1905-08
127-128). In this way, the translation of garden
city, being rendered as first den-en (teki) and
second kaen, settled on the first. At first glance,
this seems to correspond to the double meaning
which Howard attributed to the expression,
namely 'a city in a garden' (i.e. country), and 'a
city of gardens' (Osborn, 1946, p. 26). However,
den-en in Japanese has a meaning which is, in
fact, closer to rural village. In their translation,
Inouye's group took the flower garden to be
the physical centre of a garden city; and,
omitting any reference to industry, misunder-
stood it as 'a city [actually as an agricultural
settlement - author] centred around agriculture'
(Inouye, 1906a, p. 23). Later, in Den-en Toshi,
the group's image of a garden city changed to
that of an industrial village such as Port Sun-
light, as evidenced in the following quotation:
Garden cities relocate the workers who have
swarmed to cities, and with them make completely
new rural villages. Land is lent to industrial workers
who in their spare time cultivate it. In this way, they
pursue their lives as both industrial and agricultural
workers. (Home Ministry, 1907, pp. 74-75)
However, in both earlier and later interpreta-
tions, garden cities were taken to have a strong
agricultural character. This is to say that the
understanding of Inouye's group was strongly
coloured by its inclination to render garden city
as den-en. What influenced them in this way
was clearly the Local Improvement Campaign.
Their book took this kind of 'new rural vil-
lage' to be the desirable form for garden cities
in Japan. In cases where this was impossible
however, 'modem citizens should be afforded
the benefits and pleasures of agricultural life,
mixing with nature and allaying the dullness of
their lives.' In other words, 'ruralization of the
city' was advocated. Looking at things from this
point of view, it was then maintained that many
rural villages (or even provincial cities) were
already ruralized in this sense, and attention
turned to rediscovering and extolling these. In
this way, the book seemed to forget about the
original topic of garden cities, and ended up as
71
an eulogy to the feeling which Japanese have
for their traditional, native homes in the coun-
try. The book lacked any sense of citizen vol-
unteers participating in social reform as Howard
had advocated, and simply ended up as a re-
affirmation of the status quo in line with gov-
ernment policy. In other words, lauding rural
areas, the book was propaganda for the Local
Improvement Campaign. Actually, as Inouye
later said himself: 'The book was prepared so
that, in the name of garden cities, the Western
philosophy of self-autonomy could be spread
to the countryside' (Inouye, 1920, p. 9). Den-en
Toshi was published, received high praise, and
went through seven printings in five years. It
played an enlightening role as a reference book
for the Local Improvement Campaign. With
the Home Ministry at the centre, the phrase
den-en toshi thus diverged from Howard's
original meaning, and was widely used among
interested persons in an entirely different sense.
A year after publication of the book,
Takayuki Namae, a part-time consultant for
the Local Bureau, while on a study tour of
Europe and the United States at the request of
Inouye, became the first Japanese to stay in
Letchworth and get to know Howard closely.
He stayed there for two weeks from 15 August
1908. He was deeply impressed by the sixty-
year-old Howard's 'noble presence, warmness
and modesty' (Namae, 1909a, p. 7). On the basis
of this experience, he was able to obtain the
most correct understanding of anyone in Japan
at the time with regard to both garden city
theory and Letchworth itself, and he reported
on these after his return home (Namae, 1909b).
However in his own garden city theory, he
simply tried to import 'urban tastes' and some
sense of urbanity to Japanese villages and thus
did not go beyond the already published idea
of Den-en Toshi. For someone who actually
visited a garden city and spent time with the
main proponent of the idea, this is very sur-
prising. It seems to illustrate how much the
subjective pre-occupations of the Local Bureau
72 THE JAPANESE GARDEN CITY
Figure 4.2. Takayuki Namae, a pan-time consultant with
the Local Bureau, was the first Japanese person to visit
Letchwonh and meet Howard in 1908.
were able to take precedence even over direct
observations of the genuine article.
In the garden city theory advanced by Inouye,
Namae and their colleagues in the Local Bur-
eau, there are rural villages and provincial cities.
However metropolises are completely absent.
This was despite the fact that the Tokyo Urban
Improvement Programme, which represented
the main urban planning policies of the Meiji
period, had already been underway for nearly
twenty years. The programme consisted of civil
engineering projects in Tokyo and the adjoining
area, administered by the Civil Engineering
Bureau of the Ministry. By contrast with the
Local Improvement Campaign, which covered
the whole country, it was seen as much less
important. It required another decade or more
for the Home Ministry to redirect its policies
from rural areas and villages to the cities. Ac-
cordingly the seed of Howard's garden city
theory, which had needed a pre-existing con-
cern about the big city as its starting point in
Britain, fell on rocky soil in early twentieth-
century Japan and failed to germinate.
GARDEN CITY STUDIED:
THREE SCHOLARS, 1906-09
Around this same period, among people out-
side the Home Ministry who were researching
the topic of garden cities, there are three re-
searchers of particular importance. The first of
these was Tokiyoshi Yokoi, a professor of agri-
cultural policy at Tokyo Imperial University.
In a 1906 paper entitled 'The City and Coun-
try', he discusses the topic of kaen-shi (flower
garden city). In this paper, he simply states
no more than that: 'The country combines the
features of the city, and the city incorporates
the country. This is the ideal of the kaen-shi'
(Yokoi, 1906, 1913, 1925). At this stage, there
is no evidence of Yokoi having read Howard.
However, two years later his university library
put a copy of Garden Cities of To-morrow into
its catalogue. (As far as is known this is the
oldest copy of the book which exists in Japan.)
By January of the following year, 1909, it is clear
from his paper, 'The Model Village', that he
had read Howard's book. However, in con-
trast to Howard's 'scheme to ruralize the city',
Yokoi's plan was one in which 'the countryside
is taken as primary, and certain urban tastes are
imported to the countryside in line with a pro-
gramme to promote its development' (Yokoi,
1909, 1925, pp. 86-90). Like the Local Bureau,
Yokoi also appears as someone proposing
garden cities but unable to place them within
the context of urban policies.
The second person to mention is Iwao Miyake
of the newspaper Tokyo Nichi-nichi Shinbun.
In March of 1907, he published a summary of
 GARDEN CITY AS GARDEN SUBURBS: ARCHITECTS, 1904-14
Montagu Harris's The Garden City Movement
under the title Kaen Toshi (Harris, 1906;
[Miyake] 1907). Then in October of the fol-
lowing year, he published The Study of the City,
the first full scale Japanese treatment of urban
policies (Miyake, 1908). In this book, he main-
tains that the way to solve the problems of the
city is to provide the various facilities needed
for the 'urban improvement' of existing city
areas, and to proceed with 'urban expansion'
by means of, firstly, land-use controls and,
secondly, planned suburban development.
While referring to the Home Ministry's book
Den-en Toshi, Miyake devotes a large portion
of his book to discussing Howard's garden city
as a useful means of dealing with suburban de-
velopment. However, the book merely presents
an idealization of and expectations for garden
cities, without discussing the possibility of their
implementation in Japan.
The third person is Hajime Kawakami, eco-
nomist and instructor of the Tokyo School of
Agriculture. Kawakami, who had contact with
Yokoi, published a paper in 1908 under the
title 'On the Harms of Population Concentra-
tion in Cities: the Necessity to Encourage Rural
Life'. In this, he refers to kaen toshi - the choice
of this translation was probably due to Yokoi's
influence - as 'ideal cities which also incorporate
the strong points of rural districts' (Kawakami,
1908, pp. 20-23).
Borrowing scenes from Bournville (not
Letchworth), he describes the pleasures of
workers in a kaen toshi who have their own
flower and vegetable gardens. However, he
concludes that in order for such a scene to be
possible, 'the owners of corporations must be
benevolent and philanthropic, ... and the cor-
poration must show a very good, increasing
profit,' and hence that their realization in Japan
would be impossible. This was the first real
criticism to be levelled against garden cities in
Japan in this period when they were imper-
fectly understood and tended to be imagined
in a rather idealized way.
73
None of the three people mentioned engages
in a serious discussion of garden city theory.
Of the three, Yokoi and Kawakami focus on
agricultural villages, taking a position basically
close to that of the Local Bureau of the Home
Ministry, while Miyake, the urban researcher
who was not involved with the government,
was the first to discuss garden cities from an
urban point of view. His book, The Study of the
City, reveals that he was the first Japanese to
have understood the fundamental direction of
Western modern urban planning. His position
regarding urban policies is actually very close
to what later became the Japanese City Plan-
ning Act of 1919. However, his ideas ended up
without a successor. Perhaps it can be said that
he was about ten years before his time.
GARDEN CITY AS GARDEN SUBURBS:
ARCHITECTS, 1904-14
Some years after the Home Ministry and the
academics discussed above, architects also be-
gan to show interest in garden cities. Archi-
tects of the period were intensely occupied with
imitating Western, in particular British, styles
of individual buildings, but showed little inter-
est in the use of urban space, and absolutely
no interest in the city as a social entity. Their
way of viewing things, however, was oriented
towards the urban side, rather different to the
groups already considered. Accordingly it is
interesting to note that these architects, in their
encounter with garden cities, each translated
the English garden city in his own way. In other
words, the Japanese translation for this ex-
pression was still not settled. Among people
connected with the Home Ministry, den-en toshi
was already settled upon as the preferred
translation; but the first time that this translation
showed up in the publication of an architect
was seven years after the publication of Den-
en Toshi by the Home Ministry.
The first translation proffered by an archi-
tect was den-yu shi (vegetable garden city) by
74 THE JAPANESE GARDEN CITY
Seiichiro ChOjo in 1909 (ChOjo, 1909, p. 376),
followed by den-en shigai (country city) and
shin den-en shi (newly developed city) in the
Journal of the Institute of Japanese Architects
in 1910 (Kenchiku Zasshi, 1910, pp. 618, 639-
640). In a 1912 paper, Sannosuke Osawa tells
of the garden suburbs of Hampstead, which
he had visited, as an example of tei-en toshi
(garden city) (asawa, 1912, p. 12). Letchworth
is also referred to, though there is no indica-
tion that he visited there. What captivated him
was not the idea of Howardian social reform,
but rather the lush green planned residential
environment and the comfortably planned
housing itself. Japanese architects of the time
were very interested in the design of housing
(and the residential environment), but lacked
interest in issues such as the size of cities, the
shape of cities, or the manner of land owner-
ship. Thus they felt no necessity to distinguish
garden cities from garden suburbs. This ten-
dency continued not just in the architectural
world, but also among urban planners.
In the following year, 1913, Jun-ichi Tsuchiya
returned from a three-year period of study in
Europe and the United States. Using tei-en shi
(garden city) as his choice for translation, he
said: 'Most new urban areas are being made to
be as if they were in garden settings. ... [I]n
Britain, ... tei-en shi are now in the process of
being designed for the developing urban fringes
of each city' [author's emphasis] (Tsuchiya,
1913). It will be noted that, in common with
other architects at this time, Tsuchiya does not
distinguish suburban development - as encour-
aged by Britain's 1909 Housing, Town Plan-
ning Etc Act - from garden cities. However
the emphasized portion of the quotation is very
interesting, because it shows a more complete
understanding of garden city thinking as it was
increasingly being presented in Britain and
elsewhere. This emphasis on gardens in the
residential environment stands in sharp contrast
to the Home Ministry's misunderstanding of
garden cities resulting from its bias in favour of
a policy to promote the development of rural
villages. In other words, the inconsistency in
translations among architects is indicative of
their lack of preconceptions, and of their dis-
satisfaction with den-en as a translation. Their
acceptance of den-en toshi did not come until
the middle of the second decade of this cen-
tury, when the expression had already become
standard in society.
In 1914, at a meeting after his return from
abroad, Shoin Maeda used the translations den-
en shi (garden city) and den-en toshi for the first
time in architectural circles (Maeda, 1914). He
was the first architect to have visited Letch-
worth during his stay in Britain. The content
of his lecture mainly concerned the design of
residential estates in Britain, but the questions
following the lecture were entirely concerned
with individual buildings. The moderator at the
meeting, Tatsuzo Sone, Vice-President of the
Institute of Japanese Architects, commented
that: 'From the end of the nineteenth century
to the beginning of the twentieth century, so-
called den-en shi, den-en son (garden village)
and toshi sekkei (town planning) have become
very fashionable words; and while it is true that
we must research these topics, we have as yet
but barely begun.' This was a very frank con-
fession and, almost certainly, a very accurate
assessment. At the time, between 1910 and 1915
when Japan was encountering Western modern
urban planning, concepts such as garden city,
garden suburbs, garden village, town planning,
housing, etc. all entered Japan about the same
time. One can imagine how confusing it must
have been to understand these concepts and
their interrelations correctly. It was between
1916 and 1920 that this finally became possible.
GARDEN CITY ON SALE:
SUBURBAN DEVELOPERS, 1911-27
It was a private suburban railway company
in the Osaka area that was responsible for
spreading the expression den-en toshi, to the
 GARDEN CITY ON SALE: SUBURBAN DEVELOPERS, 1911-27 75

Figure 4.3. Sakurai, begun in 1911, was the first of the Osaka den-en toshi developments. It was a high-class
commuter settlement created by the Mino Electric Railway Company.

popular level. From 1911, the Mino Electric
Railway Company sold subdivisions of sub-
urban residential estates in Sakurai, Ikeda-
Takaracho, Hattori and Toyonaka, located some
7 to 18 kilometres from Osaka Station, under
the name of den-en toshi (Tamaki, 1978). The
company's aim was to secure passengers for its
inter-urban railway, thereby increasing effici-
ency - its main business was running the railway,
the residential subdivisions were secondary.
At this time of prosperity and industrializa-
tion following the Russo-Japanese War, Osaka
was a noisy, overcrowded city filled with smoke-
stacks billowing black smoke. Hence den-en,
which evoked images of country with fresh air
and quiet villages, had great appeal for the
middle class. This was in spite of the fact that
having to pay a fare to commute to work every-
day was a new experience for them. In Osaka's
den-en toshi, however, there was no semblance
of a Howardian social reform, or of planned
construction of the city. Here, there were just
straight, unpaved roads and land - the mini-
mum necessities for the about 200 residential
lots. Plans to construct the urban infrastructure
and buildings in any kind of unified way, let
alone to shape the residential environment,
were absolutely non-existent. Even so, con-
sidering the condition of cities at the time, this
represented a new world. In this way the term
den-en toshi came to be commonly used to
indicate high-class residential suburbs.
Suburban development in the Tokyo area
lagged somewhat behind that in the Osaka area.
The first large-scale suburban development was
in 1913, when the Tokyo Trust Co., in its
Tamagawa Den-en Toshi project, began to sell
off subdivided lots (Yamaoka, 1987, pp. 93-
108). Roughly 16 hectares were subdivided
into about 160 lots along a suburban railroad
about 12 kilometres southwest of the city centre.
Subdivision and construction of buildings began
76 THE JAPANESE GARDEN CITY
with hardly any community facilities other than
large lots (about 900 m2) and wide, straight
streets. The pace of development and its social
character needs to be understood against the
background of a still emergent upper middle
class in Tokyo. At first well-to-do merchants
from the downtown area began to buy lots on
which to build villas, but they were followed
by salaried people and artists. However, de-
spite this widening upper middle class aspiring
to suburban living, it was three decades before
houses stood on all the lots.
Carrying on the strategy of the Mino Electric
Railway Company, one of its executives, Ichizo
Kobayashi, in 1918, founded Den-en Toshi Co.
Ltd. (Inose, 1988; Watanabe, 1980). This was
the largest garden city company in Japan. In an
area 10 to 13 kilometres southwest of down-
town Tokyo, this company purchased about 150
hectares from farmers, built a suburban rail-
way, and divided the land into three large sub-
divisions. In particular, at the largest of these,
Tamagawadai (now Den-en ChOfu) , streets
were laid out according to a unique plan, and
facilities such as a park and station plaza were
Figure 4.4. Ikeda-Takaracho
was another of Osaka's
railway-developed den-en
toshi commuter settlements,
begun in 1912. A more
even lot size is apparent
compared to Sakurai and an
open park area is retained.
provided. In addition, an informal agreement
was made regarding land-use controls.
Several important contrasts between Letch-
worth and Den-en Toshi are immediately ap-
parent. The first and most obvious difference
relates to the overall conception of the settle-
ments. Thus Letchworth was a small independ-
ent city in exurbia which housed all classes,
including workers, and provided employment.
By contrast Den-en Toshi was a 'garden sub-
urb', a residential area for upper middle-class
commuters. There were also important differ-
ences in the degree of planning undertaken.
While Letchworth had a clear plan for the de-
velopment of infrastructure and residences, this
was not apparent in Den-en Toshi. At most
only the blocks and lots were clearly subdivided.
The development was undertaken on a piece-
meal basis by the owners. This pattern of
growth triggered a disorderly sprawl in the sur-
rounding areas. This brought increases in the
value of land holdings for the company and
those who had already purchased lots. It also
increased the traffic on the railways. Nothing
of this kind could occur at Letchworth, where
 GARDEN CITY ON SALE: SUBURBAN DEVELOPERS, 1911-27 77

Figure 4.5. Tamagawa den-en toshi as sub-divided into

lots by the Tokyo Trust Company in 1913. The formula
was similar to that adopted in Osaka, but development
proceeded very slowly.
Figure 4.6. Tamagawadai den-en toshi initiated in 1918.
This was the largest such venture and shows a much
more sophisticated approach to planning and layout,
though development proceeded on a piecemeal basis.
78 THE JAPANESE GARDEN CITY

Figure 4.7. Light electric com-

muter railway systems were the
key element in these early den-en
toshi developments. This shows
the railway which served Tawa-
gawadai being inspected by the
company managers, shortly after
completion, c.1922.

Comparison of Letchworth and Den-en Toshi (£1 = 10 yen)

Name Letchworth Garden City Den-en Toshi
Developer First Garden City Ltd. Den-en Toshi Co. Ltd.
Start-up capital £300,000 £50,000
Development period 1903- 1918-27
Designer B. Parker, R. Unwin Kintaro Yabe
Area (ha) 500 (urban) + 1000 (rural) 106 (urban)
Planned population 30,000 (urban) + 2000 (rural) unplanned
Distance from downtown 52 km 10-13 km
Estate purchase price £ 100/ha £1800/ha
Dividend rate 1 per cent (1913)->2.5 per cent 5 per cent (1918)->10 per cent
(1918) (1923)
Rent/purchase price (for residents) £64.5/ha (rent) £9000/ ha (purchase)
Residents' social class 50 per cent workers upper middle class

development was clearly delimited by an agri-
cultural belt.
Overall it was a system which favoured the
creation of betterment, i.e. increases in land
value, rather than improvements in the environ-
ment. This was because the betterment was dis-
tributed to individual owners rather than on a
communal basis. In contrast, while Letchworth's
deve-lopment also generated betterment, since
provision was made to retain this for the com-
munity through the agency of the First Garden
City Company, there was no inconsistency with
its concerns to improve the environment. Not
surprisingly therefore Den-en Toshi began to
return good profits within a short time. In con-
trast to the British approach, which in effect
was mean with the stockholders but generous
with the residents, Den-en Toshi was generous
with both. It was not a co-operative movement
of volunteers in the manner of the British gar-
den city; rather it was an example of a corpora-
tion helping (i.e. providing a commodity for)
private individuals through a market mechan-
ism. Thereafter this was to become character-
istic of the Japanese approach to the 'land
question'. And the code-word which directed
 GARDEN CITY IN PLANNING LEGISLATION: PLANNING PIONEERS, 1913-21
Figure 4.8. Hajime Seki, Deputy Mayor of Osaka and
important planning theorist, was one of the leading
figures in the City Planning Investigation Committee of
1918.
all of this activity was den-en toshi. This did not
involve the creation of the 'town-country mag-
net' urged by Howard at the level of the com-
munity. However at the level of the individual
house, a partial version of the ideal, provid-
ing houses with gardens for the wealthy, was
implemented.
GARDEN CITY IN PLANNING
LEGISLATION: PLANNING PIONEERS,
1913-21
Faced with industrialization and urbanization
following World War I, the Home Ministry
began to recognize the importance of urban
79
Figure 4.9. Yasushi Kataoka, an Osaka architect and
important urban planner, was another key member of
the Investigation Committee which discussed the 1919
City Planning legislation.
policy. As a replacement for the Tokyo Urban
Improvement Ordinance which had been serv-
ing as the capital's remodelling programme, the
City Planning Act 1919 was enacted (Watanabe,
1989). During its formulation, the bill was dis-
cussed at the meetings of the City Planning
Investigation Committee of 1918, which played
an important role in institutionalizing the pre-
vailing Japanese conception of the garden city
within legislation and wider planning practice.
The three persons who led the discussions
were pioneer researchers of Western modern
urban planning: Osaka's deputy mayor and
planning theorist, Hajime Seki (1873-1935);
Osaka architect and foremost authority on
80 THE JAPANESE GARDEN CITY
Figure 4.10. Hiroshi Ikeda, a Home Ministry official,
drafted the 1919 legislation which institutionalized
aspects of the garden suburb model of planned city
extension.
urban planning, Yasushi Kataoka (1876-1946);
and Home Ministry official and drafter of the
bill, Hiroshi Ikeda (1881-1939). The intent of
their urban planning law was to resolve the
overcrowding of the metropolises of the time
by means of planned suburban development
and construction of infrastructure (roads, rail-
ways, etc.). It is important therefore to look at
how, at the time of the enactment of the bill,
these three planning pioneers understood gar-
den city theory, its applicability for Japan, and
the way to implement it through legislation.
Of the three, Seki was the first to start re-
searching garden city theory and displayed
rather fuller understanding than other Japanese
planning theorists at this time. Thus a 1913
paper of his gave a rather accurate introduction
to garden city theory and, for the first time in
Japan, made conceptual distinctions between
garden cities, garden suburbs and garden
villages (Seki, 1913). According to his inter-
pretation, Howard's aim did not concern just
housing policies, but rather was 'to cure the
great disease of the national economy, and to
create den-en toshi on the basis of a completely
new foundation.' However, he criticized this,
saying: 'I cannot help doubting whether it is
proper for this movement to suppress the
concentration of population and industry.'
Actually, he says, 'this movement contributed
more to the orderly planning of metropolitan
suburbs than to the construction of independ-
ent, new cities.' And he concludes that 'con-
cerning the urbanization of disordered fringe
municipalities at the present time, in Japan
there is a great necessity for the municipal
authorities and citizens of Tokyo and Osaka to
research seriously the theories of den-en toshi
theorists. '
By comparison, Ikeda's understanding of
garden city theory appears to have been much
more limited. Thus in 1914 he referred to
Dusseldorf as a 'large garden city', following
a visit. Generally however his understanding
did not extend beyond that of the Home Minis-
try (Ikeda, 1914). The third of the planners,
Kataoka, discussed garden cities in his 1916
classic, The Study of the Modern City (Kataoka,
1916). Dealing with the question from the
urban side, he criticizes the Home Ministry's
book Den-en Toshi, saying that 'garden cities
completely lose their meaning if they are just
seen in terms of a penchant for rural villages.'
According to Kataoka, garden cities were an
ideal; but since Japan lacked any 'philanthropic
factory owners such as Lever and Cadbury,'
the realization of an independent garden city in
Japan was seen as impossible. However, in con-
clusion, he commended garden suburbs as a way
of taking residential suburbs currently being
developed without any plan in metropolitan
areas and moving them in the direction of
 LATER DEVELOPMENTS
'development according to an orderly plan'.
What he had in the back of his mind at the
time was Den-en Toshi in the Osaka suburbs.
This then is the way the central theorists
behind the enactment of the 1919 City Planning
Act understood garden city theory. Working
on the assumption that the concentration of
population in metropolises was an inevitable
trend, they all maintained that the construction
of small independent cities was impossible.
Instead they wanted to see garden suburbs
being promoted as a means of ordering the
metropolitan growth process. In these circum-
stances they continued to use the term den-en
toshi (which did not differentiate garden city
and garden suburb) and the images it evoked.
In this way the conceptual transformation from
the Home Ministry's book, Den-en Toshi, to
Osaka's city Den-en Toshi, and finally to the
City Planning Act of 1919 was completed.
In fact there had been no discussion of garden
cities as such at the deliberations of the City
Planning Investigation Committee. Moreover,
in the City Planning Act, enacted in April
1919, no planning controls specifically relating
to garden cities, however defined, were stipu-
lated. However in Section 21 of the Enforce-
ment Order for the City Planning Act, which
was promulgated in November 1919, this omis-
sion was redressed. The section dealt with
'Housing Estate Management' and Section 16
of the same Act also allowed government pro-
curement of land for such purposes. Although
not actually specifying them by name, or dif-
ferentiating them from garden cities, provision
was being made that would permit the official
encouragement of garden suburbs. What then
had produced this apparent shift between April
and December 1919?
To understand this, we need to appreciate
something of the events surrounding the pass-
ing of the City Planning Act. Essentially it had
incorporated fragments of the British, Amer-
ican and German planning systems. However
the question of the organic treatment of resid-
81
ential development was postponed. The whole
issue was examined by the Home Ministry after
the promulgation of the Act. In this process,
stimulated by the activities of actual suburban
developers, the idea of half public and half
private developers acting as 'Housing Com-
panies' quickly took hold (Watanabe, 1988).
Thus in October 1919, Yoshikazu Uchida, Pro-
fessor of Architecture at Tokyo Imperial Uni-
versity, proposed a plan at a research meeting
of the Home Ministry whereby such companies
would develop den-en toshi (i.e. garden sub-
urbs) (Uchida, 1922). He was the first Japanese
to calculate the return of betterment which
would accompany the construction and man-
agement of such den-en toshi, in line with the
approach that Howard had advocated. Uchida's
proposals evidently made a significant impres-
sion on the Home Ministry and in this way the
idea of 'housing companies' was accepted.
Ultimately however the concept was stillborn.
More detailed proposals for such companies
were developed by the Home Ministry's Social
Works Investigation Committee in 1921 and an
outline bill for enactment was produced in
November of that year. This envisaged housing
areas containing a hundred or more units in
areas of 3.3 hectares or more, with housing
companies as the designated developers. How-
ever the opposition from the Ministry of Fin-
ance on budgetary grounds forced the bill to
be dropped. By 1939 only one development of
this type has materialized in Osaka in 1936.
LATER DEVELOPMENTS
By 1923 a system of controlling Tokyo's sub-
urban development was beginning to take form
under the framework of the 1919 Act. How-
ever this regulatory process was thrown off
course by the impact of the Kanto earthquake
which struck the city in that year, destroying
most of the inner districts and rendering almost
1.4 million people homeless. Accordingly recon-
struction took priority over orderly suburban
82 THE JAPANESE GARDEN CITY

Figure 4.11. Den-en Toshi: a proposed scheme by Professor Yoshikazu Uchida in 1919. This encouraged the
notion of large-scale garden suburb development on a semi-public basis but practical results were extremely limited.

control in the concerns of the planners. The
abandoned suburbs now expanded rapidly to
provide homes for those dispossessed by the
earthquake and associated fire.
However from the point of view of the whole
country, which was still predominantly agri-
cultural, the Tokyo disaster was specific and
localized in its impact. A moral lesson was
drawn in some quarters. Thus the most radical
'agriculturalists', who advocated the primacy of
agriculture, saw this disaster as 'the great ham-
mer of nature' striking Tokyo, where 'luxuri-
ous life has reached its peak and materialistic
civilization is approaching its end.' Important
morals had to be learned from the great dis-
aster, including 'constructing a new Japan in
which agriculture serves as the foundation -
namely den-en toshi, the ruralization of cities,
the urbanization of agricultural villages, the
sharing of culture and commerce concentrated
in cities with villages, and sharing the sound-
ness of villages with cities' (Furuse, 1923).
Anti-urbanism is clearly visible in such views.
The reaction against the cities, unlike that in
the West which took the form of advocating
small cities, aimed directly at strengthening
agricultural villages. The slogan was for 'den-
en and the cities', but the actual demand was
for 'den-en over the cities'. Such a powerful
reassertion of the qualities of den-en, main-
taining that agriculture was the foundation of
the country, in effect continued the pre-war
position adopted by the Home Ministry in its
book Den-en Toshi. Such attitudes continued
as an undercurrent in Japanese thinking, es-
pecially amongst small local farmers, periodi-
cally bursting out when prompted by prevailing
circumstances.
The main features of the Japanese debate
about garden city theory before World War II
had already been articulated by the first half of
the 1920s. However three later contributions
were of importance and should be noted. The
first was the publication, in 1926, of Garden
 CONCLUSION: THE LAND QUESTION
Cities of Britain by Shichiro Yuge of the Tokyo
Institute of Municipal Research (Yuge, 1926).
This is an extremely accurate introduction to
British garden city theory and its background.
Its principal significance is that it meant that,
two decades after making first contact with the
theory, the Japanese finally acquired a flawless
understanding of it in their own language. But,
although this was an important achievement,
Yuge added nothing to the theory by way of
criticism or interpretation, so he was not strictly
developing the garden city idea beyond its pre-
existing limits.
Shortly afterwards Kazumi Iinuma, an urban
planning official of the Home Ministry pub-
lished 'City Planning Theory and Law', which
suggested new directions for the garden city
(Iinuma, 1927). Thus, on the basis of a re-
solution at the International Federation for
Town and Country Planning and Garden Cities
meeting in Amsterdam in 1927, he proposed a
'regional planning theory' in which small, in-
dependent garden cities would form a regional
network. His position, that 'the essence of
urban planning amounts to nothing other than
garden city theory' really represents the only
affirmation of garden cities in the true sense in
pre-1939 Japan. However his proposals were
very idealistic in tone and he had almost nothing
to say about, for example, what authorities and
powers would be necessary to plan and co-
ordinate such projects.
The third publication amounted to a fun-
damental critique of the garden city idea in
a Japanese context. In a study entitled the
'Feasibility of the Garden City in Japan', pub-
lished in 1930, another urban planning official
of the Home Ministry, Hideaki Ishikawa, ana-
lysed the profitability of Britain's garden cities,
using Yuge's data (Ishikawa, 1930). He then
compared this to conditions in Japan, with the
prevailing expectations of high dividend rates
and high land costs with no possibilities of
low interest, long-term capital. He concluded
that garden cities were only viable in Britain
83
because of such conditions and the fact that
they were absent in Japan effectively ruled
out true garden cities there. Ishikawa's paper
amounted to a damning criticism - much the
most important that was voiced in Japan be-
fore World War II.
CONCLUSION: THE LAND QUESTION
Having completed this brief review of the
history of garden city theory up to about 1930,
we are now in a position to consider how
Japan accepted, modified and ultimately re-
jected garden city theory. In Britain it is clear
that people connected with the garden city
movement were careful to distinguish concep-
tually garden cities from garden suburbs and
other kinds of development. According to the
official definition in 1919, true garden cities con-
formed to three basic principles of being firstly,
small sized; secondly, independent and thirdly
of having betterment shared co-operatively (cit.
Osborn, 1946, p. 26). In Japan, however, plan-
ners were from the start sceptical about the
three principles. This was because they took
the position of 'metropolitanism' in which, as
already noted, concentration of population
and employment opportunities in large cities
was deemed necessary for modernization
(Watanabe; 1984). Independent cities far re-
moved from metropolises were simply not
realistic. Hence, they gave up the idea of garden
cities, and moved in the direction of garden
suburbs.
Ironically, what Japanese planners learned
from British garden city theory was not what
garden city theorists themselves regarded as
the unique essence of their thought. What
Japanese planners appropriated was first of all
various techniques relating to the design side
of garden cities - namely, site planning tech-
niques for incorporating nature into cities.
Secondly, they acquired the idea of starting with
a completely blank sheet, and planning and
designing cities holistically. Looking back now,
84 THE JAPANESE GARDEN CITY
it can be seen that what captivated the minds
of Japanese architects was not British garden
city theory, but rather the theory and techniques
of Western modern urban planning.
Summarizing the relationship between Japan
and British garden city theory, the situation is
roughly as follows. The Home Ministry, which
stood on the side of the agricultural villages,
interpreted garden city theory firstly in terms
of an ideology for praising agricultural villages,
and secondly for its countryside image. Then,
thirdly, architects, who took the urban side,
interpreted the theory in terms of a design
philosophy for suburban residential estates.
Suburban developers were the ones who played
the role of mediator between the second and
third interpretations, with their sales pitch for
'garden cities'. And, finally the planners, who
systemized the legislation for all this, limited
their concern simply to how to achieve the
architects' interpretation in a planned way.
Thus the main planning issue of garden
city theory in Japan was how to achieve sub-
urban development - i.e. garden suburbs - in a
planned way. It was thought that if this plan-
ning were not thorough, suburbs would de-
generate into sprawling endlessly without any
plan, resulting finally in a confusion of rural
villages and cities. In the event, of course, sub-
urbs did sprawl in a disorderly way and Hiroshi
Ikeda as well as many other theorists criticized
suburban developers who pursued their own
profits in the name of garden cities (Ogawa,
1922, p. 394; Ikeda, 1925, p. 37; Tagawa, 1925,
pp. 504-505; Seki, 1936, p. 111). The planning
that was supposed to prevent such sprawl was
understood in terms of instigating powerful
land-use controls for the suburbs or expropri-
ating land for development. However the land-
use controls embodied in the 1919 City Planning
Act were weak and expropriation, though it
was legally possible, was not politically feasible.
Powerful landed interests effectively prevented
the exercise of such powers.
There is some irony to all this. Japanese plan-
ning had proceeded while ignoring the three
principles of garden city theory, but was now
caught in the net of the third principle of bet-
ter-ment. This was, of course, intimately con-
nected to the land question. In modern Western
urban planning, the land question became a
public issue and was directly addressed in the
formulation of planning systems. In Japan,
however, it has been consistently avoided right
up to the present. We can understand this con-
trast in terms of variations in the processes of
social and political development. Thus in the
West, urban planning arose at about the time
the middle class gained political ascendancy
and was essentially a product of middle-class
reformism. By contrast the systemization of
modern Japanese urban planning was rushed
along in an attempt to solve the land question,
but without the appearance of a strong middle
class in the Western sense. In consequence,
Japanese planning lacks the strong liberal re-
formist orientation of Western urban planning
and is more completely technical in character.
Allied with this, and in contrast to the as-
cendancy of the middle class in the West, the
Japanese political system protected the dom-
inance of landed interests. For example, ac-
cording to the election system around 1920, only
one million people out of a population of sixty
million had the right to vote; and the over-
whelming majority of those were medium and
large landowners. In this kind of situation, it
cannot be expected that any rules concerning
land-use control would be adopted which were
counter to the interests of landowners. In Japan,
then, urban planning had to proceed in ac-
cordance with the basic social rules of weak
public intervention and the individual con-
sumption of betterment. As a natural conse-
quence, in most cases, the garden cities which
the politically powerless middle class dreamed
of and were barely able to obtain in the suburbs
were garden suburbs or, in reality, nothing more
than sprawling residential areas.
Even since 1945, this pattern has continued
 REFERENCES
without any fundamental changes. The only
change was that urban landowners changed
from wealthy merchants and suburban absentee
landlords to large corporations. With the present
land tax system, corporations are afforded an
extremely advantageous position, while private
households are subjected to disadvantageous
rules. However, most Japanese believe in pros-
perity and development 'through corporations',
and do not mind life-time employment, com-
pany loyalty, long working hours, long com-
muting distances, etc. In this sense, it can be
said that the land question is a problem that
reflects the nature of Japanese capitalism and
society; in other words, it is a question con-
cerning Japanese life styles. However the power
of landowners, the weakness of public inter-
vention, the individual consumption of better-
ment, etc., are not problems unique to Japan.
Rather, the situation is fairly similar for the
developing countries which occupy the larger
portion of the world. The process of develop-
ment which such countries are undergoing re-
quires a reform of the basic rules of society,
but rapid advancement in the techniques of
urban planning is also necessary. When political
realities prevent both of these being advanced
simultaneously, as happened in Japan, then the
land question must be by-passed.
Advocates of the pure version of garden city
theory might well be inclined to dismiss its
failure to take root in Japan as a problem on
the part of those who actually received the idea.
However it is argued that such a view would
be an oversimplification because it ignores the
kind of soil on which the seed fell. The soil in
this context represents the social and political
structure, and the reason why the garden city
idea failed to germinate properly was because
it did not accord with the social and political
situation. The important thing therefore be-
comes the development of a theory which is
suited to the social situation. Looking at things
this way, and shifting away from the notion
of an immutable theory, the British garden
85
city idea and, in particular, the movement
that advanced it, remain potent sources of
planning ideas. For example, the garden city
encompasses the basic themes which are still
relevant for developing countries, such as: the
sort of 'community' found in the co-operative
movement; the self-management of regions
(Nishiyama, 1978); theories of city formation
which take residential areas rather than places
of employment as central, etc. In this sense, it
can probably be said that British garden city
theory is not a model to be copied blindly
without regard for social circumstances, but is,
rather, a common possession of the human race
in that it encompasses the issues relevant for
coping with diverse social situations.
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Eikoku ni okeru den-en teki toshi [Country-like
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Furuse, D. (1923) Shinsai ga unda den-en toshi no
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Harris, G. M. (1906) The Garden City Movement.
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Howard, E. (1898) To-morrow: A Peaceful Path to
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Howard, E. (1946) Garden Cities of To-morrow.
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Iinuma, K. (1927) Toshi keikaku no riron to hOsei
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Ikeda, H. (1914) Doitsu jichi keiei no seshin oyobi
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Inouye, T. (1920) lichi koshin ron [Improvement of
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Ishikawa, H. (1930) Nihon ni okeru den-en toshi no
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no heigai 0 ronjite den-en seikatsu kobu no hitsuyo
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nicipal Research.
 5
THE NAZI GARDEN CITY*
Gerhard Fehl
At first sight the brutal Nazi occupation and
spatial re-ordering of Poland between 1939 and
1944 would appear to be the complete antithesis
of the garden city tradition with its character-
istic emphasis on co-operative and democratic
reformism. Yet, as this chapter will show, the
Nazi planners were, in reality, applying ele-
ments taken from the conceptual repertoire of
the garden city. Over many years these ele-
ments had been technicalized and divorced
from their original reformist mission. Ulti-
mately, under the Nazis, they were developed
into a new practice of comprehensively planned
territorial re-organization, known as Raum-
planung (territorial planning), based on ideal
concepts of Raumordnung (territorial order).
This was applied in those parts of Poland which
were directly incorporated into Hitler's Reich.
Nazi Raumplanung involved the setting up
of a new administrative subdivision of territory
and the implementation of new structural re-
lationships between settlement units (village,
country town and capital) and town and coun-
try, as well as the introduction of new settlement
units into an ideal territorial order. It also in-
volved the removal of existing populations and
resettlement by racially pure Germans. Yolk as
well as Raum were being re-ordered. The whole
operation was deeply imbued with Nazi think-
ing and terms such as Raum and Yolk carried
ideologically charged meanings beyond their
simple English translations. But despite such
*This chapter has appeared in a reworked version in Die Alte Stadt, February 1990.
obvious connections with Nazism, the main
inspiration for the spatial basis of such ideas
was Howard's 1898 diagram of the 'Social City',
which had expressed his approach to regional
development on the garden city model. This
concept had been taken up by German town
planning from about 1910 onwards. With fur-
ther development it came to offer an image of
ideal spatial order to be set against the uncon-
trolled and rampant spatial suburban sprawl of
the early decades of the twentieth century.
Urban planners from this time onwards were
aiming to guide suburban growth into more
orderly forms of development. Though this re-
organization of town and country they sought
also to reorganize 'organically' society itself.
From 1933 these pre-existing notions were in-
corporated into Nazi planning and territorial
ambitions. However, in order properly to under-
stand the connections between these events and
garden city thinking, we need to sketch out de-
velopments prior to that date.
PROBLEMS OF SUBURBANIZATION
The growth of suburbs had been hailed until
the turn of the century as a promising way out
of the squalor, misery, social conflict and gener-
ally limited social existence possible in German
cities. Increasingly, however, suburban expan-
sion came to be seen as a problem in the early
twentieth century. Suburbanization was now
 HOWARD AND ALTERNATIVES TO SUBURBANIZATION
perceived as a threat to the idyllic lifestyle of
the well-to-do in their colonies of villas and a
barrier to housing reformers seeking solutions
to the problems of the less well-to-do in the
outer periphery. Moreover suburbs were creat-
ing uncertainty for land speculators regarding
future development and destroying the remain-
ing patches of open countryside within easy
reach of the city dwellers. They were threaten-
ing Heimat, the traditional homely character of
the native German town, which was in danger of
being overwhelmed by mass suburbanization.
The former bright vision of a relaxed and
harmonious life close to nature in suburbia was
now threatened by a mass out-pouring of all
the problems of the inner urban areas. Instead
suburbia was seen as a 'metropolitan monster',
devouring what was left of nature. The tradi-
tionally powerful system of German town plan-
ning, so much admired by the English, seemed
to have no power across the boundaries of the
municipalities, where suburbia started. Thus
Paul Schultze-Naumburg, prominent co-founder
of the Deutsche Bund Heimatschutz (German
League for the Protection of the Home) in 1904,
compared suburbanization in 1906 to 'a volcano
which pushes out its scoria in front of it ... and
which by its mere heat bums the free and green
countryside for miles ahead.' By this the 'bene-
fits of nature' would be denied to the town-
dwellers and 'the vast outer ring of the town will
be drowned in a mess of idle plots, cut down
forests, ramshackle factories, half-finished build-
ings, squalor and ugliness' (Schultze-Naumburg,
1906, p. 12).
The conventional urban growth pattern, hith-
erto well guided by municipal building-line
plans and by-laws had taken the form of suc-
cessive compact rings of development, com-
parable to the layers of an onion (Fehl and
Rodriguez-Lores, 1983). However this stable
and predictable pattern was threatened with
collapse as the electric tramway arrived and
spread rapidly from the mid-1890s. The further
outlying villages and country towns now came
89
into easy reach and were opened up for new
development. Furthermore, expanding industry
started to move to the outer periphery in the
search for suitable sites, forcing its workers
to follow. Moreover as wealth slowly spread
amongst the urban populations, the desire rose
for a life in a healthier and more comfortable
environment. Suburbia was now seen as a two-
faced phenomenon. On the one side it seemed
to be a promised land, enabling people to lead
another, more fulfilled, way of life. On the other
it threatened this new way of life by its own in-
nate dynamics. 'Dis-Order' was the name given
to this bewildering suburban contradiction.
In the militarized and ordered society that
was Wilhelminian Germany just after the tum
of the century such 'Dis-Order' was not to be
tolerated. Reformers, administrators, planners
and scientists began to seek instruments and
organization that would restore 'Order' into
suburban development and resolve its innate
contradictions. Great faith was placed in the
instrument of Stiidtebau (town planning) as a
means of addressing these problems and re-
solving these contradictions. However the hope
was that such actions would also solve other
pressing social problems of the time. Threat-
ening urban malaise would be eliminated. The
burning class conflicts of German urban soci-
ety would be mitigated and the much feared
urban masses would be divided and civilized,
creating an organically ordered 'caste-society'
(Standische Gesellschaft). The prevalent un-
stable urban growth dynamics would also be
transformed, improving the predictability of the
urban land market. Thus by re-organizing the
growing town and the metropolis it was in-
tended that SUi.dtebau would contribute to a
comprehensive reorganization of society.
HOWARD AND ALTERNATIVES TO
SUBURBANIZATION
Two strategies for curbing metropolitan - and
particularly suburban - growth had already
90 THE NAZI GARDEN CITY
evolved by the turn of the century. They were
both to determine urbanistic thinking for dec-
ades to come and can be considered as the
strategic roots of various efforts for the re-
organization of town and country. The first
involved decentralization, the export of surplus,
mainly working-class, population, from the in-
ner parts of the overpopulated town to the outer
suburban periphery beyond its administrative
boundary. Essentially this was a formalization
and reinforcement of already indentifiable
trends and could be justified on these grounds.
Thus the movement of industry to the periphery
was readily apparent from the beginning of
the twentieth century (Heiligenthal, 1924), and
workers had necessarily to follow their em-
ployment (Kampffmeyer, 1908).
The second and more radical strategy was
that of inner colonization (Brenning, 1909).
Using several possible approaches, this involved
discouraging people from migrating from the
country to the larger towns. One approach was
the improvement of agricultural living standards
in the countryside, thus keeping population
there (Gruber, 1908; Langen, 1937; KUhn, 1950).
A second approach involved diverting the
migrational flow to smaller country towns at
some distance from the metropolis (Schultze-
Naumburg, 1906; Wolf, 1919). Yet a third was
the foundation of new garden cities away from
larger towns in little populated agricultural
regions (Hammer, 1906; 1915). The strategy of
inner colonization was particularly supported
by large agricultural landowners in the eastern
provinces of Prussia in the wake of the agri-
cultural crisis of the late nineteenth century,
following the influx of cheap American wheat
into Europe.
It is against this background of emergent
strategies that we should consider the impact of
Howard's conception of the 'Social City'. Es-
sentially this was a diagrammatic representation
of his own conception of decentralization, form-
ing a fully articulated alternative to the big con-
centrated city. The diagram fell on particularly
Figure 5.1. Rudolf Eberstadt's 1910 proposal for or-
ganizing the growing town, using a series of wedge-shaped
built-up areas with intervening green spaces.
fertile soil in Germany shortly after the turn
of the century because it appeared as a more
advanced notion of ideal order than was other-
wise available. Even as late as 1910 the alter-
natives were rather less sophisticated. Thus
Rudolf Eberstadt's diagram of urban develop-
ment presented for the Greater Berlin com-
petition proposed a wedge-shaped pattern of
development following public transport from
centre to periphery (Eberstadt, Mohring, and
Jansen, 1910). However Howard's scheme ap-
peared to offer some higher conception of
organic order to guide the reorganization of
the existing metropolis, even though his pri-
mary purpose had been to secure its complete
replacement with a network of garden cities
(Beevers, 1988).
In Germany, however, Howard's diagram did
not enthuse only his immediate followers and
those who sympathized with his social reformist
purpose. It was as well received by the urban
professionals and planners and conservative
politicians who wished to restore a more tra-
ditional quasi-medieval society. This was to be
an organically ordered society where citizens
as members of the bourgeois 'caste' would
play a major role while the labouring classes
would be well provided with housing and living
environment, but would be controlled as an
 THE FAILURES OF PLANNING IN THE PRE-NAZI ERA
Figure 5.2. Howard's Social City as represented by
Eduard von Berlepsch-Valendas in 1907. The heavy
social reform overtones which were apparent in the
original (see figure 1.2) have been removed and it has
been reduced to a geometric pattern, a model of spatial
order.
inferior 'caste'. To these conservative elements
Howard's diagram represented nothing more
than a scheme of organic territorial order. Thus
when Eduard von Berlepsch-Valendas (1907)
presented his version of the Howard diagram
it had become a much simplified geometrical
structure, stripped of the rich details of the
original. The process continued with Gustav
Langen's 1911 diagram (1912), presented as
an alternative to Eberstadt's. In a similar way
(and perhaps influenced by Langen) Raymond
Unwin began to develop his satellite system
in Britain at about the same time (Miller, 1989,
pp. 17-18; Hall, 1988, pp. 108, 168).
By 1911, therefore, the diagram was com-
pletely stripped of its social reformist message
and could become part of a more conservative
project of territorial reorganization, involving
the decentralization of surplus population from
a big city, rather than its replacement as prom-
ised by Howard. In the new version a much
91
Figure 5.3. Gustav Langen's 1911 counter-proposal to
Eberstadt's scheme for city development (figure 5.1),
based on garden city-like satellite towns, physically
separated from the city core by belts of unbuilt land.
stronger nucleus, the central city, was sur-
rounded by dependent satellites in the periph-
eral zone of suburbanization. This represented
concentrations of urban development separated
by green belts of open countryside. Thus an
image of physical order had been established
and a static structure seemed at hand, prom-
ising to channel the unstable dynamics of sub-
urbanization. By this means the garden city
idea had been reduced to a mere repository of
spatial-technical concepts.
THE FAILURES OF PLANNING IN
THE PRE-NAZI ERA
Raymond Unwin's ideas about satellite devel-
opment had considerable impact on German
modernist town planners in the 1920s. Ernst
May in particular propagated the satellite con-
cept through his work at Breslau (May, 1922)
and Frankfurt-am-Main (May, 1930). Increas-
ingly the concept came to be seen as a means
of channelling future urban growth and re-
organizing the urban region (Fehl, 1986). At
the same time, however, planners of more
traditionalist, conservative persuasion were
following similar conceptual lines, led by
92 THE NAZI GARDEN CITY
Gustav Langen. It was Langen who developed
the original concept and coined the term
Raumordnung in 1927 as a way of bringing
together notions of societal and territorial
order (Hoffacker, 1989).
But rampant suburbanization continued to
overrun all plans of ideal territorial order and
defeat attempts to create a more stable order
for urban and societal development. Thus in
1937 Gustav Langen referred to suburbia as
'this battlefield on the periphery of our towns,
where between scraps of disfigured and torn
apart nature ... between shacks, drab walls,
chimney stacks, green houses, ditches, railways
tracks and smelly ponds you can find scattered
housing estates and interspersed villas ... Who-
ever recalls what "Heimat" once meant will find
the combined misery of mankind here' (Langen,
1937, p. 28). The tone of this condemnation is
strikingly similar to Schultze-Naumburg's in
1906, suggesting little progress. Even if we dis-
count the biases of both commentators, there
had in truth been little progress between ad-
joining municipalities towards the creation of
green belts, for example in the Ruhr (Hornung,
1942).
After reviewing the, in his view, desperate
state of affairs in the urban periphery, Langen
went on to urge the Nazi party and government
to adopt more drastic action: 'What we need as
the key to raising social order to a higher level
is centralized public intervention and regula-
tion of land ownership, the abolition of the
casual squandering of opportunities which in
this field of urban growth have so often blocked
the way to healthy [i.e. organic - author] de-
velopment' (Langen, 1937, p. 28). Such calls
for more central intervention in the control of
land and its development in association with
the campaign for garden cities were not un-
common in many other countries, though in
Germany at that time they carried the taint of
Communism.
However Langen identified two important
reasons for the failure of plans to control
suburbanization and substitute more ordered
development. The first was the typically frag-
mented pattern of land ownership around
German cities. Thus any attempts to arrive at
comprehensive planning for the whole urban
region would be stifled from the outset if there
was no way of reorganizing landownership on
a more comprehensive scale. In addition there
was the traditionally powerful local autonomy
of German municipalities, which was associated
with local capital controlling the process of
building development. This in turn frustrated
co-operation between different municipalities
to secure more orderly development on the
urban periphery. Only centralized action could
overcome such difficulties, but at the expense
of powerfully entrenched municipal autonomy.
Thus when more powerful town planning pro-
posals, strengthening both central authority and
land acquisition and control powers, were in-
troduced in 1925 they were debated until 1929
and refused because of landowner and mu-
nicipal opposition (Hirtsiefer, 1929; Pergande
and Pergande, 1973).
Without effective planning controls, suburban
development was bound therefore to occur in
a fragmented and patchwork fashion. Suburbia
was - and still is - made up of small develop-
ments, each one independent from neigh-
bouring areas and guided only by a loose
co-ordinating framework of planning for land
use and roads. No provision was made for con-
centrating all development in a few well co-
ordinated and well planned satellites. Even the
so-called Gross Siedlungen, housing areas of 3-
10,000 inhabitants, did not become satellites in
the proper sense, remaining as larger parts of
the wider patchwork of development (Fehl,
1986). Despite the good intentions of many
metropolitan municipalities to tackle the plan-
ning of town and country on a wider scale, such
efforts usually stopped at municipal boundaries.
The political will necessary to tackle the en-
trenched interests of private land and municipal
autonomy was conspicuously lacking until the
 THE NAZIS AND SETTLEMENT PATTERNS
Nazis came to power and had embarked on
World War II.
THE NAZIS AND SETTLEMENT
PATTERNS
Although the Nazis had originally condemned
big cities as a source of the decline of the
Germanic race, by the late 19308 they had come
to see them as necessary evils. In certain cir-
cumstances and with suitable re-modelling they
could even be useful as architectural stage sets
for party rallies. However the further growth
of the large towns was to be checked, a theme
which became an obvious element of national
politics during the 1930s. But since the Nazi
party was not omnipotent and carefully re-
spected the traditional taboos of private land
ownership and municipal autonomy, not too
much actually changed in practice. A ceiling
price for urban land was introduced in the late
93
Figure 5 .4. Map of Poland, show-
ing the new administrative divi-
sions introduced by the Nazis,
taken from Wasser (l989b). The
two provinces which were inte-
grated directly into the Reich are
shaded.
1930s, but private ownership remained sacro-
sanct (Harlander and Fehl, 1986). The situation
only changed after Poland had been overrun
in September 1939 and a war economy was
introduced.
The former Polish provinces bordering
Prussia - Wartheland, with its capital Posen
(Posnan) and West Preussen-Danzig with its
capital Danzig (Gdansk) - were integrated into
the German Reich as Reichgaue (provinces).
Wartheland indeed was singled out for special
treatment as a 'neo-Germanic Model Province
in the eastern parts of Germany' (cited in Kuby,
1988). In contrast to the western parts of Poland,
the larger eastern part, the so-called General-
gouvernement, was put under direct SS ad-
ministration, based in Krak6w. This became
the 'dustbin of the nation', to which all the
undesirable non-Germanic elements - Gipsies,
Poles, Jews - were moved from all over the
Reich (Wasser, 1989a and b; Kuby, 1988). It
94 THE NAZI GARDEN CITY
included the large extermination camps Aus-
chwitz, Majdanek and Sobibor. However our
focus in this chapter is on the two new inte-
grated eastern provinces of the Reich and the
schemes for their territorial reorganization.
Rampant urban growth was not tolerable,
especially for a model province. In order to pre-
vent this the planners referred back to the old
but never forgotten concept of inner coloniza-
tion. They also remembered Bernhard Hammer
who had in 1906 proposed garden cities as
a means of implementing inner colonization.
Many of the planners involved in the reordering
of the eastern provinces had from World War
I seen the future of Germany in a progressive
re-agrarianization. Their academic training was
reinforced by perceptions of the impact of the
world recession and its damaging effect on
manufacturing industry. And if industry was to
decline then so too would its urban equivalent,
the big city. Accordingly they looked to a 're-
duction of the role of export-oriented indus-
tries, strengthening the exploitation of national
natural resources, transformation of towns into
more self-maintaining economic units, enhanc-
ing the move away from the town back to the
country, inner colonization and planned settle-
ment especially in the eastern parts of Ger-
many' (Hoffacker, 1989, p. 146). However the
full implementation of such strategies conflicted
with Hitler's ambitions of German world dom-
inance based on industrial power. Accordingly,
a strategy of industrial modernization was also
necessary and re-agrarianization was limited to
the eastern provinces.
By 1939, therefore, planners especially in
the eastern Reich were expected to plan for
shrinking towns or at least for an end to further
growth. They had also to shake off the long
established strategy of decentralization of urban
dwellers from the growing city into the urban
periphery. Instead an inner colonization strat-
egy was resurrected, with the cessation and
reversal of the movement from country to town
at its roots. This implied restrictions on personal
mobility: everyone was to be assigned a place
most suitable both for himself and the Volks-
gemeinschaft (DAF, 1941). Once population
mobility had been eliminated the Nazi plan-
ners hoped to establish a static but utterly effici-
ent spatial distribution of population expressed
in a hierarchical model of territorial and societal
order. Growth was to be possible within this
framework, but without altering the basic hier-
archical relationships within it.
The decisive break with what was increas-
ingly portrayed as the 'Anglo-Saxon model of
decentralization' had come in 1937 when the
Germans organized a rival exhibition to the
International Congress of Housing and Town
Planning at the Paris World Fair, where Unwin
was speaking about his regional planning work
in London (Unwin, 1930). The German exhibi-
tion in Dusseldorf, entitled Schaffendes [i.e.
Creative] Volk, included a major presentation
by Gustav Langen entitled Deutscher Leben-
sraum (German Living Space). In explanation
of its action, the leading German Academy of
Town and Territorial Planning in 1938 argued
that Anglo-Saxon decentralization was only
appropriate for colonial empires with 'a world
of empty space'. Since Germany was a 'country
without space' territorial order had to proceed
on different lines.
This involved starting not from the city but
from the country, using 'the village as the build-
ing block' (Keil, 1940). The predominance of
town over country apparent in the decentral-
ization strategy was to be eliminated so that
'town and country be reconciled' (Langen, 1937,
p. 33). However this objective was comprom-
ised by the need for a settlement pattern that
allowed centralization based on Nazi party
structure: 'The relationship between leaders
and followers must be expressed fully with-
in the settlement structure' (Christaller, 1941,
p.6).
However, quite apart from the ideological
and control considerations, there were import-
ant material reasons for emphasizing the village.
 THE NAZIS AND SETTLEMENT PATTERNS 95

Figure 5.5. The settlement ideal as propagated by the Nazis. This photograph, taken from a 1940 pamphlet, shows
a traditional German village, expressive of strong folk identity and cohesion. The Nazis took this as a model for
new villages, housing estates and urban settlements in the eastern provinces.

The integrated eastern provinces were consid-
ered to be the future granaries of the Reich and
were intended to safeguard the wartime provi-
sion of food and allow complete independence
of imported grain following victory (Milward,
1977). Hence, the economists urged the plan-
ners to incorporate the necessary provisions for
modern agriculture, including food and agri-
cultural machinery industries. Territorial plan-
ning for the integrated provinces therefore came
to involve establishing a mixed agricultural-
industrial settlement structure (Meyer, 1941,
p. 94). The farmers would playa double role as
providers of food and defenders of the territory;
they would be called 'armed farmers' (Wasser,
1983, p. 60).
In this new Lebensraum in the east the Nazis
wanted to implement their great ideological
dream. The hope was that finally they would
open up completely new paths of societal and
territorial organization, where, as Langen had
put it in 1937, 'territorial order would be iden-
tical with folk order' (Langen, 1937, p. 31). The
idea of shaping society through town planning
was not of course a new one. However the Nazis
pushed the idea to the utmost of racial order
and this was stamped on to territorial order.
Thus Josef Umlauf, responsible for urban plan-
ning in the integrated eastern provinces re-
marked in 1942 that 'folk and territory are
both the foundation stones of political life ...
Reorganization of and reordering of folk is the
starting point of the large events now taking
place in the east of Germany. From it stems
the principle which will guide territorial order'
(Umlauf, 1942, p. 282).
96 THE NAZI GARDEN CITY

Figure 5.6. The despised reality of suburban sprawl and irregular development. Taken from the same 1940 pamphlet
as figure 5.5, the Nazis were anxious to avoid any development of this type in the eastern provinces, which they
wanted to act as models of the new agrarian Nazi order.

CREATING THE IDEAL NAZI the leadership of SS Commandant Konrad

TERRITORIAL ORDER
Some proposals for the territorial reorganiza-
tion of Poland had been made as early as 1935
by the Deutsche Arbeitsfront (DAF), the Nazi
successor to the trades unions. However ar-
rangements were far from complete by 1939
and much conceptual and detailed work re-
mained. The DAF had hoped to be commis-
sioned to reorganize the model province of
Warthegau (as Wartheland was now known).
However Hitler considered the work to be of
very high ideological importance and therefore
commissioned Heinrich Himmler as Reichskom-
missar fiir die Festigung Deutschen Volkstums
(State Commissioner for Stabilising Germanic
National Characteristics) in October 1939.
Himmler set up a huge planning office under
Meyer. He then set about developing an ideal
structure intended to guide future planning.
Wartheland was considered to be a testing
ground and 'workshop' (Umlauf, 1941, p. 100)
where the first tests would be made before the
concept could be realized in the remaining parts
of the east. From here the SS hoped that 'it
would give an illuminating example according
to which in future the western parts of the Reich
would be reorganized' (Meyer, 1941, p. 98).
The technical aspects of the ideal spatial
structure and the new administrative framework
for Wartheland and Westpreussen-Danzig were
developed and elaborated on by Walter Chris-
taller in 1940-42. Christaller was a geographer
and member of Himmler's staff and was com-
missioned by the Reichsarbeitsgemeinschaft
fiir Raumforschung (Reich Working Group
 CREATING THE IDEAL NAZI TERRITORIAL ORDER
for Territorial Investigation) to develop ideal
schemes on the strength of his well known
doctoral dissertation of 1933, 'The Theory of
Central Places'. His theory was based on agri-
cultural production and the regional pattern of
markets for agricultural products. It was an
approach which echoed the prevailing thinking
by starting with the villages, then moving to
the 'central places', the towns.
Christaller was never a member of the SS,
but can be regarded as a naive technocrat, using
his technical skills without fully acknowledging
the larger processes of which he was part (Istel,
1988). He saw his task as striving towards 'in-
troducing a new spatial order, according to an
ideal plan, into the inappropriate, outdated or
haphazard forms of urban and traffic networks'.
His proposals essentially originated from his
former research into agricultural settlement
structure. His earlier empirical findings now
became proposals for an ideal structure and
were elevated into a general normative pattern
for the spatial distribution of settlement (Istel,
1988). In his plan for the eastern provinces he
elaborated his new concept of the basis of
distribution of goods, administrative association
and connecting traffic before settling on an
optimal solution (Christaller, 1940, 1941).
Christaller did not consciously derive his
concept of ideal spatial order from the garden
city idea. Quite apart from the larger purposes
to which his proposals were being applied, his
emphasis on the village as the basis of settle-
ment within the strategy of re-agrarianization
with its links to the older idea of inner colon-
ization was rather different from Howard's
97
Figure 5.7. Variations in the
conceptual geometry of Walter
Christaller's central place
theory, published in 1941 and
used to underpin his schemes
to create a new spatial order
in the eastern provinces.
starting point of the expanding big city. Never-
theless the outcome can be considered as part
of the spatial-technical tradition of the garden
city planning. Four important similarities are
apparent between his conception of spatial
order and that directly derived from the main-
stream garden city tradition. Most immediately
evident are the striking structural similarities.
Both exhibit hexagonal patterns and show a
hierarchical ordering of settlement units. The
difference is that whereas Christaller started
from the village and worked upwards, the gar-
den city formulation worked the other way and
has only a two level hierarchy.
The second parallel is apparent in Chris-
taller's treatment of the regional capital. This
has much in common with schema for accom-
modating metropolitan growth in decentralized
satellite systems derived from the mainstream
garden city tradition, particularly as articulated
by Unwin or Langen. Thus his proposals for
the Posen area are described as 'ideal case for
ordering a network of central places':
Posen is sited almost in the geometric centre of
Wartheland, the capital which has the power and
potential to develop into a town of 450,000 inhabit-
ants [from roughly 350,000 - author]. The metro-
politan area of Posen is structured in three rings: an
inner ring of suburbs where residential areas are
intermixed with industry, intensive market garden-
ing and recreation; this ring is closely related to Posen
by commuting. Bordering on it is the middle ring,
made of mainly intensive market gardening and agri-
culture; large areas serve the recreation of the city
[Comparable to a green belt - author]. An outer
ring is made up of eleven townships and shows the
normal economic structure of towns in Wartheland;
in some important economic and structural respects
98 THE NAZI GARDEN CITY
these townships are related fully to the town of Posen
[similar to satellites - author]. Within a distance of
50 to 60 km from the centre of Posen there shall
thus be a regular ring of country towns each with
30,000 inhabitants and sited on a railway line radi-
ating from Posen; distances between these towns
shall be equal. (Christaller, 1941, p. 19).
A third parallel was apparent in the approach
to the spatial and functional organization of the
inner area of the capital and the country towns.
These basic principles were laid down in 1940
by Karl Culemann who had been commissioned
to design the structure of a Normalstadt (normal
town) to be applied when new towns needed
to be founded to complete the settlement pat-
tern in the eastern provinces (Culemann, 1941).
Finally, on all levels of spatial hierarchy, par-
ticularly at the level of district towns with 10,000
Figure 5.8. Applying central
place theory to the eastern
provinces. A subsequent stage
in the translation of theory to
the actual scheme. Notice
especially the regular group-
ings of six smaller settlements
around a larger central settle-
ment, echoing Howard's so-
cial city diagram.
inhabitants, it would be necessary to establish
'an organic connection between town and coun-
try' (Christaller, 1941, p. 8). To define the pre-
cise form of this connection the Reich working
party subsequently commissioned Paul Wolf,
then chief planner of Breslau and an old protag-
onist of the garden city idea (Wolf, 1941). His
design for the connection was closely related
to the garden city principles as found in Unwin.
Thus Christaller and his associates produced
a settlement structure that shared much com-
mon ground in a strict technical sense with the
mainstream garden city tradition. Yet in many
other respects, the differences could not have
been greater. Not the least of these contrasts
was that the territorial plan would effectively
subject the whole of the province to party
control by virtue of the close identity of party
 IMPLEMENTING THE NEW TERRITORIAL ORDER
organization and the spatial pattern of settle-
ment. However to create such an ideal order
on paper was relatively easy, but how feasible
was it to create such a scheme in practice? How
far was there any persistence of the traditional
reluctance to challenge the powerful interests
of private land and municipal autonomy that
had thwarted territorial planning in the west-
ern Reich? We must now examine the ways in
which authority was made available to imple-
ment such a scheme.
IMPLEMENTING THE NEW
TERRITORIAL ORDER
In fact planning in the integrated eastern prov-
inces was centralized in a totalitarian manner.
99
Figure 5.9. A section of Chris-
taller's actual 1941 plan for the
new administrative framework
for Wartheland around Posen
(Posnan). Notice the promin-
ent green belt, without settle-
ment, around Posen.
Rather unusually, Hitler, who generally pre-
ferred competition in leadership, gave sole
responsibility for planning the provinces to
Himmler (Meyer, 1941). Accordingly the local
authorities there were subjected to enforced
co-operation with the SS. Having devised a
planned totality of territorial order and design
of settlements, Himmler and his staff 'devised
the leading concepts' and 'directed the line of
implementation to be followed' by means of
his General Ordinances (Meyer, 1941, p. 93).
Thus Christaller's principles of territorial order
and Culemann's principles of the normal town
were incorporated into the General Ordinance
for Planning and Design of Towns in 1942. This
constituted an order to be strictly followed by
all districts, municipalities, housing authorities
100 THE NAZI GARDEN CITY
Figure 5.10. Walter Christaller (1893-1969), seen in
later life. His central place theory came to form the
basis of a new spatial science of geography throughout
the English speaking world during the 1960s. Few, if
any. of these geographers who seized so eagerly on his
ideas had any inkling of his past associations with the
55.
and other dependent bodies, themselves newly
formed under Christaller's proposals. All had
to apply for permission for approval of all
planning activity, however small. Work could
not proceed without approval and deviation
from the principles laid down in the General
Figure 5.11. Paul Wolf's proposal of 1941 for integrat-
ing new country towns into a rural framework, again
echoing many aspects of the pattern of the social city.
Ordinances was severely punished (Wasser,
1989a, 1989b).
The integrated eastern provinces were then
characterized by totale Planungsfreheit (total
freedom to plan) (Meyer, 1940, p. 393). A vast
territory was laid at the feet of the planners
as a 'raw material in need of being moulded'
(Liedecke, 1940). In the perceptions of the plan-
ners involved, here was a territory free of all
the well known and bothersome restrictions of
normal planning activity. There would be no
native population, no existing buildings to be
taken into account and no private ownership
of land. 'It is characteristic of total freedom to
plan that: first, men of native [i.e. Germanic]
background are available in sufficient numbers
and with adequate skills, willing to appropriate
new territories; second, sufficient land, being
presently owned by non-Germanic population
is available for appropriation' (Meyer, cited in
Groning and Wolschke-Bulmahn, 1987, p. 92).
The scheme also offered security for investors
in the development of new settlements because
 IMPLEMENTING THE NEW TERRITORIAL ORDER
Figure 5.12. Plan of the type of town shown in figure
5.11, also by Paul Wolf. Wolf and others established a
general pattern for the new towns (Normalstadt) to be
established in the integrated eastern provinces. Although
the layouts are rather formal, many elements of garden
city thinking are apparent.
the new population would be moved in on an
enforced planned basis, without need to rely
on the uncertainties of market conditions.
In order to obtain sufficient freedom to plan
for reorganization of town and country in the
incorporated eastern provinces some 560,000
Jews (up to spring 1941) were deported or
concentrated in the newly constructed ghetto
in Litzmannstadt (Lodz) (Himrnler, 1940; Kuby,
1988). A further 408,825 Poles of non-Jewish
background had been brutally transferred as
'undesirable elements of a minor race' into the
Generalgouvernment (Groning and Wolschke-
Bulmahn, 1987), including most of the Polish
intelligentsia (Luczak, 1969). Uncounted Poles
were transported as forced labour in agriculture
101
and war industries in the western part of the
Reich or used in cruel medical experiments
(Roth, 1985a, 1985b). HimmIer estimated in
1940 that another 3.4 million Poles from all
the integrated eastern provinces would have to
go the same way soon.
Altogether about 4.5 million out of 10.2
million population were planned for removal
in one way or another. The target population
was 7.3 million after exchange of popolation.
~~};:::,rt~a~fC:=~~~ ~~r:~:ss~~~;:~;:;i
laws, not operative in the western part of the
Reich, permitted expropriation of the remain-
ing Poles without compensation (Gotz, 1940;
Pergande, 1942). Within the district of Posen
alone some 3.2 million hectares of mainly agri-
cultural land were eligible for expropriation
in this way, amounting to about 75 per cent of
the territory of the whole district (Mundt, 1941).
For planning purposes the province of War-
theland was bisected. The eastern half was con-
sidered, according to Jacobshagen (1941, p. 265),
to be a Neuplanungsraum (territory for com-
prehensive new development) in which the mass
of existing structures and buildings did not
justify preservation. Planning thus had to start
with a clean slate. However the western half,
having been colonized by Prussians since Na-
poleonic times, was considered to be only an
Umplanungsraum (territory for modified devel-
opment). Only those buildings associated with
'lower Polish culture and usually of lower value'
were to be removed, namely farm buildings,
stables and barns (Liedecke, 1940). Thus plan-
ning had only to respect historic buildings of
the Prussian past in the western half; otherwise
the freedom to plan was indeed total. More-
over the concern to 'Germanize' the land-
scape extended beyond towns and villages.
The SS planners also tried to 'Germanize' the
rather open countryside by extensive planting
of hedges and forests (Hornung, 1942; Groning
and Wolschke-Bulmahn, 1987).
In writing about their comprehensive plans
102 THE NAZI GARDEN CITY
for territorial order, the SS planning technocrats
never hint at what happened before they started
work. The impression is always conveyed that
their own work was an utterly rational approach
to a territory handed on to them as clean raw
material. Thus the impression implied is that
they had nothing whatever to do with the move-
ment of people in and out, with the seizing of
property and the tearing down of houses. The
planning historian cannot however adopt such
a blinkered approach. To properly understand
Raumordnung we need to examine its links with
Volksordnung (Folk order).
FOLK ORDER AND TERRITORIAL ORDER
On October 6th 1939 Hitler addressed the
Reichstag and demanded 'an ethnographic re-
organization in the east'. In line with this, the
SS commissioned Erhard Wetzel and others to
establish a scheme of Volksordnung. It basic-
ally consisted of three steps. The first involved
exchange of population; Poles (and Jews) out -
Germans in! Subsequently, in 1942, Rimmler
described his vision of Germanization:
We have to Germanize the east not in the tradi-
tional way by teaching the native population the
German language, German habits and German laws.
Instead we have to Germanize in a new sense. We
have to take care that only men of German - that is
Germanic - blood will be living in the eastern prov-
inces from now on. (Himmler, 1942, p. 117)
Following this planned population movement
came a second step whereby the newcomers of
Germanic background would be resettled in
tribal order accordiJ;lg to a plan of tribes. There
would be regions of; for example, Westphalians,
Swabians, Bavaria.ns and Batavians from the
Netherlands (Zoch, 1940). Such tribes could
well be the descendants of those who had
emigrated from Germany in the sixteenth or
seventeenth centuries to perhaps the Black Sea
or other parts of Europe. Resettlement was to
take place in strategically important zones
called German settlement territory (Doubek, O.
cited in Wasser, 1989a).
It was at this point that the third step of
reorganizing the tribal regions according to the
new principles of territorial order occurred, as
provided for in the plan prepared by Christaller.
Thus it can be seen that territorial planning was
just the third step of a more comprehensive
scheme of folk order. The sub-organizations of
the SS and the planners in charge of each step
were different. It was this separation of respons-
ibilities that enabled the territorial planners to
claim that they did not dirty their hands with
the earlier steps.
We have already considered the scale of
population movement and noted its ideological
underpinning in Nazi thinking about racial su-
periority. However it is also important to note
the material impacts of deportations in provid-
ing a source of cheap labour and wealth for the
SS. While the Jewish part of the Polish
population was viewed as Unter-Menschen (sub-
human), fit only for extermination, the non-
Jewish Poles were regarded as leaderless work
slaves, available for the extensive SS-owned
enterprises Erd- und Steinwerke GmbH (Earth
and Stone Works Ltd). The SS therefore had a
source of the cheapest possible labour as a
result of its first step in the integrated eastern
provinces. The building and construction sectors
and later the chemical and munitions indus-
tries were supplied from this source, the SS
receiving a small daily fee for every forced la-
bourer they supplied (Luczak, 1969; Kuby,
1988). Such forced workers were themselves
unpaid, supplied with inadequate food, shelter
or health care. Hirnmler spoke in 1942 of 'exter-
mination through labour' (cited Bauche, 1986,
p. 93) but it was lucrative business for the SS.
The other dimension of the exchange of
population, the movement in of Germanic
people, was in some respects almost as brutal.
It was realized from 1940 onwards when
Volkerrohstoff (population raw material) of
 EPILOGUE AND CONCLUSIONS
Germanic origin was forcibly collected from
other occupied territories and resettled in the
eastern provinces, where pre-existing villages
had in the meantime been cleared (Luczak,
1978). It was promised that those who lost their
homes would be given farms in the eastern
provinces, would be masters over a number of
Polish slaves and would be provided with good
furnishings, mostly seized from deported Poles.
By the end of 1943 some 530,000 of these so-
called Reichsdeutsche had arrived in Warthe-
land and Westpreussen-Danzig. They came
from the Baltic states, the Black Sea and eastern
Poland amongst other places (Luczak, 1978).
However this inward movement was not a
success. Although it was intended to reduce
the pre-existing population, the number of
German newcomers remained far behind the
number of Poles deported. Many farms re-
mained empty. There was an unwillingness on
the side of the newcomers. There were con-
flicts between groups of new arrivals coming
from different countries and cultures and, de-
spite their Germanic origins, speaking differ-
ent languages. Farms soon decayed after being
empty for a while and many of the newcomers
were not experienced in farming methods
suitable for the Polish soil and climate. The
intention to improve agricultural production
and convert the eastern provinces into the
Reich's granary failed to materialize (Luczak,
1978; Kuby, 1988).
The negative effects were strengthened by
increasing resistance from the remaining Poles.
Partisan activities made building and railway
and road construction hazardous to German
supervisors and experts. Almost nothing could
be built from 1942 onwards (Luczak, 1969;
Wasser, 1989a, 1989b). The front moved back
after the German defeat at Stalingrad in Janu-
ary 1943 and from then onwards all plans for
new towns, new infrastructure of new build-
ings were progressively doomed to remain as
blueprints.
103
EPILOGUE AND CONCLUSIONS
Chief planner Konrad Meyer, agriculturalist
and SS commandant, was later brought to trial
at Nuremberg. He was discharged of guilt
and in 1956 became Professor for Territorial
Order at the Technical University of Han-
over. During the 1950s and 1960s Christaller's
theories enjoyed international acclaim amongst
geographers seeking a rational scientific basis
for their discipline. Such developments were
symptomatic of a resurrection of the work of
Himmler's territorial planners and a wider re-
habilitation of the concept of territorial order
in West Germany and elsewhere. However its
protagonists were careful to strip it of the ideo-
logical varnish that linked it to the Nazi con-
cept of Volksordnung (Istel, 1988).
The Nazi adoption of the garden city concept
represented a turning point in its long evolution
in Germany. Under the banner of total freedom
to plan and fully furnished with the necessary
planning instruments to plan comprehensively,
the greatest possible distance from Howard and
his concept of the garden city had been reached.
His humanitarian and emancipatory goals had
been completely twisted and choked by Nazi
technocrats, applying a technical and spatial
concept of the garden city to serve diametrically
opposite goals. During its evolution in Germany
the garden city has twice undergone a detach-
ment of ends and means. Around 1910 it was
turned into a mere spatial reform model for
town planning, divorced from Howard's wider
reformist project. It was this which ultimately
allowed it to be so readily incorporated into
Nazi Raumordnung to serve the horrifying ends
sought by Himmler. In tum this Nazi concept
of territorial order was itself reintroduced into
post-1945 Germany as a mere technical-spatial
concept. However, while Howard's original pro-
ject proved to be a humanist utopia which could
not be realized, Raumordnung before 1945 was
a nightmare that was put into reality.
104 THE NAZI GARDEN CITY
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 6
THE AUSTRALIAN GARDEN CITY
Robert Freestone
In 1913 Ebenezer Howard looked forward to
one of 'the best and brightest chapters' of the
garden city movement being written 'in the great
continent of the Pacific' (GCTPA, 1913). How-
ever although the ideas of the movement gained
considerable currency in Australia, particularly
before the Second World War, Howard's as-
pirations were never quite realized. Garden
city ideas did not change the face of urban
Australia, and never won over every planner
even in their heyday. The contemporary im-
pact and legacy were even more diffuse, and
at times ambiguous. But they have shaped, di-
rectly and indirectly, the living environments
of many Australians, and have influenced at
least two generations of urban planners, even
those unaware or even perhaps dismissive of
direct inspiration.
Drawing on previous work by the author
(Freestone, 1989a), this chapter attempts to pro-
vide an historical overview of the multi-faceted
and at times contradictory Australian response
to the garden city tradition in theory and prac-
tice. Organized into a quasi-chronological and
interpretative framework, it commences with
a review of the precedents and preconditions
for importation of the garden city idea that
existed in the nineteenth century. Threaded
through a necessarily broad and summary sur-
vey is a focus on three particular facets of
the meaning of the garden city tradition in
Australia: as a generalized urban environmental
ideal; as town planning and housing principles;
and as a set of ideas for shaping the course of
metropolitan and regional growth.
SETTING THE SCENE: THE NINETEENTH
CENTURY
Nineteenth-century Australian cities were 'pri-
vate cities', an interpretation working on several
levels. They were commercial cities with growth
potential ultimately related to world capitalism.
At another level, they were 'privatized' cities
of single-family houses and limited social fa-
cilities. Financiers, speculators, and landlords
all played key roles in shaping physical growth
patterns. The colonial conception of planning
did not extend far beyond the survey of an
initial town grid. Most authorities were 'unable
to comprehend future town planning needs'
(Cannon, 1976, p. 39). The powers of the Com-
monwealth government from 1901 related to
national issues like defence and trade; there was
no mandate for general planning and housing
initiatives. The minutiae of urban administra-
tion inevitably devolved to local government -
a statutory creation of colonial authority and
the weakest tier in the federal system. This
combination of laissez-faire economy, large-
scale urbanization, and limited development
controls meant that Australia was not without
108 THE AUSTRALIAN GARDEN CITY
social problems. The character of urban re-
formism was vital in setting the stage for the
introduction - and modification - of garden city
ideas.
What of quests toward a cooperative, decen-
tralized society along the lines of Howard's
original treatise? Many of the intellectual cur-
rents which informed his argument were replic-
ated in Australia. The reformist and radical
works on his reading list, like Edward Bellamy's
Looking Backward (1888), were certainly avail-
able and even stimulated imitations (South,
1891). Alternative land tenures, land nation-
alization, and land value taxation were succes-
sive themes from the 1870s. The early writings
of Alfred Wallace led to the formation of Land
Nationalisation Societies in the 1880s while
from the early 1890s Henry George won many
admirers. Such developments influenced the
utopian scheming of different groups: religious,
temperance, anarchist, communitarian, and
Georgist (Powell, 1978).
Two theoretical schemes foreshadowing ele-
ments of Howard's prospectus were those of
the Rev. Horace Tucker and the utopian so-
cialist William Lane. Tucker's mission was to
settle persons of limited means in small co-
operative settlements (Tucker, 1894). Stirred
by Bellamy's ideas, Lane developed the con-
cept of a 'co-operative commune' outside con-
ventional society and he eventually led his
followers on a quixotic quest to found a 'new
Australia' in South America (Souter, 1968).
Howard would have been aware of the apoca-
lyptic writings of Lane (also known as John
Miller) for the Fellowship of the New Life, a
communitarian-inclined precursor of the Fabian
Society (Armytage, 1961). In To-morrow (1898)
he mentioned the Paraguayan colony to em-
phasize that his working model would not be
destabilized by the same autocratic rule.
Small village settlements of various comple-
xions were established throughout Australia.
The involvement of colonial governments, prim-
arily in response to the urban unemployment
crisis of the 1890s, eroded the utopian con-
notations. By the turn of the century most
settlements had either collapsed or lost sight of
their original objectives. Lack of capital, limited
farming expertise, poor land, management con-
flicts, declining interest in communalism, and an
upturn in city employment opportunities were
recurring reasons. Loss of interest in small-scale
decentralization meant that one strand of social
reform able to respond to the intrinsic radical-
ism of the garden city idea had virtually dis-
appeared by the early 19OOs.
Anti-metropolitan sentiments thrived through-
out the nineteenth century. In the depression
of the 1890s large cities personified social evil.
Communal experiments were one response, but
recognition of the 'centralization curse' never
boiled over into demands for new, urban com-
munities. First, there were already hundreds of
country towns widely perceived as relatively
'new'. Second, the most strident attacks came
from rural interests clamouring for devolution
of economic and political power. Their main
demands were for new colonies, decreased gov-
ernment spending on cities, closer settlement,
and more political power (Aitkin, 1972). Third,
anti-urbanism from within the cities lacked
vigour and conviction; the imbalance between
town and country was merely lamented. There
was also a rival strain of urban boosterism in
some quarters so that by the 1880s metropoli-
tanism was elevated to a form of nationalism.
The view developed that capital city growth was
a vehicle for social and economic advancement
(Hayter, 1892).
At Federation many Australians would have
shared statistician Timothy Coghlan's ambival-
ence toward big cities. He praised 'the spectacle
of magnificent cities growing with marvellous
rapidity' yet fretted that 'abnormal aggregation'
was a 'most unfortunate element' of progress
(Coghlan, 1904). The contradiction gradually
dissolved in the consensus that both urban and
rural interests were legitimate: measures were
required to stimulate rural development and
 SETTING THE SCENE: THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
improve city life. This view was obviously to
influence the interpretation of the garden city
message.
The years from 1890 to 1914 are often re-
garded as an era of significant social reform
in Australia. This heyday of humanistic liberal-
ism saw Australia gain something of a world
reputation as 'a social laboratory' (Crowley,
1974). However prior to the emergence of the
town planning movement, urban reform was
fragmented into relatively narrow concerns. The
degree and extent of problems were invariably
qualified by reference to foreign conditions,
except for purposes of dramatic effect. Re-
form activity lacked revolutionary connotations
and concentrated on ameliorating symptoms
rather than eradicating deeper social causes.
The physicalist idea that poor surroundings per
se were the root of ill-health, immorality, and
discontent, appeared repeatedly in government
reports which invariably made frequent refer-
ences to foreign, and especially British, reform
initiatives. Reformers typically saw their en-
deavours as apolitical and blinded themselves
to obvious redistributive costs. Reformers were
drawn from across the political spectrum with
no consistent party affiliation, except on matters
such as the appropriate scale of state interven-
tion. The improvements which they achieved
were mostly small scale and partial yet the
cumulative impact could be significant. But
apathy, conservatism, utilitarianism, property
rights and the ideology of growth were early
established as obstacles to success.
By the 1880s disparate strands of civic im-
provement began welding together into a more
cohesive critique of urban problems. This was
evident in the new interest in model cities and
suburbs, the formation of generalist reform
bodies such as Melbourne's Kalizoic Society
(1884) which campaigned against slums, pollu-
tion and environmental desecration, and the be-
ginnings of a modern planning literature. Thus
in an influential 1890 address entitled 'The Lay-
ing Out of Towns', expatriate English architect
109
John Sulman argued for a more rational, aes-
thetic, and closely supervised approach to urban
design. He criticized the predominant 'chess-
board' system of layout, favouring the radial
'spider's web' model on grounds of economy,
convenience and amenity. He foreshadowed
modern land-use zoning, arguing that different
functions should be allotted 'suitable positions
at first' rather than just 'shaken into place'.
Possibilities for town beautification were con-
sidered: curved streets, tree planting, belts of
parkland. Unfettered development could no
longer be condoned. New legislation was re-
quired to cover approval of subdivision plans,
provision of parks and streets in relation to the
subdivided area, and limitation of population
density. Sulman's ideas were an important step
in the evolution of planning away from rudi-
mentary colonial notions and a harbinger of
the concerns and flavour of modern planning
and garden city thought.
The notion of the garden city - as an essen-
tially British, environmentalist, liberal approach
to urban questions - was readily accommodated
in this reform scene from the early 19OOs. In
relation to the living environment, several es-
tablished reform themes were most directly
influenced: the overhauling of outmoded prac-
tices of land subdivision, the greening of resid-
ential neighbourhoods, provision of parks and
playgrounds, land-use segregation, and hous-
ing improvement.
However the nineteenth century produced
no planned towns pointing the way towards
modern garden cities. Nor were there any
planned factory settlements to help prepare the
ground for garden villages. The insignificance
of tied factory communities in the early 1900s
can be related to the nature of the economy.
Pastoral-mercantile foundations made an in-
digenous Bournville as unlikely as a colonial
Birmingham. Small manufacturing establish-
ments and backyard operations geared to a
limited market were the norm. Company hous-
ing was important in the decentralized mining
110 THE AUSTRALIAN GARDEN CITY
sector but uncertainty minimized large-scale
investment in other community facilities. Profits
were ploughed back into further capital accu-
mulation, repatriated to Britain, frittered away
in conspicuous consumption, or devoted to
philanthropic benefactions. No industrial mag-
nates arose 'to impose paternalistic order on
the housing of their employees' (Bolton, 1981,
p. 18). More enlightened foreign interests -
such as Lever Brothers - also concentrated
strictly on business.
Nineteenth-century attempts to create ideal
environments were dominated by the model
suburb or, more accurately, model subdivision
- since the legal responsibility of private 'de-
velopers' ended with the cutting up of estates.
Specially designed subdivisions - dating mainly
from the mid-1870s - promised a level of amen-
ity and sense of community greater than con-
ventional suburban estates although they were
frequently as premature. In part, they were
aimed at generating greater profits via artificial
snob appeal. Hallmarks included large allot-
ments, wide and often curved streets, planned
open spaces, and recommended land-use zon-
ings. Such features usually exceeded minimum
local government requirements.
Ideas about the optimum shape of metro-
politan growth in line with garden city thought
surfaced only fleetingly in nineteenth-century
Australia (Bland, 1857; Keily, 1891; Sulman,
1890). The most significant local influence on
this sort of thinking was the distinctive 1837
town plan of Adelaide, usually associated with
William Light (Hutchings and Bunker, 1986,
pp. 13-16). Interestingly, Howard included
a 'sketch map' of Adelaide in explaining the
concept of social cities in Garden Cities of To-
morrow, but it is unlikely that Light or his
contemporaries saw the plan in the same dy-
namic sense. In general, the overall size, shape
and structure of cities, let alone integrated
systems of new towns, received little detailed
attention until the early 19OOs. Sulman's ideas
were still ahead of their time even when 'The
Laying Out of Towns' was reprinted in the
influential Sydney-based journal Building in
1907. The tentative debate on the form of the
ideal metropolis helps explain why metropoli-
tan and regional applications of the garden city
idea drew such a response in Australia before
the 1940s (Freestone, 1986).
A GARDEN CITY MOVEMENT?
A variety of agencies, brokers and channels of
communication facilitated the diffusion and
modification of garden city ideas to and around
Australia from the early 19OOs. The tyranny
of distance meant heavy, often belated, reli-
ance on the printed word. Government fact-
finding missions produced the most substantive
information from 1913. The published reports
reflect a general drift in interest away from
Howard's ideas towards garden city principles
of town planning. Knowledge of overseas gar-
den city theory and practice was also acquired
on personal visits, official and private. Inter-
ested politicians, bureaucrats, businessmen, and
professional people scheduled inspections of
garden city developments into their itineraries.
International conferences provided first-hand
contact for some. At home, a series of plan-
ning conferences in 1917-19 provided further
opportunities for dissemination of garden city
ideas. There were 287 official delegates in
Adelaide in October 1917 for the first national
conference, whose major theme was 'Promo-
tion of General Education and Public Under-
standing of the Science of Town Planning and
Garden City Housing and Principles'. Almost
600 attended a second conference in Brisbane
in 1918.
The 1914 lecture tour by William Davidge
and Charles Reade on behalf of the Garden
Cities and Town Planning Association was
perhaps the best example of the direct export
of garden city thought. New Zealand-born
Reade stayed on to become Government Town
Planner of South Australia (Hutchings and
 A GARDEN CITY MOVEMENT? 111

Bunker, 1986, p. 51). The lectures were the

direct catalyst for the formation of town plan-
ning associations in four states. These organiza-
tions were the closest Australian counterparts
of foreign garden city associations and, in the
absence of any planning institutes before the
19305, they also functioned as quasi-professional
bodies.
Garden city advocates generally fitted Sut-
cliffe's typology of early planning movements
as collections of different types of individuals
such as the home-based planners willing to look
abroad, intermediaries alive to foreign devel-
opments, and the globe-trotting cosmopolites
(Sutcliffe, 1981, p. 173). To use an Australian
colloquialism, advocates represented more of
an informal 'push' in the early town planning
movement than an organized garden city move-
ment in the sense of that in Britain (and period-
ically in other countries). They did not form a
tightly-knit group, partly because of the capital
city basis of the planning movement. There Figure 6.1. Sir James Barren (1862-1945) was Mel-
was the usual quota of dreamy do-gooders bourne's leading garden city advocate, a role which often
saw him in conflict with the more hard-nosed 'city
and charlatans. Not even the leading figures
functionalists' in the 1920s. A distinguished medical
necessarily knew each other well. Intimate man, academic and leading public figure, the garden
friendships were rare and relations occasionally city cause was but one of numerous social reform causes
soured. Most were, predictably, middle-class, with which he was associated.
professional, Christian, male. But what really
brought them together, like their nineteenth-
century counterparts, was a common ideology the dominant obsession in the lives of advo-
of reform as an apolitical activity and the be- cates - there were no Purdoms or Osborns here.
lief that major social improvements could be Many leading advocates pursued various reform
effected through improvement of the physical interests, effectively diffusing the garden city
environment. No garden city advocate wished cause into specialized realms such as housing,
to overturn the existing social order; reform was local government, infant welfare, eugenics, tem-
seen as more a matter of professional action. perance reform, even the single tax movement.
'The best results,' declared Sydney advocate The garden city message in Australia thus could
R. F. Irvine (1913, p. 114) 'are obtained through take on quite diverse interpretations and shades
the co-operation of various kinds of experts.' of meaning.
These various traits gave to garden city ad- There was little support for, and debate on,
vocacy the character of British liberalism and the concept of a decentralized, co-operative
American progressivism. A unique element in society - or even new towns - in the early
the Australian situation was perhaps a spirit of twentieth century. The garden city movement
melioristic nationalism from Federation through in Britain had largely completed its meta-
to the 1920s. The garden city was by no means morphosis from a radical social movement to
112 THE AUSTRALIAN GARDEN CITY

Figure 6.2. House plans and sketches (c.1914) by local architect F. G. Castleden promoting the Australian
Agricultural Company's garden suburb venture in suburban Newcastle, New South Wales. Anthony King argues
in his book The Bungalow (1984) that the garden suburb was an important agent for the diffusion of progressive
domestic architecture in Australia.

a pragmatic planning force by the time it was
set to make a major impression in Australia.
With an established local tradition of ameli-
orative urban reform, it was always unlikely
that Howard's work would become a bible
for dedicated social activists or a populist text.
Instead, Howard's call for a social revolution
would be overlooked, his ideas frequently mis-
interpreted, and his books recognized only as
classics of planning history. There were few
local statements recalling the radical flavour of
Howard's original argument. In Co-operative
Garden Cities, Twycross (1916) outlined a
scheme for rural communes on publicly-owned
land that was generally derivative of Howard's
ideas, apart from its rural slant and emphasis
on the planning of 'business life'. The book
was noted in socialist circles for its enthusiasm
and research, but made little impression in
either radical or planning circles.
The broad agenda of the later garden city
movement inevitably weakened the importance
attached to garden cities by Australians. In-
digenous factors were also relevant. Recent
settlement, small population, limited rural-
urban migration and a relatively high standard
of living all impeded the emergence of a genu-
ine movement for new towns. Urban reformers
continued to believe, with some justification,
that the scale and extent of urban problems
 A GARDEN CITY MOVEMENT? 113

Figure 6.3. Walter Scott Griffiths' Australian version of Unwin's famous 'nothing gained by overcrowding' case
(for another British version see figures 10.3 and lOA). This was prepared for the first national town planning
conference, held in Adelaide in 1917. Griffiths (1863-1929), a Sydney draughtsman and map-maker, became
Government Town Planner of South Australia in 1922.

were less dramatic than in the old world. James
Morrell invoked these themes in a report for
the Victorian government, noting that there was
'not the same necessity for garden cities ... in
comparison to Great Britain, where the condi-
tions of existing ancient cities are difficult to
remedy' (Morrell, 1915, p. 64).
Buttressing this position was general support
for continued metropolitan growth within the
planning movement. Big cities were not vilified
by the garden city push. Sulman (1915, p. 49)
maintained that in Australia because 'the whole
tendency of modern life is to concentrate popu-
lation in urban areas ... the present develop-
ment and future prospects of its cities are of
first importance.' Sydney reformer and labour
politician J. D. Fitzgerald (1909, p. 30) went
further, seeing growth as ensuring the greatness
of cities and 'in no sense evil'.
The one local purist was Toowoomba-based
Dr Thomas Price. He always clearly distin-
guished the 'big city' school of urban planning,
which 'merely makes the best of a bad busi-
ness', from the garden city movement with its
promise of 'hundreds of small towns' (Price,
1919). At the 1917 and 1918 national planning
conferences, Price was the most consistent
proponent of new town or expanded country
town development. Flickering support came
only from delegates who similarly represented
rural local government. The lack of interest in
selective urban decentralization mirrored gen-
eral community attitudes. Up to the late 1930s
critiques of metropolitan life generally re-
mained in the traditional mould with the ac-
cent on 'back-to-the-Iand' and devolution of
political and economic power. A further hind-
rance to professional, popular and official
114 THE AUSTRALIAN GARDEN CITY
enthusiasm for garden cities was a perception
of them as utopian fantasies or, at best, products
of special circumstances not found in Australia
(Fitzgerald, 1921, p. 1).
IDEALS AND PRINCIPLES
The most general guise of the Australian gar-
den city was as an image of, and catchphrase
for, the ideal urban environment. Places like
Letchworth, Hampstead and Bournville were
seen as combining separate advances in layout,
land-use zoning, landscaping, and housing into
total environments. They crystallized the aims
of reformers interested in overhauling the
'happy-go-lucky' approach to urban develop-
ment. The appeal of the garden city ideal was
perhaps strongest when expressed visually,
especially when plans or pictures of garden city
environments were compared with those of
unplanned areas. This technique, a staple of
British planning propaganda, crops up repeat-
edly in the early planning literature (Reade,
1909).
It was not advocated, however, that idyllic
foreign scenes should be reproduced in every
detail. There was a distinctively Australian
interpretation of the ideal urban environment
- somewhat fuzzy but unmistakable with gum
trees rather than elms, detached rather than
group housing. The accent was still on spacious-
ness, orderliness, parks, and trees: the planned
community of happy homes. For most planners,
and certainly the informed public, this was what
the garden city ideal represented. An Australian
variation on famous maxims by John Burns
and Lord Rosebery, expressed well the bour-
geois consensus about the power of the planned
environment to transform standards of living:
'there is no possible doubt that it is the mean
environment that produces the miserable body,
the dwarfed mind and the atrophied soul. It is
impossible to raise a fine race with high ideals
within the miserable surroundings of the large
cities of today' (Price, 1918).
The supposed dividends of the generalized
garden city ideal were diverse (Freestone,
1989a). It stood for a healthy, disease-free en-
vironment; for reproduction of a virile race of
white Australians; for decency and morality;
for social stability, and a sound economic ap-
proach to urban development. The emphasis
given these interrelated themes in the planning
literature varied according to the spokesperson,
the audience and the period. Claims for physical
and moral health predominated between 1911
and 1916. The nexus between social harmony
and garden city living was emphasized in the
early post-war years, significantly a: time of in-
dustrial unrest. Commercial benefits tended to
be stressed in the propaganda of the prosper-
ous 1920s. The first period, seeing the emer-
gence of an organized town planning movement
and an intensive flow of information from
overseas, saw the inspirational power of the
garden city at its height. Around 1911-16 the
garden city became virtually the touchstone of
planning reform, certainly its most coherent
paradigm (Fitzgerald, 1912, p. 23).
If there was a competing holistic ideal, it was
perhaps the lingering notion of the city beautiful
which actually foreshadowed the garden city
in integrating many of the threads of urban re-
formism to the early 1900s. The rise of a formal
town planning movement saw, for a time, the
terms 'city beautiful' and 'garden city' used in-
terchangably, especially in the popular press.
Inspired both by classical ideas and more
contemporary American initiatives, recurring
images in city beautiful dreams were monu-
mental buildings, grand piazzas, and awesome
vistas. An enduring motif was the civic centre,
a grouped composition of major public build-
ings. This was aesthetic, architectural planning
in the grand manner. It came into prominence
with the planning of the federal capital and the
1909 Royal Commission on the Improvement
of Sydney (Gibbons, 1980). The Commission
did endorse planned suburbanization in the
image of the garden city, but there were later
 IDEALS AND PRINCIPLES
criticisms of its wider attempt to 'Haussmanise'
a metropolis already engulfed 'in the maelstrom
of modern economic development' (Reade,
1917).
This pragmatic thinking was to see the van-
guard of planning reform pass to the city func-
tional paradigm in the 19208 (Freestone, 1989b).
This was seen as the most realistic and 'scien-
tific' approach to making the best of existing
cities in all their complexity. The emphasis was
methodological, starting with the need for a
comprehensive civic survey and moving on to
detailed investigation of issues such as traffic
flows, public utilities, and land-use zoning.
America supplied most inspiration, partly re-
flecting the growing importance of wider cul-
turallinks. Within this context, garden suburbs
and cities were seen as only part of the correct
approach to metropolitan problems. But, just
as the city beautiful legacy lingered in the
specialized realm of 'civic art and amenities',
the garden city ideal survived as relevant to a
particular set of problems in the urban organ-
ism: housing and land subdivision.
There were no hard and fast criteria or defin-
itive manuals for what were frequently termed
'garden city principles' or 'town planning on
garden city lines'. Sulman came closest to a
precise definition in 1921:
The term garden suburb, or garden city, is constantly
used in reference to Town Planning ... Just what
the term connotes is, however, somewhat difficult to
define ... The special characteristics which differen-
tiate them from the ordinary town or suburb are the
allocation of special quarters or sites for each kind
of building, the absence of congestion of dwellings
and their better arrangement, the ample provision
of parks, playgrounds, and open spaces, the planting
with trees and grass of part of the width of the roads
where not required for traffic, and the provision of
greater opportunities for social intercourse. (Sulman,
1921, p. 106)
The desired characteristics in a planned gar-
den city environment were a peculiar mix of
technicalities and ideology. Any community
worthy of the garden city label was preferably
115
a distinct physical and social entity. One amen-
ity necessary even in the smallest undertaking
was public open space. A trademark of many
planned suburbs was a common playground at
the rear of housing allotments, an adaption of
the British allotment garden. A key maxim for
the garden city environment was 'everything in
its place' and land-use zoning, or at least exclus-
ive 'residential area' proclamations, were re-
commended. Socially mixed environments were
generally advocated, although in reality most
communities were destined, if not intended, to
attract particular social groups. Classification
of roads into a hierarchy was favoured. There
was general enthusiasm for rounded street
corners. Dead-end streets were anathema,
hampering importation of the modern cul-de-
sac idea. Garden city layouts were the anti-
thesis of the gridiron subdivision, and generally
fell into one of two categories: curvilinear sym-
metrical or contour controlled. Single-family
detached dwellings were the housing ideal
with ample yard space front and back. Almost
inseparable from the house-and-garden prin-
ciple was home ownership. Alternative hous-
ing tenures were discussed and occasionally
tried but owner-occupation easily won the day.
As a consequence, many Australian garden city
environments lacked the degree of unified con-
trol that was characteristic of many of the best
developments in England or on the continent.
Although for years there was little serious
dissent from this overall package of 'garden
city principles', small pockets of resistance
can be identified. The more conservative mem-
bers of the land surveying profession fought
a rearguard action against the town planning
'cranks' touting their progressive innovations
like curved and narrow streets. There were also
critics, in the mould of Trystan Edwards and
Thomas Sharp in Britain, who viewed garden
city principles as prejudicing consideration of
more economical, aesthetic and climatically
suitable modes of urban living such as town-
houses and modern group housing. Among
116 THE AUSTRALIAN GARDEN CITY
them was Leslie Wilkinson who arrived from
England in 1918 to become Foundation Pro-
fessor of Architecture at Sydney University
(Wilkinson, 1982). The thesis that garden city
principles could be inimical to solving low-
income housing problems was actually raised
before the Victorian Royal Commission on
Housing in 1914, but in the general planning
climate such a heretical notion could never be
seriously explored.
The third major impact of garden city thought
evident before the Second World War was in
informing planners' views on the desired shape,
structure and size of urban areas. Such ideas,
termed 'the larger aspects of the Garden City
idea' by Abercrombie (1916, p. 172), were or-
ganized into three main areas: the spatial dis-
tribution of metropolitan open space (with talk
of green and agricultural belts); the satellite
community concept; and their synthesis into a
holistic model of metropolitan expansion. How-
ever the hold of these ideas on the early plan-
ning fraternity was far from total. Before the
1930s there was little general debate concerning
the size and structure of the ideal metropolis.
The long-run consequences of sustained sub-
urbanization were scarcely considered.
There were moves toward unified metropol-
itan plans but city functional thinking focused
attention on sectoral matters, like transportation
and zoning, rather than overall spatial form.
Even where this was discussed, various ideas
associated with the garden city movement did
not necessarily triumph. Green belts and satel-
lite communities were but two options. Some
planners favoured the idea of interspersing de-
velopment and open country in a wedge-like
configuration, the 'radial parks' form implied
in the major city functional plans for Melbourne
(Metropolitan Town Planning Commission,
1929) and Perth (Metropolitan Town Planning
Commission, 1930). What planners did not say
was as important as what they did. Many by de-
fault seemed content with existing metropolitan
structure: in simplest terms, a single-centred
metropolis with a strong central business dis-
trict and surrounding residential areas pierced
by radial transport spokes.
THE GARDEN CITY IN PRACTICE,
1910-1930
Attempts to translate garden city and related
land planning theory into practice spawned
diverse projects (Freestone, 1989a). Before the
Second World War, new towns designed on
garden city lines were the closest equivalent
to British garden cities. These 'garden towns'
emerged from various political, economic and
social circumstances, but they were not as
numerous as some had predicted - this was
always an unrealistic hope for the great era
of town formation in Australia had already
passed. Canberra, where the garden city in-
fluence became most apparent in the 1920s,
was destined to be Australia's best expression
of the garden city ideal, but before 1939 the
planned Victorian coal town of Yallourn was
the more convincing interpretation. Settlements
initiated by state governments in new irrigation
areas, such as Theodore in Queensland and
Leeton in New South Wales, saw garden city
principles making their widest geographical
impact. Private entrepreneurs were largely dis-
interested in, and ill-equipped to undertake,
new town development. Ambitious land specu-
lators, like Sydney-based surveyor-entrepreneur
Henry Halloran, dominated the picture, not
idealistic limited dividend companies. Intrigu-
ing plans were also drafted under the quasi-
garden town provisions of the South Australian
Town Planning and Development Act 1920,
although this did not amount to a deliberate
new town policy.
The breakthrough to garden city principles in
the design of industrial housing estates came
around 1917-20, with the community respon-
sibilities of private companies emerging as a
theme of post-war reconstruction and spokes-
men for capitalism acknowledging that worker
 THE GARDEN CITY IN PRACTICE, 1910-1930
welfare could be good business. This period
also saw marked industrial disputation, hous-
ing shortages caused by the wartime brake on
construction, and garden city advocates like
Fitzgerald and Sulman vigorously pressing their
case. A number of ambitious projects were
blue-printed at this time. W. H. Burford and
Sons, a soap manufacturing subsidiary of Lever
Brothers, proposed a garden village at Dry
Creek north of Adelaide while in 1925 another
British subsidiary, Guest, Keen and Nettlefold,
was reported in the local press to be dragooning
its 'army corps of work-people' into model
homes 'set in a genuine garden city layout' in
the western suburbs of Melbourne. The most
audacious synthesis of garden city principles
never to eventuate was Electrona, a projected
'model industrial centre' near Hobart which was
to offer 'every possible advantage in health,
welfare and civic well-being'.
The housing estates actually started were
more modest small-scale ventures, notably in
inaccessible locations, and calculated to attract
and retain the goodwill of a labour force. Yet
they varied in site planning sophistication and
type of sponsor - ranging from a small country
bootmaker at Goulburn, NSW, through large
consortiums such as the Collins House group
with its Lutana housing estate at Hobart, to the
federal government, in the case of Littleton, a
virtual company suburb for munitions workers
at Lithgow, NSW. In the transition from the
drab company housing of the nineteenth cen-
tury to the modern concept of a planned garden
community, H. V. McKay's scheme at Sunshine
near Melbourne was perhaps the crucial link.
None of these projects approached the physical
standards attained in the best known foreign
garden villages. like New Earswick, Margaret-
enh6he, or Yorkship Village. Only at Lutana
and Littleton did the right combination of need,
idealism, capital resources and development
control merge to produce substantial physical
environments, but even these were flawed by
penny pinching.
117
The most tangible manifestation of the gar-
den city ideal in Australia was in planned
suburban development. The early planning lit-
erature emphasized two preferred routes to-
ward 'garden cities-in-the-suburbs': one was via
object lessons sponsored by public agencies,
private capital and voluntary bodies. The pio-
neering showpieces were the so-called garden
suburbs developed soon after the turn of the
century - the first, largest and best of which
was Haberfield in Sydney. What these early
projects lacked in progressive community plan-
ning features, they usually made up for in the
quality of their domestic Federation-style ar-
chitecture (Fraser and Joyce, 1986). Like the
model 'suburb' of the nineteenth century, many
of the 'garden suburbs' developed by private
capital on the outskirts of Australian cities in
the twentieth century were essentially just
planned subdivisions, two-dimensional layouts
awaiting later house construction.
The other means seen as securing garden city
standards in suburbia was through enlightened
government intervention. There were at least
three ways in which the state sought to trans-
late the planning standards of model environ-
ments into the norm for suburban development.
The basic purpose of planning legislation was
comprehensive control over land-use develop-
ment, but the only two statutes in force before
the Second World War (in Western Australia
and South Australia) did embody more spe-
cialized garden city environmental aspirations.
State governments also proferred suburban
planning advice where statutory powers were
weak or absent. Since the nineteenth century
the spread and texture of suburbia was most
manipulable at the local government level, and
so-called 'town planning by-laws' further re-
flected the progressive influence of the garden
city movement.
Ebenezer Howard had hoped for a southern
continent of garden cities (Howard, 1920) but
the garden suburb - always a more realistic
venture as in other countries - dominated the
118 THE AUSTRALIAN GARDEN CITY

Figures 6.4. and 6.5 (facing page). The proposed 'model industrial centre' of Electrona, Tasmania was to have
created an environment with 'every possible advantage in health, welfare and civic well-being'. However the
industrial complex near Hobart which the town was intended to serve never prospered. A comparison of Marcus
Barlow's 1918 plan and the desultory settlement which actually appeared is a good example of a major theme of
the Australian garden city movement, namely the gap between ideal and reality.

Australian scene. It was a phenomenon frag- surroundings. There was no co-partnership

mented into various and often dubious guises,
weakening links with both Howard's treatise
and the reformism of the British garden city
movement. Public money was responsible for
three of the most substantial early projects -
Daceyville in Sydney, Colonel Light Gardens
in Adelaide, and Garden City in Melbourne -
but capitalism put garden city ideas to greater
and more profitable use. At worst, the outcome
was a premature geometric subdivision, and
the best developments indicated only that afflu-
ent people could afford to purchase attractive
housing movement to stake out some of the
middle ground.
The way in which Howard illustrated the path
to his new civilization expressed certain ideas
about town size, shape and structure that the
garden city movement placed in a new context
of ameliorative urban improvement. In practice,
as in theory, these macroscale aspects of the
garden city were rather weakly developed in
Australia. Their most substantial expression was
in the Perth City Council's Endowment Lands
residential development project (Clark, 1969).
 RECESSION AND EPITAPH: THE GARDEN CITY IN THE 1930S
No garden city blueprint for a metropolitan area
was made official, although moves were made
to give legal standing to an agricultural belt
around Brisbane in the early 1920s. In general,
provision of open space at the metropolitan
scale remained a haphazard process while sub-
urban sprawl and premature land subdivision
went virtually unchecked by planning controls
throughout the inter-war period.
RECESSION AND EPITAPH: THE GARDEN
CITY IN THE 19305
Up to the late 1920s, the garden city was a
significant influence on planners and planning
projects. John Sulman in his Vernon Memorial
119
lectures at Sydney University treated the gar-
den city tradition as a vital, contemporary force
with respect to the health of towns, the de-
tailed planning of urban communities, and, to
a lesser extent, the metropolitan distribution
of living areas and open space (Sulman, 1921).
But by the early 1930s 'garden city' had begun
to reclaim its simple popular meaning of the
'green city'. The call was for the local planning
movement to move on 'from the garden city
ideal to city planning as a developed concept'
(Gerard, 1934). By the late 19408 the garden city
was an historical topic (Brown and Sherrard,
1951).
With no organized movement as a focus for
propaganda and action, the garden city as an
120 THE AUSTRALIAN GARDEN CITY

Figure 6.6. Subdivision plan for a garden suburb estate at Mount Lawley in Perth (c.1920) by Carl Klem, who was
partner in a surveying firm which dominated the garden suburb 'industry' in the Western Australian capital before
the Depression. Its formal entrance, precincts, crescents and disposition of open space were derivative of Reade's
plan for Colonel Light Gardens.

all-encompassing image or symbol of the ideal
urban environment had certainly passed its
zenith by 1930, although it could still be sum-
moned by reformers to condemn unplanned
residential development as well as by entre-
preneurs to stimulate speculation in fancy sub-
divisions. Town planning on garden city lines
had been accepted by most planners, but as
the revision of standards continued, the direct
association with the garden city movement
receded.
The Australian garden town was spawned
by the coincidence of the garden city era with
a distinct phase of closer settlement and re-
source development. Its demise came when
prospects for new towns were diminished by
depressed economic conditions and slow popu-
lation growth. In retrospect, the achievement
was hardly triumphant. The reality of develop-
ment made most garden towns far from model
environments, especially in their early years.
When politicians were not making hollow
pledges to do better, government authorities
were sticking with obsolete planning methods.
The garden towns did not, nor could not,
amount to a peaceful path to reform. Never-
theless, they collectively represented a signi-
ficant historical shift in Australian town design
away from relentless rectilinear layouts towards
more attractive, economical and comrnunity-
orientated forms.
The garden village concept never took off.
The social, economic and business climate was
too apathetic or even hostile for this to occur.
Decent housing in planned surroundings was
obviously an expensive proposition for any
company and, unless significantly subsidized,
simply uneconomic. The average worker was
not earning wages sufficient to rent or purchase
this sort of accommodation. Management and
workers were in any case not fully convinced
by the ideology of welfare capitalism in gen-
eral and company housing in particular. But
housing without community planning was an
option for some companies. Home finance and
construction schemes could still embody the
conventional wisdom that industrial efficiency
depended on satisfactory home life as much as
 RECESSION AND EPITAPH: THE GARDEN CITY IN THE 1930S
conditions on the factory floor. These schemes
were and still seem more suited to the indi-
vidualistic Australian temperament (Advisory
Council of Science and Industry, 1916). The
industrial garden village ideal thus remained
far more impressive than the reality. Enthusi-
asm in both business and planning circles for
this almost fully imported phenomenon waned
during the 1920s. Economic forces checked the
progress of all schemes, with the Depression
virtually extinguishing what idealism remained.
Throughout the inter-war years various hind-
rances made garden city layouts the exception
rather than the norm in the suburbs. A 1924
complaint about Melbourne development
standards was echoed in other states: 'the old
gridiron pattern still rules - monotonous rows
of allotments, all of the same size; just large
enough to comply with minimum requirements;
no heed to contour lines; and no provision for
reserves' (Victorian Town Planning Associa-
tion, 1924).
121
Figure 6.7. A 1930s aerial view of
the 'company' garden town of
Yallourn in ViCtoria's Latrobe
Valley. It was conceived by the
state government as a model resid-
ential environment for workers in
the nearby open-cast coal mine
(which eventually consumed the
town by the 1980s). However it
did not prevent makeshift camps
and temporary 'bag towns' spring-
ing up in the vicinity.
Various factors impeded garden suburb plan-
ning: a plentiful stock of vacant building allot-
ments inherited from nineteenth-century land
booms; land being subdivided into parcels too
small to permit 'town planning' treatment; the
shortage of qualified planners; and the resist-
ance of real estate interests, happy with tried
and trusted sales techniques. Of those people
who could actually afford a home in the sub-
urbs, many were quite content with their bun-
galow and ordinary plot of land regardless of
what the experts said. The pursuit of individual
home ownership far outweighed support for
garden suburb living, a reality that clearly af-
fected the scale and progress of early public
housing initiatives.
Australian garden suburbs and subdivisions
were, then, invariably far removed from the
model communities plotted on paper. Institu-
tional, political and especially financial restric-
tions regularly, if not calamitously, intervened
between theory and reality. Few developments
122 THE AUSTRALIAN GARDEN CITY
approached the excellence of premier British
garden suburbs. Nevertheless, enough was done
virtually to kill off for decades the 'old idea'
(Irvine, 1913) of terraced residential develop-
ment as preferred housing. Garden suburbs did
represent the first significant challenge to the
piecemeal and rectilinear urban extension taken
for granted since the early days of settlement.
At least in this sense, they fulfilled the wishes
of early garden city advocates. But the in-
escapable conclusion is of a rather incomplete
revolution in physical and social design. The
refinement of progressive site planning tech-
niques and their wider professional and com-
munity acceptance were more evident with the
establishment of permanent state housing au-
thorities, emergence of private developers able
to operate at a community scale, professional-
ization of the town planning movement, rising
personal incomes, and greater government in-
volvement in the urban development process
after the Second World War.
Growth-orientated city functional thought,
the absence of permanent metropolitan plan-
ning authorities, the ideology of suburbanism,
and the drive for legislation which facilitated
local area rather than metropolitan planning,
all hampered wide endorsement and imple-
mentation of concepts like green belts and
satellite towns before the 1940s. There was
heightened interest in the late 1930s against a
background of resurgent metropolitan growth
as well as conceptual and practical develop-
ments abroad, including the American Green-
belt cities. With the pioneers departed from the
scene, a new generation of more professionally-
orientated advocates then took up the cause.
Planners in early post-war Australia could
hardly ignore the broader ideas in the garden
city-new town tradition, especially given the
added impetus of related conceptual and prac-
tical advances in Britain and the fact that
over one and a half million more Australians
were living in capital cities than in the early
1920s.
REDISCOVERY: IMAGES OF
THE POST-WAR PERIOD
Planning ideas derived from or linked to gar-
den city doctrine flowered in the 1940s and
1950s, initially spurred on by the ideology of
post-war reconstruction which affected pop-
ular perceptions, professional judgements and
government policies on peacetime national
development. Town planning was accorded a
central place in the reconstruction of the 'new
social order'. The idealism of professional works
(Bunning, 1945; Barnett, et at., 1944; Smith,
1944) mirrored popular manifestos (Bean, 1945;
Marshall, 1944).
Generally, only lip service was explicitly paid
to the garden city movement, let alone Howard,
yet the talk was still frequently of planned
neighbourhoods, community centres, Radburn
layouts, green belts and satellite towns. Brit-
ish planning initiatives had a profound im-
pact on local thinking. Pre-war channels for the
importation and adaptation of foreign ideas -
the books, journals, planning reports, study
tours - remained intact. Leading British plan-
ners participated more enthusiastically in the
export of ideas and ideology than before the
war. The first and most notable visitor was
Sir Patrick Abercrombie in 1948 (Gawler, 1963,
p.24).
The quintessential garden city environment
- a pleasant residential scene with the accent
on space, greenness and community - endured
as a planning ideal (Winston, 1950). Helping
carry it through to the post-war period was a
capital-city-based movement for slum abolition
and better housing that had emerged during
the Depression. This gained political momen-
tum sufficient to spark several state govern-
ment enquiries culminating in the investigations
of the Commonwealth Housing Commission
(1943-44), the springboard for post-war public
housing and home ownership schemes. The
Commission's recommendations on dwelling
design and community planning became a
 REDISCOVERY: IMAGES OF THE POST-WAR PERIOD
textbook for architects, surveyors and planners
for years afterwards.
At a larger scale, professional planners re-
mained generally lukewarm to the concept of
new towns. At the 1951 Federal Congress on
Regional and Town Planning in Canberra, the
weight of opinion favoured expansion of exist-
ing country centres rather than new communit-
ies ab initio on grounds of economic feasibility
and political acceptability. With the exception
of the ephemeral First Six New Cities Move-
ment (Heath and Hewison, 1951), the new
town cause languished through the 1950s and
much planning activity became entrapped in
the intricacies of new statutory systems looking
back to British initiatives of the early 1930s
rather than late 19408. Wider visions were dom-
inated by rural-flavoured regional development
philosophies.
The satellite town concept - as a rationaliza-
tion of, rather than alternative to, metropolitan
growth - had far greater appeal. Planned satel-
lite towns variously came to stand for the end
of slums, sprawl and ribbon development; de-
centralized employment and social opportunit-
ies; proximity to open country; and generally a
more balanced and complete community life. By
far the most successful project was Elizabeth,
developed by the South Australian Housing
Trust north of Adelaide (Marsden, 1986). How-
ever rapid metropolitan growth outpaced earlier
expectations and directly challenged the notion
that a handful of small satellite communities
could absorb future growth. At the 1958 Syd-
ney Congress of the Australian Planning Insti-
tute, satellite towns mustered very little support.
While planners still had a commitment to some
sort of orderly, cellular metropolitan extension,
with few exceptions (for example Melton and
Sunbury on Melbourne's fringe) the satellite
town in its original form fell from favour.
Interestingly, as this rethinking occurred
through the late 19508 and 1960s, a strong push
for bolder new town initiatives emerged among
planners and others interested in urban affairs.
123
The sources were diverse: a pervasive profes-
sional belief that Australia was lagging well
behind British and American new town achieve-
ments; academic interest in 'metropolitan dom-
inance', Anglo-American growth centre theory
and the economics of decentralization; recog-
nition of the limited effectiveness of dispersed
decentralization incentives and growing govern-
ment support for selective urban decentraliza-
tion; the elevation of Canberra as the exemplar
of new town development; and growing concern
in the wider community over the environmental
implications of continued metropolitan growth.
The Australian Institute of Urban Studies is-
sued a report seeking 'efficient and humane
alternative to overconcentrated growth' and
calling for a breathtaking programme of new
city creation (Australian Institute of Urban
Studies, 1972).
This sort of thinking influenced the decision-
making of state governments in the early 1970s
and culminated in the national growth centre
programme of the Whitlam Labour Govern-
ment's Department of Urban and Regional De-
velopment (1972-75). This involved completely
new cities, such as Monarto near Adelaide,
regional city complexes like Albury-Wodonga
on the NSW-Victoria border, and metropolitan
'system-cities' like Holsworthy/Campbelltown.
The growth centre strategy was downgraded
after the fall of the Labour Government but
further undermined by falling rates of popula-
tion growth, declining economic conditions, and
counterurbanization trends unrelated to gov-
ernment incentives. Only Campbelltown near
Sydney and Albury-Wodonga have met with
any real success in terms of accelerated popu-
lation growth.
The major metropolitan plans for Melbourne
(1929) and Perth (1930) had been inexplicit
about the environmental, economic and social
costs of suburban sprawl, not to mention the
desired shape and direction of long-term urban
expansion. These became significant issues only
from the late 19308. In line with overseas trends,
124 THE AUSTRALIAN GARDEN CITY
Australian planners came to favour cellular
rather than continuous growth to avoid hap-
hazard suburbanization (Costello, 1949). The
main schematic interpretations of cellular urban
development lie squarely in the garden city
tradition. The classic statement was the 1948
planning scheme for Sydney. This adapted the
essence of Abercrombie's two London plans to
local concerns: premature land subdivision;
receding countryside; inner-city blight; and
the perceived need to retain both a strong
city centre and suburbanize economic activity
(Winston, 1957).
All such green-belt city 'master plans' faced
formidable obstacles. They were ultimately un-
able to cope with the complexity and pace of
urban change, based as they were on conserva-
tive estimates of population growth and oper-
ated through a planning system based more on
negative regulations than positive incentives.
Yet they were, historically, a virtually inevitable
step in the evolution of town planning thought,
reflecting a wider recognition of the need for
co-ordinated, goal-orientated urban develop-
ment, and achieving some partial success, albeit
without fundamentally reordering the nature of
the Australian city.
CODA
Mainstream planning thought has now, obvi-
ously, moved on from its earlier garden city
connections. The garden city environment today
is no longer the most obvious residential plan-
ning ideal of the planning profession in Aus-
tralia, although most of the distinctive features
of the garden suburbs promoted by reformers
in the early twentieth century are still regarded
by many Australians as desirable, if increasingly
expensive to attain (Stretton, 1989). Profes-
sional interest, popular demand and economic
circumstances now increasingly focus on al-
ternative housing modes: medium rather than
low density developments; townhouses rather
than detached dwellings; recycled rather than
all-new housing; urban consolidation rather
than suburban spread.
At a larger scale, green belt and satellite town
concepts are also now no longer in vogue.
Following the lead of Adelaide (1962), metro-
politan planning schemata have moved towards
forms facilitating continuous growth, notably
corridor plans (Alexander, 1981). In general,
recent planning thought has tended to de-
emphasize spatial considerations in favour of
social and economic ones. The master plan style
associated with the garden city tradition has
given way to emphasis on continuous urban
management. There is recognition of the im-
portance of public participation as much as
professional expertise in plan-making. And the
tacit assumption of continued growth has been
displaced by concern with the urban implica-
tions of economic decline and job generation
(McLoughlin and Huxley, 1986).
None of this is to suggest that there was once
a grand past which has been irretrievably lost.
Howard's early aspirations for one of 'the best
and brightest chapters' of the garden city move-
ment were never realized because Australia
simply never had a garden city movement in
the real sense. Certainly there were garden
suburbs, satellite towns, new towns, green belts
and planning advocates who embraced garden
city ideas. But there were no garden city as-
sociations, few orthodox disciples in the Unwin
or Osborn mould, and no development really
comparable to a Letchworth or a Hampstead.
While there are remarkable parallels between
the Australian and British experience in theory
and practice right from the early 1900s to the
1950s, Australian responses in general seem
more diffuse and less orchestrated, more ex-
pedient and less committed. Ultimately, too,
the results were less successful and lasting than
those in the British heartland or other countries
closer to it.
Yet, from an historical perspective, garden
 REFERENCES
city ideas clearly had a remarkable impact on
Australian landscapes, legislation and attitudes
to cities, especially up to the early 1960s when
the agenda for planning first began to take
decisive new directions. And not all that went
before has been completely swept away. As
long as there is talk of new communities and
urban decentralization, people-friendly neigh-
bourhoods and green spaces, and, borrowing
the late Denis Winston's (1961) felicitous phrase,
the need for 'compactness without congestion,
spaciousness without sprawl', a positive associa-
tion with the garden city tradition will endure.
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THE AMERICAN GARDEN CITY:
LOST IDEALS
Daniel Schaffer
On March 4, 1921, Warren G. Harding took
the oath of office for the presidency of the
United States. Woodrow Wilson, the outgoing
president, accompanied Harding to the steps
of the US Capitol but could not muster the
energy to stay for the inaugural ceremony. His
health had been shattered by a debilitating
stroke, which was partially induced by his
exhausting and ultimately failed effort to win
Senate approval for the League of Nations
(New York Times, 5 March, 1921, p. 1). Rarely
in US history has a change in administration
been marked by such a dramatic change in pre-
sidential style and substance. Wilson, the former
college professor and a devout Presbyterian,
who had championed the progressive ideals of
government activism (Link, 1947; 1965; Blum,
1956; Garraty, 1956), was replaced by the cigar-
smoking, whiskey-drinking Harding, who be-
lieved that business ascendancy was not only a
sign of economic vigour but an unimpeded path
to national prosperity (Leuchtenburg, 1958;
Hicks, 1960). Sixty years later, on January 20,
1980, another inaugural also signalled a forceful
redirection in the course of twentieth-century
American politics. Ronald Reagan, the former
movie actor and television pitch man, replaced
the born again Christian and nuclear physicist
Jimmy Carter as president of the United States.
7
Unbridled private enterprise was again in full
stride.
The purpose of this chapter is not to com-
pare the sometimes surprising similarities in
the history of presidential politics in the United
States. Rather, it is to provide an historical
assessment of the American garden city move-
ment in the 1920s. Yet, in thinking about the
garden city during the decade of 'normalcy',
when business interests dictated the direction
of public policy and when three consecutive
Republican Party presidents extolled the virtues
of corporate enterprise, one cannot help but
notice that the garden city movement flourished
- despite its roots in the opposing principles of
utopian socialism and American progressivism.
Not so in the 1980s or early 1990s. A similar
conservative political climate has not nurtured
a similar response from planners and activists.
In fact, the garden city movement today - or,
as it is now called, the new town movement -
is conspicuously absent from the American
housing/urban planning agenda, which itself
consists of a sparse - indeed barely visible -
listing of initiatives, mostly designed to stimu-
late conventional forms of private investment
(cf. Stewart, 1987). The guiding recipe for late-
twentieth-century reform seems to be this: if
urban neighbourhoods are to be liveable, they
128 THE AMERICAN GARDEN CITY: LOST IDEALS

Figure 7.1. The garden city idea offered an alternative to the untidy suburban sprawl of metropolitan America
between the wars. The rigidities of grid layouts, imposed by city regulation without regard to topography, produced
unsightly development of the type shown here.

also must be profitable. Comprehensive plan-
ning, a la garden city, fails even to make it
onto the dessert menu, let alone appear as an
entree on the main course of events.
Why is this so? After all, the 1920s gener-
ated as inhospitable a setting as today for the
advancement of garden city/new town prin-
ciples. Yet, the 1920s were the movement's
glory days in the United States, marked by un-
equalled success except perhaps for the brief
moment of influence enjoyed by those who
headed Franklin D. Roosevelt's Suburban Re-
settlement Administration in the 19308 (Arnold,
1971; Conkin, 1959; Schaffer, 1983).
THE GARDEN CITY'S DECADE IN
THE SUN
Listing the movement's accomplishments in the
19208 gives a sense of its vitality and vigour.
Heading, or more precisely preceding, those
accomplishments was the formation in 1923 of
the Regional Planning Association of America
(RPAA) - the most important advocacy group
for garden city principles in the nation's history.
(Lubove, 1963; Sussman, 1976). The RPAA
was an informal association of like-minded,
left-leaning intellectuals, many of whom were
born and raised in New York City during the
late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Clarence S. Stein, the organizational force be-
hind the group, and Lewis Mumford, its prime
intellectual spirit, were reared in Manhattan -
Stein in an upper-middle-class household and
Mumford in a fatherless, working-class family
with middle-class aspirations. Benton MacKaye,
an iconoclast proponent of wilderness preser-
vation, was born in rural Massachusetts not far
from David Thoreau's Walden Pond, but he
spent much of his adolescence in Manhattan
often attending rehearsals and stage perform-
ances written by his playwright father. Even
 THE GARDEN CITY'S DECADE IN THE SUN 129

Figure 7.2. On flatter terrain these grid layouts gave the normal privately developed suburb a perspective of quite
mind-numbing monotony, shown here on Long Island.

less active members - such as Frederick L.
Ackerman, Charles Ascher, Stuart Chase, and
Robert Kohn - called New York City home.
And, the few youthful members of the group -
for example, Catherine Bauer - hailed from
the New York metropolitan area. The lone,
significant exception to the RPAA's New York
City connection was Henry Wright, Sr, a Mid-
westerner who had been trained as architect at
the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
If the RPAA seemed geographically bound
by the East and Hudson rivers that surround
Manhattan Island~ they displayed a multi-
disciplinary breadth of training and skills that
touched nearly every aspect of land-use plan-
ning. Stein was an architect· educated at the
Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris; Wright was
also an architect, although his training took
place closer to home. MacKaye was trained as
forester at Harvard University and had worked
for the federal government under Gifford
Pinchot, chief of the US Forest Service during
the agency's formative years of development.
Chase was an economist and writer with a
national following; Ackerman an economic
analyst much influenced by the progressive
ideals of Thorstein Veblen; and Ascher was a
lawyer specializing in real estate.
Mumford, who had the least amount of
formal education among the group, clearly
possessed the broadest base of knowledge.
Although still in his twenties, he was already
130 THE AMERICAN GARDEN CITY: LOST IDEALS
recognized as a promising American writer,
editor, social critic, and urbanist. Mumford gave
the RPAA a voice that helped to lift its street-
wise concerns for housing and transportation
onto the lofty plane of social reform and re-
gionalism. He also enabled the RPAA to reach
beyond the fields of architecture and urban
planning to the world of social criticism and
policy discussion. With Stein as its organiza-
tional wizard and Mumford as its intellectual
and creative spokesperson, the RPAA enjoyed
a strong foundation for success. When one
adds the talents of its other members, it is not
surprising that its influence far exceeded its
resources.
For the RPAA, however, the force of ideas
and the power of personnel commitment was
not enough. To transform their garden city
concepts into reality, the association needed a
large transfusion of the lifeblood of real estate
development in America - money. Fortunately,
for the group, a financier stepped forward soon
after the RPAA's formation. Alexander Bing,
who had earned a fortune in Manhattan real
estate development, was seeking to invest a
portion of that fortune in socially-responsible
enterprises. The plight of organized labour had
initially caught his interest, but persuaded by
his friend Clarence Stein, Bing turned his at-
tention to the problems of low-cost housing. In
the early 1920s, he formed a limited dividend
corporation, the City Housing Corporation, to
advance his goals and called on members of
the RPAA to help him realize his vision. Thus
high social ideals were submerged in a large
pool of capital - a potent combination for
success in the money-driven era of the 1920s.
In 1924, ground was broken for Sunnyside
Gardens in the New York City borough of
Queens - the first joint venture of the RPAA
and City Housing Corporation and urban pre-
lude to the chorus of garden city experiments
that was to follow (Stein, 1957). In 1925, the
International Town, City, and Planning Con-
ference, dedicated to the future of the garden
city movement and regional development, was
held in Manhattan. Ebenezer Howard, the ori-
ginator and grand old man of the movement,
exchanged ideas with America's new cadre
of garden city proponents: Stein, Mumford,
Wright, Bauer, and MacKaye (Mumford, 1978).
In 1928, construction on Radburn began, a small
New Jersey subdivision whose design would
spark worldwide interest as an intelligent -
indeed ingenious - response to the impact of
the automobile (Schaffer, 1982).
The 19205 was also the decade in which Ben-
ton MacKaye presented his plan for construct-
ing the Appalachian Trail and published his only
monograph, The New Exploration (MacKaye,
1921; 1978). Mumford, who remained a prolific
author throughout his long career, spent a con-
siderable portion of his time and energy berat-
ing the condition of urban America in the 1920s
and extolling the virtues of the garden city as
a sensible alternative to city congestion and
suburban sprawl (see, for example, Mumford,
1921; 1925a; 1925b; 1927a; 1927b; 1928). Stein's
organizational skills were never in more de-
mand than during this decade as evidenced by
committee appointments to professional plan-
ning organizations and his supervision of New
York's Commission on Housing and Regional
Planning (NYCHRP) (Stein, 1949; NYCHRP,
1923; 1924; 1926a). Under the auspices of this
state-sponsored commission, Henry Wright
prepared his most insightful and perhaps most
influential document - a visionary regional plan
for New York state that also vigorously justi-
fied garden city principles on a regional scale
(NYCHRP, 1926b). We must emphasize that
such accomplishments did not mean that garden
city advocates dominated the field of planning
in the post-World War I period. But it illus-
trated that they were a significant and vocal
minority who could not be ignored - either
within the profession or, more importantly,
among policy-makers.
Compare the garden city movement in the
1920s to the movement in the 1980s and one is
 THE GARDEN CITY'S DECADE IN THE SUN
left with a startling contrast. Gone are the grand
visions of comprehensive regional development
so forcefully articulated by Mumford and his
colleagues. Gone, too, are blueprints for bal-
anced growth, in which city and suburb would
share the landscape in a mutually beneficial
way. Gone, in fact, is the notion that planning,
any planning, makes a difference (New York
Times, 31 May, 1989). The garden city has been
relegated to the history books and historical
conferences that carefully examine its past
131
Figure 7.3. Radburn, a proposed
garden city for New Jersey, ar-
ticulated the alternative at the
end of the 1920s. This shows an
early plan for the whole scheme.
vigour and past mistakes (Baum, 1988). Indeed,
one need only replace the image of the socially-
responsible developer Alexander Bing with that
of the modern real estate tycoon Donald Trump
and the ideas of Clarence Stein with those of
Secretary of Housing of Urban Development
Jack Kemp to envision how far housing and
metropolitan policies have travelled during
the past seventy years. At a time when the
nation's cities are increasingly viewed as drug-
infested hells where poverty and violence set
132 THE AMERICAN GARDEN CITY: LOST IDEALS
Figure 7.4. This detailed plan shows the characteristic
Radburn layout, with the complete separation of pe-
destrian and vehicle circulation. The basic residential
development unit was the 'superblock' with inner parks
accessible by footpath from all dwellings.
the conditions of everyday existence and com-
promise life's value, it is not surprising that
alternative visions of urban and regional growth
have been forgotten and lost. Within this en-
vironment, the garden city movement at best
is seen as a quaint artefact, an intriguing part
of the past which like grandpa's fedoras or
grandma's bonnet are interesting to look at but
fail to meet current styles and fashions. Such
artefacts, whether material or intellectual, rarely
leave the privacy of one's home or office and,
if they do, it is simply for purposes of light-
hearted and nostalgic comparisons and not for
public display and consideration.
CHANGED LANDSCAPES
At certain levels of analysis, the 'closeting' of
garden city principles is not difficult to under-
stand. The United States, in the 1990s, is a
dramatically different place compared to the
1920s. Indeed the nation has taken on an en-
tirely different look, equivalent to a surgical
facelift, which has left the landscape with a new,
almost unrecognizable, appearance.
In 1920, the nation's population density was
less than 35 people per square mile (Historical
Statistics, 1975); today it is estimated to be more
than 67 people per square mile (Statistical
Abstract, 1987, pp. 7-8). In 1920, only four US
metropolitan areas exceeded one million: New
York; Chicago; Philadelphia; and Detroit (1980
Census, Vol. I, 1981); today there are forty-
one (Statistical Abstract, 1987, pp. 28-30). In-
deed a recent US Census Bureau report found
that 86 per cent of all Americans lived in the
nation's 282 designated metropolitan areas and
nearly one-half reside in those metropolises
that have more than 1 million people (cited in
Knoxville News-Sentinel, 5 August, 1989). In
1920, it was possible to find large swatches of
land 15 miles from major metropolitan centres,
as Radburn's planners did in Fair Lawn, New
Jersey, just west of Manhattan; today cities
sprawl into suburbs which, in turn, sprawl into
exurbs. Except for parks and cemeteries, there
may not be large expanses of open space for 50
to 75 miles from the urban cores - and, if
there are, they invariably are for sale; ripe for
being sliced into small subdivisions that make
comprehensive planning impossible to achieve.
Certainly, this is the case in the New York
metropolitan region where housing develop-
ments, office complexes, and research parks
now stretch more than 70 miles south past
Princeton, New Jersey and more than 50 miles
west into Easton, Pennsylvania and Bucks
County to the south in virtually a solid wall of
development. New York, however, is not alone.
 CHANGED LANDSCAPES 133

Figure 7.5. An early view of Radburn. It was the crowning achievement of the Regional Planning Association of
America and a hallmark of intelligent site planning replicated more in Europe than in the United States.

Other cities - for example, Boston, Atlanta,
Dallas, Denver, and San Diego - are experienc-
ing the same trends, a step or two behind the
nation's pre-eminent city, but gaining fast.
Because the garden city is a vision that can
only be realized through the availability of large
swatches of open space, the absence of space
makes the dream particularly difficult to fulfil
in a congested and overcrowded world. Where
will these cities be built? Who will invest the
enormous sums of capital that garden cities
require up front (sums that become astro-
nomical in wildly inflated real estate markets),
and then be willing to carry that investment
over the long haul - especially when corporate
mergers and leveraged buy-outs have promised
much higher returns with much less risk and
wait? Who will purchase expensive garden city
homes? Even if the design elements are true to
garden city principles, will not the prices of the
homes - partially due to the high price of land
- turn the garden city into another exclusive
suburb? Or, if a sharp decline in real estate
values occurs, will not the developer be left
holding land worth 20 or 30 per cent less than
he or she paid for it? In short, why should
134 THE AMERICAN GARDEN CITY: LOST IDEALS
planners and social activists - let alone private
investors - devote their time and energy to a
concept that seems hopelessly out of step with
the conditions and trends found in America
near the turn of the twentieth century?
CHANGED POLITICAL REALITIES
Beyond the physical reality so vividly displayed
on the landscape, there is also a political reality
- equally vivid - that has served as an important
roadblock to the re-emergence of garden city
principles in the 199Os. The 1920s is often por-
trayed as a decade when American intellectuals
rejected the nation's prevailing hedonistic
values - and, in the process, rejected their native
land. Except for those intellectuals who joined
the expatriate movement, however, many found
the 19208 to be a time of hope and optimism,
despite its excessive materialism. Garden city
advocates were among them (Cowley, 1951;
Baritz, 1970).
First, it is important to remember the back-
drop against which garden city ideas were re-
hearsed and articulated. The progressive era
Figure 7.6. Radburn, 'a town of
children'. The pioneering use of
the pedestrian underpass made it
a particularly child-friendly envir-
onment. Today America's policy
analysts and policy makers agree
that the nation's cities are in-
creasingly unfit living environ-
ments for its children, though this
growing realization has yet to
translate itself into effective action.
was part of the immediate past. Whether they
supported Theodore Roosevelt's New Nation-
alism or Woodrow Wilson's New Freedom,
or rejected both for Eugene Deb's American
brand of socialism, intellectuals embraced the
power of the state as a progressive force that
could advance the nation's social and economic
welfare (see, for example, Sklar, 1988). The
experience of World War I did not dampen
this enthusiasm (see, for example, McClay,
1988). Indeed it further fuelled the faith that
many intellectuals had previously expressed in
the positive power of the state. This enthusiasm
remained despite government efforts to quell
legitimate protest at home and despite a gov-
ernment's ability to use deadly force abroad to
address what seemed, especially over time, to
be trivial matters.
Of course, garden city advocates, bred in an
era laced with Victorian values and disdainful
of any hint of anarchism, were drawn to the
power of government not by its irrational or
paranoid side, but by its successful efforts to
mobilize citizens to achieve a collective goal.
Thus they favourably assessed the war effort
 CHANGED POLITICAL REALITIES
on the domestic front and marvelled at the
government's ability to marshall its people and
resources (Kennedy, 1980). Trains were placed
under the direction of the federal government
and schedules were set to ensure that war
material was shipped speedily overseas. Public
capital was made available - at low interest
rates - to finance the construction of manu-
facturing facilities necessary to arm and clothe
the army in Europe. Economic councils, often
headed by the nation's leading industrialists,
were organized to avoid duplication and the un-
necessary waste of precious resources. And if
housing shortages threatened a manufacturer's
ability to attract an adequate workforce, then
the government was there to lend a hand in
135
Figure 7.7. As well as giving Rad-
burn to the conceptual repertoire
of planning, the garden city ad-
vocates contributed massively to
regional and resource planning
thinking and action in the 1920s.
One particularly significant ini-
tiative was the Appalachian Trail,
proposed by Benton MacKaye.
financing and constructing wartime homes.
Thus, even in the real estate industry, perhaps
the nation's most politically conservative en-
terprise, government detected a need for activ-
ism and allowed neither ideology nor tradition
to stand in its way (Lubove, 1960; Whitaker,
Ackerman, Childs, and Wood, 1918). Why, gar-
den city advocates contended, could not gov-
ernment exercise its will to attain similar goals
during peacetime?
Compare this sense of enthusiasm for the role
of government in the 19208 with the prevailing
sentiment in the 1980s and early 1990s. Ronald
Reagan received just credit for revolutionizing
politics in the United States, giving it a more
conservative cast and perhaps achieving for
136 THE AMERICAN GARDEN CITY: LOST IDEALS
the Republican Party what Franklin Roosevelt
attained for the Democrats fifty years before -
long-term majority status, at least for presiden-
tial elections. However, let us not forget how
Jimmy Carter paved the way for a Republican
ascendency with his constant discussion of
limits, his rhetorical emphasis on zero-based
budgeting, and his financial priorities that often
favoured military needs at the expense of social
programmes (Hargrove, 1988). Jimmy Carter
did not advance his programmes through well-
rehearsed media spots or glitzy commercials
that proclaimed a new dawn was coming. In-
deed, in contrast to Reagan, his portrait of the
Figure 7.8. Today the Appalach-
ian Trail is a priceless natural
retreat that stretches from Maine
to Georgia - a green shield that
stands guard against residential
and commercial development
along the heavily populated
eastern seaboard.
limits of government was shaded with grey
tones of gloom and doom. Nevertheless, Carter
pointed the nation in a direction that Reagan
was to take it with much greater fanfare and
success. If we include the rhetoric and many of
the policy initiatives of the Nixon and Ford
administrations, we are left with a twenty-year
assault on government activism and the nurtur-
ing of a political environment that would hardly
be conducive to the advancement of garden city
principles. George Bush, despite his pretensions
to forge policies for 'a kinder and gentler na-
tion', has continued a trend that has dominated
American politics for more than two decades.
 AN UNCIVILIZED CITY
Figure 7.9. The same kind of thinking that underpinned
Radburn and the Appalachian Trail was also apparent
in Henry Wright Snr's proposals for the regional de-
velopment of New York State, involving cellular patterns
of growth and many green pathways. The proposals were
discussed but never came close to being implemented.
Moreover, the rise of political conservatism
was preceded by the rise of intellectual con-
servatism. At first crudely financed by corpo-
rate interests, conservative intellectuals and the
think tanks in which they work (for example,
the American Enterprise Institute, Heritage
Foundation, and Citizens for a Sound Eco-
nomy) have attained a rigour that rivals - and,
in many cases, supersedes - the research of their
liberal counterparts. Thus, while garden city
advocates of the 1920s worked in a world of
opinion dominated by progressives such as
Theodore Dreiser, Herbert Croly, and Sinclair
Lewis, planners and activists in the 1980s and
early 1990s have been surrounded by the
thoughts of George Will, William Safire, and
William F. Buckley. Among the roster of public
intellectuals, the conservatives now dominate
the field and the garden city - or, even more
conventional forms of urban planning - are not
on their policy agenda. Without an intellectual
undergirding and subject to a hostile political
environment, it is difficult to anticipate success
137
for any policy initiative, let alone one that falls
just outside the political mainstream. Thus, as
US politics and political discourse moved fur-
ther to the right through the past two decades,
the garden city idea moved further from the
edge of the policy arena into the far reaches of
the strands where spectators may watch the
action but have little influence on the course of
events.
AN UNCIVILIZED CITY
If the political and intellectual communities of
the 1980s found the garden city to be an idea
alien to their own sensibilities, then the nation's
urban dwellers - those who might be receptive
to the movement's appeal - have largely aban-
doned the notion of neighbourhood upon which
the garden city concept was based. Indeed the
garden city movement, despite its intellectual
bent, was at root an idea nourished by middle-
class sensibilities. It extolled the virtues of
family and tried to devise a community environ-
ment where work would not be all-consuming.
It idolized children and emphasized shared
open space as a means to assure ample park
land for a town's tots and teens. It hoped
to minimize mother's work, through sensible
architecture and communal activities, so that
women could share a family's joys as well as
its responsibilities (Stein, 1957; undated). In
seeking these goals, garden city advocates did
not abandon the city, as social critic Jane Jacobs
and others, have argued (Jacobs, 1961, pp. 16-
25). Rather they sought to extend a city's most
positive virtues onto a new landscape where
the civility, culture, and creativity that flour-
ished in traditional urban settings could be
nurtured (Mumford, 1962; 1978). Simultane-
ously, they hoped to contain the city's super-
charged atmosphere within a 'living' field that
was beneficial rather than destructive to its
inhabitants. As we have already noted, virtu-
ally all garden city proponents of the 1920s and
1930s, and especially those who belonged to
138 THE AMERICAN GARDEN CITY: LOST IDEALS
Figure 7.10. Urban decay in the United States today.
This picture shows the south Bronx, an appropriate
setting for Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities and
an enduring symbol of the nation's troubled cities.
the RPAA, were urban dwellers with urban
sensibilities - in fact, the majority were from
New York City, the nation's pre-eminent me-
tropolis in the years between the wars. In many
respects, the movement they spearheaded was
not a nostalgic return to the country, but a
progressive re-entry into the city, an environ-
ment which tney believed was being under-
mined by congestion and inadequate housing
(see, for example, Mumford, 1919; Stein, 1922;
1947).
The return to the city, however, would not
take place via a direct route. To achieve their
ultimate goal of balanced growth, garden city
advocates called for the first garden city com-
munities to be built on undeveloped, open
space. The plan was to draw urban dwellers to
these new developments, and then have plan-
ners and developers re-enter and rebuild pre-
existing, but now depopulated, cities according
to garden city principles. Nevertheless, it was
the city, as much as the burgeoning suburbs
and centuries-old farmsteads, which garden city
advocates hoped to preserve.
It is doubtful that garden city advocates
would have the same warm feelings about
American cities, and particularly New York
Figure 7.11. The reverse side of urban decay is subur-
ban sprawl. In fact in the United States, the two forces
complement each other. The further America's white
middle class travels to find its suburban dream, the more
expendable cities become, both politically and eco-
nomically. Compare with figure 7.2.
City, in the 1990s. Middle-class neighbour-
hoods have dwindled in number to a precious
few. In their place, the city is now a study in
contrasts between rich and poor. As journalist
and novelist Tom Wolfe so vividly depicts in
The Bonfire of the Vanities, a work of fiction as
powerful and disturbing as the reality it con-
veys, New York City is a world of two cities-
neither of which has much appeal (Wolfe, 1987).
There are urban areas such as the south Bronx
where criminals run free and law enforcement
officers are imprisoned daily in the courthouses
and patrol cars in which they work - hesitant
to step into the neighbourhoods they are sworn
to protect but cannot control. Then, there are
places like the high-rent districts of midtown
Manhattan where multi-million dollar mort-
gages are commonplace and paper profits from
the economic foundation of a self-centred so-
ciety that is as rich and wasteful as it is anxious
and unstable. In between is a shrinking middle-
class squeezed by an economy that demands
more than $1000 a month for a two-room walk
up, and which rightfully senses that the odds of
slipping into poverty exceed the likelihood of
rising into the echelons of wealth, comfort, and
 AN UNCIVILIZED CITY
financial security. The recent rash of child slay-
ings in New York City, innocent but victimized
bystanders of a violent society, only symbolizes
that the city has become the least civilized of
America's environments.
Even if the problems of poverty, violence,
and racial and class segregation could be ig-
nored or overcome (a tall order in itself), where
would garden city advocates turn today to
construct their middle-class utopian dream? The
garden city vision was built upon the premise
of melding city and suburb into a regional
whole. Proponents hoped to achieve harmony
not just in a community's physical design -
balancing urban, suburban, and rural space -
but also in its social fabric by weaving together
classes of all kinds in a single place.
None of this is to suggest that the quest
was easy to achieve in the 1920s. Institutional
barriers to racial integration - and, in many
places, legally sanctioned barriers - were more
prominent than they are now (Jackson, 1967).
Moreover, men of wealth and power were
rarely held in higher esteem, hailed as captains
of their own fate as well as the nation's industry
- and deserving of both by virtue of their dem-
onstrated abilities (Hicks, 1960; Schlesinger,
1988). It is also important to remember that
garden city proponents in the 1920s failed to
realize their vision except for a few fleeting
moments of triumph in Sunnyside Gardens,
Queens; Radburn, New Jersey; and Chatham
Hills, Pittsburgh. In retrospect, the accom-
plishments of garden city advocates were indeed
modest and should not be overstated when
examined through the prism of seventy years
of history.
Nevertheless, the optimism that the garden
city advocates expressed in the 1920s was not
without foundation. There were enough suc-
cessful examples to point to, enough respect
for their ideas, enough open space within easy
reach of the nation's metropolitan areas and
enough contact across the classes in the cities
to stir the passions of garden city advocates
139
without making them seem foolish. Despite all
the legal rulings designed to advance equality
and equity since, cities seemed more access-
ible and hospitable then. They were alive with
ethnic neighbourhoods, and crowds of people
who stayed after dark simply because they
lived there - if not downtown at least close by,
within walking distance of a thriving mass
transit system.
Now, the city has been largely walled off
from the suburbs; the gates are opened for the
middle class only for work and occasional
sporting or cultural events. Perhaps more sig-
nificantly, the city does not exist as one; nor
can it be described as a series of neighbour-
hoods knitted together by a common urban
identity. Instead, the city has been segmented
into distinct sections, each with its distinct
economy, culture and even language. Within
this setting, the garden city cannot flourish
because ironically the garden city - despite its
call for civic renewal on virgin territory outside
the city - requires an image of a healthy city
to be sustained. The city in the country - or,
perhaps more accurately, city and country - is
the ultimate goal of the garden city vision.
When the problems of the city seem beyond
repair and when many of the city's inhabitants
- especially youthful teenagers - seem beyond
redemption, how can we expect hopeful alter-
native strategies for metropolitan development,
such as the garden city, to take hold? If cities,
the historic home for a society's most civilized
possessions and activities, appear to harbour a
society's most uncivilized and unsavoury as-
pects, then why should a people hope for -
indeed how can they hope for - an urban or
metropolitan renaissance? Why not write cities
off as poor and dangerous investments and
move on to more sensible endeavours?
This nationwide sentiment becomes even
more compelling as a post-World War II sub-
urban generation - devoid of urban roots - gains
demographic and political dominance (Abbott,
1987). Without a positive image of the city, the
140 THE AMERICAN GARDEN CITY: LOST IDEALS
garden city idea, like so much of planning, is
without hope. Fear motivates public policy. Let
us not become like it, like them, becomes the
prevailing sentiment. In such a charged atmos-
phere, garden city goals of class integration
become threats to the established order. For
many citizens and public officials, harmony
exists because of segregation, not despite it.
Thus, for many, to call for a melding of city
and suburb and rich and poor would do more
harm than good, and indeed could be inter-
preted as a naive and potentially disruptive
political initiative. Such a vision of harmony
and integration has faded from public discourse
because it is not politically feasible - and, as
this discussion has faded, so too has the image
of the garden city as a sensible alternative to
traditional forms of development.
LESSONS FROM THE GARDEN CITY
Thus formidable obstacles exist to a resurgence
of the garden city/new town movement in the
United States, which advocates cannot hope
to overcome or remove. To contend that the
creation of self-contained communities sur-
rounded by green open space is a viable policy
option is to infuse the world of policy-making
with an element of fanciful irrationality that
neither intellectuals nor public officials would
find attractive. Let us not forget, however, that
the US federal government presented such a
policy option, in the New Communities De-
velopment Act, just twenty years ago (Corden,
1977). Therefore, there is a resilience to the
garden city/new town movement that persists,
despite the movement's inability to translate
its ideals into a forceful reality. That resilience
in part is due to the basically middle-class sen-
sibilities that permeate the movement's ideals.
Here, then, is one important lesson that
today's planners can learn from yesterday's
garden city advocates. For planners to influ-
ence policy, they must strike a responsive
chord among middle-class constituencies or the
elected officials who represent middle-class
interests. When society's most urgent needs are
largely relegated to a non-middle-class citizenry
trapped in the urban cores, the task of the
planner is particularly difficult. In addressing
the problems, he or she may increasingly be
accused of being motivated by special interests,
a label which has been the kiss of death in
recent US electoral politics. Few American
politicians these days want to be identified as
an advocate of the poor, and those who advise
politicians on how to address problems of pov-
erty through more government activism and
public funds are not likely to receive a quiet,
undistracted, and universally accepted hearing.
Personal sympathies have not been reflected
in budget priorities - a separation of thought
and action that is likely to continue given the
current political climate and federal budget
restraints imposed by the deficits accumulated
during the Reagan years.
What garden city advocates managed to do
so brilliantly was to tie the fate of the poor to
the fate of the middle class. We can make the
metropolitan region work better for everyone,
they seemed to be saying, by adopting certain
design features and making sure that affordable
housing exists for all citizens, regardless of their
economic status. Moreover, we can make a
better society, they seemed to be saying, by
integrating all social classes and by avoiding
the segregation of rich and poor into distinct
and clearly identifiable urban and suburban
neighbourhoods. Garden city advocates never
achieved this goal. On the other hand, they
never compromised the integrative nature of
their rhetoric and analysis. Power to persuade
exists in the images that writers and scholars
choose to create. Planners in the 1990s who
ignore this garden city lesson of the 1920s do
so at the risk of making themselves politically
irrelevant, especially when they call for dramatic
social and economic change without suggesting
how that change is to be accomplished given
current political realities.
LESSONS FROM THE GARDEN CITY 141

Figures 7.12 and 7.13. Letch-

worth and Radburn in their early
years. What comes through in
both pictures is a strong sense of
a slower and more predictable
pace and pattern of life than is
apparent today. The garden city
ideal was in effect underpinned
by such social realities, which
casts doubts on the capacity of
the original vision to work for the
1990s, solving problems of the
kind shown in figures 7.10 and
7.11. But surely there is a crying
need for an updated vision?
142 THE AMERICAN GARDEN CITY: LOST IDEALS
Garden city advocates also argued that the
physical landscape counted when trying to
improve the social character of the city. They
were not so naive to think that handsome
neighbourhoods alone nurtured good, whole-
some people - that is, they did not insist that
if we upgraded the physical appearance of the
city, we would somehow improve a people's
social character, too. There was, however, an
element of their thought based upon the pre-
mise that if you lived in an environment that
looked better you would think more clearly and
more rationally about the long-term consequ-
ences of short-term decisions - that you would
have reason to have a stake in the future. (see,
for example, New York Times, 14 May, 1989,
S4, p. 24).
The point here is not to argue the merits of
their assumptions, but to suggest that the im-
age of a well-built landscape provided a focal
point for their analysis and kept their conten-
tions both simple and comprehensible. Today,
planners suffer from an identity crisis. The
planning profession has been balkanized into
an endless series of subsets that seem only
vaguely related to one another. Planners are
transportation experts, health care experts,
housing experts, poverty experts, and economic
development experts. Garden city advocates
may have delved into each of these issues as
well, but it was a primary interest for the 'de-
sign on the land' that transformed this mosaic
of concerns into a professional portrait that
policy-makers and the public could see and
understand.
ACCESSIBLE LANGUAGE
Finally, garden city advocates wrote and spoke
in plain English - an increasingly rare skill
among academics in general and academic plan-
ners in particular. Whether one agreed with their
conclusions, readers or listeners could under-
stand what garden city advocates were saying.
In this era of confusing charts, meaningless
tables, inscrutable jargon, and fuzzy models, it
is refreshing to return to the plain, yet power-
ful, words of Mumford, Stein, and Bauer. They
spoke not to fellow professionals but to the
educated public and concerned policy-makers.
Their desire was not to prove their professional
schooling or worth, but to persuade. Their goal
was not to make headway in an academic de-
partment but to make advances in housing and
community design. And, their approach was
multi-disciplinary and descriptive not single-
purpose and esoteric.
If garden city advocates have been accused
of being too simplistic, then certainly today's
planners are guilty of making compelling and
important policy issues impossible to under-
stand. However we might criticize their ideas,
we cannot deny that garden city advocates
provided good, insightful reading, which is the
first necessity in order to be taken seriously in
the world of policy-making. The same cannot
be said of today's academic planners, who are
largely left speaking to others within the small
and confining world of the university. It was a
desire to reach beyond the ivory tower, even at
the risk of antagonizing fellow professionals,
which enabled the garden city advocates to
achieve a broad audience. It is a lesson that
today's planners should find worthy of con-
sideration if they hope to influence the way the
nation's cities and suburbs are built (d. Jacoby,
1987).
CONCLUSION
On the wall behind the desk in Ronald
Reagan's Oval Office hung a portrait of Pres-
ident Calvin Coolidge, the nation's archetypal
1920s political conservative. 'Silent Cal' could
not match the eloquence or charm of 'The
Great Communicator', but he stood shoulder
to shoulder with Reagan when it came to po-
litical ideology. For this reason, Reagan found
Coolidge, whose fame and political fortunes
were left bankrupt by the Great Depression, to
 REFERENCES
be a wise and heroic public figure. In his own
naive way, Reagan probably wanted to return
the United States to the 'roaring twenties', when
capitalism flourished in a state untarnished by
welfare programmes and governmental regula-
tion. The retreat he led did not reach this distant
and backward destination, but Reagan did
succeed in turning the course of fifty years of
history sharply to the right. Indeed the march
he began, although slowed by social and eco-
nomic realities he refused to accept, remains
on track and is unlikely to be reversed by fu-
ture presidents regardless of their party affilia-
tion. It is this achievement that makes Reagan,
for all his failings, a truly significant president.
Perhaps it is time for today's planners to
hang the portraits of garden city advocates on
their office walls - not in the naive hope that
Ebenezer Howard's grand scheme of a net-
work of social cities can be carved onto the
contemporary landscape. The time when the
garden city could become the dominant form
of real estate development in the United States
may have never existed - and certainly has
long passed if it ever did. But that does not
mean that garden city ideals have become
historical artefacts of a bygone era. The quest
of Mumford, Stein, Wright, MacKaye and their
fellow professionals for a humane residential
environment for all citizens - one that would
be affordable, attractive, and accessible for
every economic class - combined with their
desire to reach a broad audience with their ideas
remain goals that are as worthy today as they
were more than a half-century ago.
Try as he might, Reagan could not bring
flappers and flivvers back to the future. He did,
however, accomplish a great deal. Today's
planners will also fall short of their destina-
tion, especially if their goal is to place an inter-
ior park in every neighbourhood and a forest
around every town. Nevertheless, in discussing
such past images as a reality worth striving for,
they might help lead the nation in the 'right'
direction when it comes to devising a sensible
143
housing and community development policy -
just as Reagan succeeded in turning the nation
toward a more conservative political path. If
that redirection can be achieved, then the gar-
den city movement - despite its shortcomings
and century-old quaintness - is. an idea that
remains as contemporary and relevant today
as it was in the 1920s when Sunnyside Gardens
and Radburn were built. After all, if the era of
Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover could produce
such unexpected planning vigour, then certainly
the age of Reagan and Bush may hold promise
as well. The realization of that promise depends
not only on the nation's prevailing political
climate, but also lies in the hands of the plan-
ners themselves.
This, in the end, may be the most valuable
lesson that the American garden city movement
of the 19205 has to teach today's planners. Here
is one case where what was said and how it was
presented may be more important than what
was accomplished. Planners, it should be re-
membered, not only build, develop, and count
but they have ideas and the weight of those
ideas can shape not only the landscape but the
course of urban and metropolitan policy. All
we need to do is take a look backward to the
garden city movement in the 1920s to appreciate
the difference that ideas can make - both then
and now.
REFERENCES
Abbott, C. (1987) The New Urban America: Growth
and Politics in the Sunbelt Cities, 2nd ed. Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Arnold, J. L. (1971) The New Deal in the Suburbs:
A History of the Greenbelt Town Program 1935-
1954. Columbus: Ohio University Press.
Baritz, L. (1970) The Culture of the Twenties. New
York: Bobbs-Merrill.
Baum, H. (1988) Problems of governance and the
professions of planning: the planning profession
in the 19805, in Schaffer (ed.), pp. 279-302.
Blum, J. M. (1956) Woodrow Wilson and the Politics
of Morality. Boston: Little Brown.
Conkin, P. K. (1959) Tomorrow a New World: The
144 THE AMERICAN GARDEN CITY: LOST IDEALS
New Deal Community Program. Ithaca, NY: Cor-
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THE AMERICAN GARDEN CITY:
STILL RELEVANT?
Robert Fishman
If Ebenezer Howard can claim the mantle of a
prophet, it is through his perception that the
triumphant industrial metropolis of his time
represented a temporary phenomenon, and that
the real trend of the twentieth century would
be a radical decentralization of people and
industry away from the urban cores. Garden
Cities of To-morrow must be put in the context
of a diverse group of decentralist /regionalist
thinkers from the tum of the century, includ-
ing Alfred Marshall, William Morris, Patrick
Geddes, Peter Kropotkin, and H. G. Wells
(Fishman, 1977, pp. 23-64). Howard was per-
haps the least sophisticated intellectually of this
group, but he alone was able to join decentralist
theory to a vision of a new community - the
garden city - that was both easily comprehen-
sible and had deep roots in Anglo-American
culture. The garden city tradition thus had from
its origins two distinct elements: (1) decen-
tralization, the idea, as Howard put it in 1904,
that the twentieth century would be the age of
the 'great exodus' from the 'closely-compacted,
over-crowded, city' (Howard, 1904); and (2)
community, the idea that the blind but power-
ful forces of decentralization could and should
be channelled to form self-contained commu-
nities where work, residence and leisure fa-
cilities would be found in close proximity.
There was thus always a tension in the garden
8
city movement between its advocacy of 'dis-
persal' as applied to the large city and its in-
sistence on 'concentration' in order to create
what the Reith Committee succinctly defined
in 1946 as 'self-contained and balanced com-
munities for working and living' (Hall, 1973,
Vol. 1, p. 383). As will be shown, Howard and
his followers in the first half of the century were
able to master that tension and formulate an
increasingly complex vision of a planned en-
vironment that incorporated both dispersal and
concentration. The movement thus gained
power and credibility from its unique combina-
tion of social idealism and insight into funda-
mental urban trends.
In the second half of the century, however,
metropolitan decentralization has taken forms
far more radical than Howard or his followers
of the 1920s or 1930s were able to ancitipate.
In the 'nonplace urban fields' of the late
twentieth century, the most basic concepts of
the movement, especially the ideal of self-
containment, have lost their meaning, just as
the new towns themselves have been swallowed
up in vast 'urban regions' that have taken the
place of spatially-delimited settlements. Seek-
ing to ride the tiger of decentralization, the new
town movement has wound up literally inside
it. In my conclusion I will consider what can be
salvaged from the garden city tradition to help
 THE CONCENTRATED GARDEN CITY 147

humanize the post-urban world of the late

twentieth century.

THE CONCENTRATED GARDEN CITY

Writing in the 1890s, Howard saw no contra-
diction between his belief in the dispersal of
the urban population and his hopes for the re-
concentration of that population in smaller
garden cities. As early as 1884, the economist
Alfred Marshall had perceived that railway
technology had made it possible for goods then
manufactured in London or other large cities
to be produced at lower cost in what he called
'colonies' located 'well beyond the range of
London smoke' along major trunk lines (Mar-
shall, 1884). Such colonies would make pos-
sible a migration of London's workers from the
expensive, overcrowded metropolis. But railway
technology still required a relatively concen-
trated node of population and production close
to a station-stop and freight sidings. Moreover,
the newer technologies that would promote
more radical dispersion were still in their in-
fancy. Only in 1898, the year of To-morrow's Figure 8.1. Howard's garden city idea was essentially a
publication, did a parliamentary committee put product of (and a reaction to) the era of coal, steam and
the railway, as this early (1920) piece of propaganda for
forward proposals that would have extended Welwyn indicates.
electricity supply from localized and fragmented
operations to fully interconnected regional grid
systems; in that same year another parliament- belief in the self-contained community went
ary committee first published a report that envi- beyond technological constraints to equally
sioned nation-wide, rather than local, telephone important economic, social and cultural ideals.
service. As for the automobile, motor vehicles In particular, Howard saw his planned decen-
in Britain were still theoretically bound by the tralization as a vital step away from an urban
Locomotives on Highways Act of 1861, which economy based on irregular employment to-
restricted their speed to 4 miles per hour and ward a more mature industrial economy in
required that they be preceded by a man carry- which stable employers could offer steady work
ing a red flag. These provisions were repealed to a permanent workforce.
only in 1903 (Encyclopaedia Brittanica, 11th ed.) In his 'Three Magnets' diagram in Garden
From Howard's original perspective, techno- Cities of To-morrow, Howard characterizes the
logical considerations alone seemed to indicate town by linking 'Chances of Employment' with
that a dispersing urban population would have 'High Rents and Prices'. Here and in the accom-
to be re-concentrated in new towns in order to panying text, Howard put forward with de-
provide the basic services and the economic ceptive simplicity a sophisticated analysis of the
base necessary for modern life. But Howard's 'urban crisis' of his time. As he and like-minded
148 THE AMERICAN GARDEN CITY: STILL RELEVANT?
economists such as Marshall realized, what
attracted people to large cities was the variety
of employment opportunities that were neces-
sary to compensate for the seasonality and
unreliability of individual jobs. Workers sub-
ject to constant layoffs had to be close to nu-
merous potential employers; employers, with
their alternating slack periods and booms,
needed the large urban labour pool; and both
were thus tied to the 'high rents and prices' of
the city. This situation fell with special severity
on the working poor, who were forced to live
in dismal, expensive housing which was the
only kind available close to the great urban job
market.
The solution, as Marshall was perhaps the
first to advocate, was a coordinated movement
of both jobs and people to sites where land
was cheap. Here workers could afford good
housing within walking or bicycling distance of
their places of employment, and factories could
afford extensive and efficient sites without any
increase in wages or costs. But such a move
required as a prerequisite a degree of stability
of employment such that workers could depend
on the few job opportunities a small town of-
fered and employers could cut themselves off
from the urban job market and depend on a
group of long-term employees.
The 'social revolution' that Howard fore-
sees in Garden Cities of To-morrow is, I would
argue, fundamentally this movement from a
high-cost, unstable big-city economy to a low-
cost, stable decentralized economy concentrated
in self-contained communities. The garden city
would generalize the benefits that workers en-
joyed in such exceptional situations as Port Sun-
light and Bournville (whose initiators, W. H.
Lever and George Cadbury, were among the
strongest supporters of the First Garden City,
Ltd. (Fishman, 1977, p. 59) Through careful
planning and by returning the unearned incre-
ment to the community, the garden city would
enable a wide variety of enterprises to leave the
city. With lower costs and a stable, contented
workforce, these enterprises would become
stable employers. Finally, the garden city would
encourage the formation of cooperative enter-
prises that had never flourished in the cut-throat
urban economy.
The self-contained decentralized community
thus made important economic sense. More-
over, by proper planning the garden city could
ensure many benefits unavailable at any cost in
a big city: proximity to unspoiled nature; flour-
ishing neighbourhood units; and the chance, as
Howard put it, 'to awaken the soft notes of
brotherliness and good will' drowned out in the
city (Howard, 1902, p. 150). Thus, for Howard,
decentralization and the self-contained coop-
erative community formed an essential unity.
This combination of the practical and the
idealistic won Howard a remarkable range of
supporters from capitalists to labour leaders
to (eventually) George Bernard Shaw. Shaw's
great play of 1905, Major Barbara, is in fact
a good illustration of the degree to which the
garden city movement drew its strength from a
wider sense that decentralization was the wave
of the future. The play is built upon the con-
trast between the misery of West Ham where
Barbara Undershaft has her Salvation Army
shelter - a misery which Shaw explicitly traces
to the casual urban labour market - and the
prosperity of Percivale St. Andrewes, where
Andrew Undershaft has his munitions works.
Shaw describes Percivale St. Andrewes as lying
'between two Middlesex hills ... an almost
smokeless town of white walls, roofs of narrow
green slates or red tiles, tall trees, domes, cam-
paniles and slender chimney shafts, beautifully
situated and beautiful in itself.' The characters
praise the town's libraries, schools, nursing
home, ballroom, insurance fund, pension fund
and building society. Andrew Undershaft prom-
ises to save the 'half-starved ruffians' of West
Ham 'not by words and dreams' but by thirty-
eight shillings a week, a sound house in a hand-
some street, and a permanent job' (Shaw, Act
3, scene 2). That, ultimately, was what Ebenezer
 CHANGING PATTERNS OF DECENTRALIZATION
Howard promised, but without the munitions
works.
CHANGING PATTERNS OF
DECENTRALIZATION
The great achievement of that remarkable
generation of planners who led the garden city
movement from the founding of Welwyn in
1919 to the British new town legislation of the
late 1940s was to keep alive Howard's vision
of metropolitan dispersal and reconcentration
into self-contained, balanced communities in
the context of a far more complex and sophist-
icated understanding of the implications and
consequences of decentralization. As the true
nature of nation-wide telephone service, re-
gional electrical grids, and above all the truck
and the automobile became clear, planners
could no longer argue that the dispersal of
population from the city necessarily required
re-concentration of that population in garden
cities. As Lewis Mumford put it in his classic
Culture of Cities, with new technology 'no single
center will, like the metropolis of old, become
the focal point of all regional advantage: on
the contrary, the whole region becomes open
for settlement' (Mumford, 1938, pp. 489-490;
Mumford's italics).
But if the whole region indeed becomes open
for settlement, what would preserve the coher-
ence and self-containment of the individual
garden city? More seriously, what would pre-
vent the metropolis from simply sprawling out
over the whole region, as indeed appeared to
be happening? To answer these questions,
Raymond Unwin in particular began to for-
mulate truly regional plans for controlled de-
centralization. In his 1930 proposal, 'Regional
Planning with reference to Greater London',
Unwin took up certain suggestions that Howard
had put forward in his 'Social Cities' and de-
veloped the key concept of limiting London's
growth by surrounding it with a permanent
greenbelt. London's excess population and its
149
new growth would be channelled into new
towns beyond the greenbelt, and these new
towns would be strictly limited in size by their
own greenbelts (Unwin, 1930, pp. 153-165).
If Unwin provided the essential regional con-
text for a re-interpretation of the garden city,
Clarence Stein and Henry Wright in the United
States re-interpreted Howard's plans for the city
itself. The unprecedented mobility offered by
the personal automobile threatened to explode
the unity and coherence of Howard's railroad-
era garden city. In their plan for Radburn, New
Jersey (1929), America's first garden city, Stein
and Wright applied themselves· to creating
a safe, efficient, automobile-based town that
would also be a genuine community. By care-
fully separating automobile and pedestrian
routes, and by re-planning housing within large
superblocks, they were able to make Radburn
both a 'town for the motor age' and a town that
exemplified the balance and self-containment
that Howard had originally sought (Schaffer,
1982).
Taken together, the greenbelt idea and the
'Radburn plan' reconciled under the American
conditions of the 1920s and the 1930s the in-
herent tension in the garden city ideal between
decentralization and community. This recon-
ciliation, however brilliant, was based on cer-
tain conditions and assumptions unique to that
period. Although the fact of decentralization
was already evident, the great cities retained
sufficient vitality to make decentralization seem
a slow, hence controllable, process. The eco-
nomic collapse and low birthrate of the De-
pression years reinforced that perception. The
Depression also fostered a belief that the era
of private, piecemeal, capitalist development
was over, and that the main responsibility for
building in the future would pass inevitably to
government agencies capable of planning and
acting on a regional scale. These assumptions
appeared to be justified by the innovative but
short-lived greenbelt towns programme in the
United States. In Britain it was the successive
150 THE AMERICAN GARDEN CITY: STILL RELEVANT?
Figure 8.2. Later in the 1920s Radburn upgraded the vision to accommodate the motor age, albeit with levels of
automobile ownership and use well below those of today.
impacts of depression and, even more dramati-
cally, war, which brought official acceptance of
the garden city programme in the Abercrombie
Plan for Greater London (1944), the New
Towns Act (1946) and the Town and Country
Planning Act (1947).
At mid-century, therefore, the garden city/
new town movement appeared finally to be
fulfilling the goals of its founders. In the United
States the postwar boom confirmed Howard's
turn-of-the-century prediction that the twenti-
eth century would see the 'great exodus' from
the large city; at the same time, Britain was
putting in place a model programme of planning
and construction that promised to guide that
exodus along garden city lines. Nevertheless,
the leaders of the movement were apprehen-
sive. Frederic J. Osborn wrote to Lewis Mum-
ford on 28 April 1950, 'My honest opinion is
that for the time being the dispersalist move-
ment is losing out, as it clearly is in Canada
and the USA also' (Hughes, 1971, p. 185). In a
subsequent letter three months later he added
that, although garden city ideas had been 'po-
litically accepted here ... in the cities I can still
stand and feel that the real forces are press-
ing in the wrong direction. A vast movement
of ideas and passions could alone reverse the
trend; but we have not yet by any means
created it, have we?' (Hughes, 1971, p. 187).
Osborn was correct to be apprehensive. In
the four decades since he wrote, new town
methodology has grown increasingly marginal
to the planning debate and new towns them-
selves increasingly marginal to the built environ-
ment. Even in Britain, where twenty-eight New
Towns housing two million people are regarded,
in Gordon Cherry's phrase, as 'jewels in the
planning crown', the new towns have, as Cherry
acknowledges, 'contributed only in a limited
way to postwar development' (Cherry, 1986,
p. 16).
 POST·WAR DECENTRALIZATION IN AMERICA
Figure 8.3. The Radburn ideal was to escape from the
car. Notice the complete separation of vehicles and
people and the way virtual1y al1 houses present 'service'
rooms to the road while living rooms typical1y face the
pedestrian side, reversing the conventional conceptions
of house arrangement.
The cause for this marginalization is not any
reversal in the deeper trend toward decen-
tralization; nor can it be blamed on the malign
influence of Le Corbusier and his fellow high-
rise 'concentrators' whom Osborn regularly
reviled. I would argue it was precisely the pro-
found strength of urban 'dispersal' that radi-
cally undermined the assumptions on which
Osborn and his generation of new town plan-
ners worked. The tension between decentraliza-
tion and community was finally stretched to the
breaking point. In the vast low-density regions
that have largely displaced the cities as the real
'centres' of our late-twentieth century society,
151
Howard's ideal of balanced, self-contained com-
munities set in unspoiled nature has lost its
meaning.
POST·WAR DECENTRALIZATION IN
AMERICA
The radical nature ofpost-1945 decentralization
can be seen most clearly in the United States.
Not only were planning restraints on dispersal
virtually absent there, but government heavily
subsidized decentralization through insured
mortgages on suburban houses, tax breaks to
industry leaving the city, massive spending on
highways and allowing urban public transpor-
tation to decay (Jackson, 1985).
The postwar American suburban housing
boom might have been seen as simply the
continuation of a 1920s boom that had been
interrupted by the Depression and World War
II, but in the 1950s industry began leaving the
central city even faster than people. The 1960s
saw the displacement of downtown shopping
and entertainment by highway-based shopping
malls, and the 1970s and 1980s saw the move-
ment of downtown office work to peripheral
'office campuses'. Perhaps most importantly, the
newer high-tech industries virtually all shunned
old factory districts of the central cities and in-
stead dispersed along the same highway 'growth
corridors' that accommodate tract develop-
ments, shopping malls and office parks. Silicon
Valley in northern California and Route 128
outside Boston are only the first and best known
of these prosperous districts that now exist
outside all major American cities (Fishman,
1987).
Indeed, by the 1980s, decentralization had
so dispersed the core functions of the old central
cities that many sprawling regions acquired the
critical mass of population, jobs, and specialized
services to function as 'new cities' in their own
right. Unlike the old cities, these new cities had
no recognizable centres or peripheries; within
regions that covered thousands of square miles
152 THE AMERICAN GARDEN CITY: STILL RELEVANT?

Figure 8.4. The Depression highlighted the problems of the unemployed, the dispossessed and the slum dwellers.
The garden city ideal was invoked by progressive opinion to provide a model of resettlement.

they included formerly urban, suburban, and
even rural elements; their only structure came
from the patterns and intersections formed
by the superhighway 'growth corridors' that
created and sustained them.
No longer dependent 'suburbanites' of the
older urban centres, the prosperous residents
of the 'new city' watched unconcerned as the
former factory districts of the old centres turned
into devastated inner cities. 'We don't go down-
town anymore' became the motto of the new
city. Known by a host of names - megalopolis,
exurb, urban region, outer city, edge city, spread
city, non-place urban field, low-density city,
outtown, technoburb (my own coinage, I'll
admit) - the new city continues to grow. In
the New York region, development has spread
some 75 miles west of Manhattan to re-vivify
the declining coal towns of eastern Pennsylva-
nia. In Southern California the new city ex-
tends 150 miles along the Pacific Coast from
Los Angeles to San Diego (Fishman, 1990).
Frederic Osborn and Arnold Whittick sub-
titled their definitive new town study, 'The
Answer to Megalopolis' (Osborn and Whittick,
1969). In fact, new town theory, based ulti-
mately on tum-of-the-century ideas of 'town
and country' and the interwar experience of
suburban expansion, has found it virtually
impossible to respond to the post-urban world
of the megalopolis. The greenbelt concept as-
sumes that growth is occurring at a well-defined
line at the edge of large cities and that beyond
that edge one can find still-stable 'unspoiled'
agricultural areas. One can thus control urban
growth with a greenbelt much as a gardener
plants a border around a flower-bed that has a
tendency to spread.
But reality is not so neat. In the new city,
growth is occurring simultaneously through-
out the region; moreover, areas within the
old cities are experiencing devastating collapse.
The process is well-illustrated by the fate of
three American new towns in the Baltimore-
Washington DC area: Greenbelt, Maryland
(1938), one of the New Deal Greenbelt Towns,
11 miles north-east of the US Capitol; Reston,
Virginia (1965),25 miles into northern Virginia;
 POST-WAR DECENTRALIZATION IN AMERICA
and Columbia, Maryland (1967), 15 miles south-
west of Baltimore and 25 miles north-east of
Washington. Reston and Columbia were both
privately constructed to be what the developer
of Columbia, James W. Rouse, called 'complete
and self-sustaining'. With its 18,000 acres of land
and projected population of 110,000, Columbia
seemed especially well-planned to be an al-
ternative to what Rouse criticized as 'the vast,
formless spread of housing pierced by the un-
related spotting of schools, churches, stores,
[that] creates areas so huge and irrational that
they are out of scale with people' (Breckenfeld,
1971, p. 172).
153
Figure 8.5. Under President
Roosevelt's New Deal, the Re-
settlement Administration po-
pularized the idea of greenbelt
towns, developed at low densi-
ties and physically separated
from the big cities.
All three new towns were constructed well
beyond what was then the edge of development
in areas that appeared to be stable agricultural
districts, but all three are now deeply enmeshed
in the 'vast, formless spread' of the regional
new city. Greenbelt is part of a high-tech area
formed by the proximity of the National In-
stitute of Health and the University of Mary-
land. Reston, which seemed so remote in the
1960s that its developer went bankrupt, is at
the centre of an area of intense development
spurred by the proximity of Dulles International
Airport; 8 miles away is Tysons, the region's
largest shopping mall and office park which
154 THE AMERICAN GARDEN CITY: STILL RELEVANT?
boasts more square footage for stores and
offices than downtown Miami (Garreau, 1988).
Columbia, which has reached a population of
68,000 with 41,000 jobs, is a highly successful
part of a 'new city' that in the last decade has
taken the place of the quiet agricultural land
between Baltimore and Washington. The two
metropolitan areas are now so completely inter-
meshed that Census officials have despaired of
drawing a meaningful boundary between them
and are considering combining them in a single
district (Leff, 1987).
Figure 8.6. Only three such
settlements were developed, the
most famous being Greenbelt,
Maryland. The excellent social
facilities and Radburn residential
layouts are clearly apparent here.
In such districts the concept of a 'self-
contained community' becomes meaningless for
two reasons. First, as we have seen, the new
regional city with its massive scale simply en-
gulfs even the most ambitious new town plan.
In southern California, for example, the 83,000-
acre new town of Irvine has been swallowed
up in the Pacific Coast new city (Griffen, 1974).
Secondly, residents of even the best-planned
new town cannot be expected to treat it as a
'self-contained community' and live their lives
essentially within its borders. Possessed of the
 POST-WAR DECENTRALIZATION IN AMERICA
mobility that the personal automobile brings,
they will live at a regional scale.
This 'automobility' is not simply an auto-
matic response to technology but reflects a
deeper shift in social and economic ideals. As
indicated above, Howard's original hopes for a
self-contained community implied the economic
ideal of the steady job and the stable employer.
It assumed a localized workforce whose skills
would be appropriate over the long term for
the small group of employers on the spot. This
ideal was never realized in practice; it has be-
come questionable even in theory. In the in-
formation age, highly-educated workers need
155
Figure 8.7, Apart from a few war-
time experiments, America had few
settlements with any real claim to
be part of the garden city tradition
until the private new towns of the
1960s, Reston, Virginia was estab-
lished in 1962,
a truly regional job market to find appropriate
employment. In the age of the two-earner
family, both with special skills, it is hard to
imagine both spouses finding suitable work
within the same new town. Even if they did,
this age of leveraged buy-outs and the new
international division of labour would ensure
that the situation would be only temporary. In
short, the job market of the late twentieth cen-
tury, especially in the high-tech areas of the
new city, has taken on much of the mobility
and instability of the nineteenth-century urban
job market. Workers must therefore be pre-
pared to treat their place of residence as only
156 THE AMERICAN GARDEN CITY: STILL RELEVANT?
a base from which to seek economic opportu-
nity throughout the decentralized region.
Like employment, consumption and leisure
can no longer be contained within the borders
of the new town. Howard promised to accom-
modate that 'class of shopping which requires
the job of deliberation and selection' within the
'Crystal Palace' at the centre of the garden city
(Howard, 1902, p. 54). Subsequent new town
planners have devoted much effort to creating
convenient and attractive shopping areas, but
affluence demands a wider choice than any
locality could provide. In the United States, at
least, the purely local mall has been displaced
by vast enclosed 'edge cities', or 'mega-malls'
with as much as five million square-feet of
space, that necessarily draw their customers
from throughout the region (Landscape Archi-
tecture, 1988), Leisure, too, has been 'regional-
ized'; in addition to the journeys-to-work and
the journeys-to-shop, there are now the rou-
tine journeys to the beach, mountains, or woods.
A second home 50 miles away might mean
more to the resident of megalopolis than a
greenbelt close at hand.
Figure 8.8. The larger, more fa-
mous and ultimately more suc-
cessful new town of Columbia,
Maryland was starred the follow-
ing year.
The new towns, therefore, have not proved
to be the 'answer to megalopolis' but its victim.
Not only has the new town ideal lost its co-
herence in the face of radical decentralization,
but it has also lost its economic underpinnings.
Ebenezer Howard had always insisted that his
garden city idea was 'practical' economically
because it captured for the community the 'un-
earned increment' in land values that resulted
when agricultural land is re-valued as sites for
homes and businesses. Although the new town
planners took substantial state subsidies for
granted, they too based their calculations on
the rise of land values which would help to pay
for the new town infrastructure. These eco-
nomic calculations, however, have been funda-
mentally altered as shown by the failure of the
government-sponsored new town programme
in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s.
THE US NEW TOWN INITIATIVE
Now largely (and perhaps thankfully) forgot-
ten, the US new town initiative arose as part of
Lyndon Johnson's 'Great Society' and briefly
 THE US NEW TOWN INITIATIVE
promised to become the most extensive pro-
gramme of new town construction in the world.
The programme brought together the hopes
inherent in the garden city tradition with the
particular problems and concerns of the United
States in the 1960s. The trends to radical de-
centralization which have been described were
now sufficiently advanced to be seen as a threat
to the national envirOl ;ment; 'sprawl' was al-
ready part of the national vocabulary. Yet
reformers still hoped these trends would be re-
versed by a vigorous programme of national
planning and construction. The three private
new towns of Reston, Columbia and Irvine -
all in their initial stages in the 1960s - had
157
Figure 8.9. Columbia's position
in the Washington-Baltimore
corridor helped ensure its success
in attracting population and in-
vestment though undermined its
physical separateness.
refocused attention on the new town model.
Advocates claimed that by channelling devel-
opment to carefully planned communities sur-
rounded by greenbelts, the American new
towns would not only contain suburban sprawl
but would also cut down on wasteful commut-
ing by putting housing back in close proximity
with jobs. Moreover, these new communities
would fight the social and racial exclusivity of
most suburbs by including ample low-cost
housing (Perloff and Sandberg, 1972).
But American new town advocates realized
that only a handful of private developers could
hope to muster the resources necessary to
construct a whole city, while a European-style
158 THE AMERICAN GARDEN CITY: STILL RELEVANT?
programme of government-developed cities was
still too 'socialistic' even in the heyday of 1960s
liberalism. The result was a characteristic com-
promise: the new town programme was to be
carried out by private developers but financed
with federally-guaranteed loans. These long-
term, low-interest loans would enable devel-
opers to overcome what was seen as the greatest
barrier to new town construction: the immense
'front-end' expenditures for land acquisition,
roads, sewers, and other infrastructure devel-
opments which had to be paid out years before
a single dollar could be recouped as revenues.
These guaranteed new town loans were the
centrepiece of Title IV of the 1968 Housing
and Urban Development Act (Rabinowitz and
Smookler, 1972).
Developers were slow to take advantage of
these loans because of a Vietnam-induced crisis
in the construction industry, but this reluctance
Figure 8.10. Columbia's devel-
oper, James Rouse of Baltimore,
managed its growth with an im-
pressive mix of entrepreneurial
flair and a convincing display of
sympathy for progressive ideals in
community development.
failed to slow the new town momentum. In 1969
a prestigious 'National Committee on Urban
Growth Policy' recommended the construction
of 110 American new towns by the year 2000
(Canty, 1972). In 1970 these recommendations
were embodied in Title VII of the Housing and
Urban Development Act which expanded the
loan guarantee programme to a maximum of
$50 million for each project and also gave the
new towns privileged access to a number of
other federal subsidy programmes for mass
transit, public health, water pollution, educa-
tion, and public works. To produce innovative
designs, developers got federal grants for plan-
ners and architects. A 'New Town Develop-
ment Corporation' was set up to select among
proposals and to supervise construction. The
measure's backers predicted that at least ten
new towns per year would be begun in the
coming decade (Apgar, 1971).
 THE US NEW TOWN INITIATIVE
Even with these inducements proposals still
came slowly, but by 1974 the New Town De-
velopment Corporation had approved sixteen
new towns and allocated over $280 million in
federally-guaranteed loans. By that year, how-
ever, it was obvious that the programme was in
deep trouble. Both the federal government and
the private developers had underestimated the
time and resources necessary to bring a new
community to fruition. One expert estimated
159
Figure 8.11. Many of America's
major housebuilders were in-
volved in building Columbia.
The Levitt company, with their
own experience of developing
large new residential areas, made
much of the attractions of the
new town.
that a single new community with a projected
population of 70,000 required at least $400
million for land purchase and infrastructure and
that at least $160 million would have to be spent
before receiving any revenue. In addition, the
new city would need $400 million for industrial
and commercial development and $700 million
in mortgage loans for housing (Smookler, 1975).
(These figures would have to be doubled for
the 1990s.)
160 THE AMERICAN GARDEN CITY: STILL RELEVANT?
The problem was more than the magnitude
of these sums. The early 1970s saw a very trou-
bled housing and construction market char-
acterized by rapidly rising costs. By 1974 the
typical new town developer had spent all the
money from the loans but the new town was
only partially complete. In the midst of a re-
cession the developer was hard pressed to sell
the few completed sites he could offer. Mean-
while, interest payments for land already ac-
quired and infrastructure already built were
hurrying the new towns toward bankruptcy
(New York Times, 1976).
In 1978 the federal government, having previ-
ously imposed drastic cuts, decided to cut its
own losses and liquidate the programme. Where
possible, land was sold and new towns were
refinanced and re-developed on a smaller scale
as typical suburban subdivisions. In other cases
the government foreclosed and took losses
which totalled more than $150 million. Not a
single project survived to become a genuine new
town (New York Times, 1978).
The new town fiasco was not untypical of
many other Great Society programmes that
failed expensively in the harsher climate of the
1970s. But this failure also points to some real
economic weaknesses in the new town model.
Figure 8.12. One of the keys to
Columbia's relative success was
the attraction of major employers.
Here Rouse, second from the right,
watches as the then Governor of
Maryland, Spiro T. Agnew, breaks
ground for Columbia's first indus-
try in a mutually advantageous
1967 photo-opportunity.
As we have seen, a new town project ties up
land and other expensive resources for 15 to 20
years before achieving the nirvana of 'positive
cash flow'. Moreover, the developer - whether
a private firm or government agency - only
begins to reap the real benefits when the project
is almost complete. Even a brilliantly-executed
project can be brought to ruin by unanticipated
delays. And, given the vagaries of the world
economy, one must now assume that every
decade will see its share of 'unpredictable' eco-
nomic crises that force delays.
To be sure, a new town project can succeed
if it has the long-term, unwavering backing of
a well-financed government, and if that gov-
ernment has the power to regulate regional
development to bring housing and industry to
the new community and to keep others from
encroaching on the greenbelt. But such gov-
ernments are rare. In a more typical market
economy, even large firms are forced to opt
for projects that can be completed quickly. One
such firm boasted that it can sell completed
houses only six months after it had bought
the farmland on which to construct them
(Smookler, 1975, p. 133). The result of such a
short-term horizon is necessarily a fragmentary,
dispersed environment where a multitude of
 THE GARDEN CITY: STILL RELEVANT?
uncoordinated projects eventually provide, over
a wide region, the facilities that would have
been concentrated in a new town.
THE GARDEN CITY: STILL RELEVANT?
Can we then consign the garden city tradition
to the dustbin of history (to borrow Trotsky's
term of abuse)? Or call the new town what
Mumford once called Le Corbusier's Ville radi-
euse: 'Yesterday's City of Tomorrow' (Mum-
ford, 1968, p. 116)? To do so, I believe, would
be to confuse what is living in the garden city
tradition with what is dead. The new town
model embodies only one phase of the garden
city tradition. That tradition must now be re-
thought and re-cast to respond to a new era of
decentralization.
What makes this possible is that Howard's
ideas still speak powerfully to at least some
aspects of megalopolis. His ruling idea of 'a
marriage of town and country' still represents,
I believe, the best aspirations of the contem-
porary residents of the new decentralized city.
But what is 'town' and what is 'country' when
161
Figure 8.13. As Reston and Co-
lumbia became the models for the
ill-fated American New Com-
munities programme of the late
1960s, much attention was fo-
cused on the reality of their
promised social and racial mix.
Federal housing projects, such as
Cedar Ridge in Reston, intro-
duced some black faces into what
were otherwise largely white,
middle-class communities.
the dominant environment of the new city is a
complex low-density collage of urban, rural, and
suburban elements? It is hopeless to try to sort
this collage out into neat traditional packages
of town and country with well-defined green-
belts to keep everything in its place. Instead, we
need a new design synthesis that would strive
to create a landscape in which distinctively ur-
ban and rural elements would find their place.
An important start on this project has already
been made at Milton Keynes, where, as Lord
Llewelyn-Davies describes it, there has been
'more emphasis on trees and grass than on solid
buildings ... [and] even more than architectural
quality, landscape quality will determine the
impact of the new city' (Llewelyn-Davies, 1972,
p. 114.)
The lessons of Milton Keynes, however, can-
not be applied directly to the more anarchic
setting of the North American megalopolis (and
perhaps never again even in Britain). As we
have seen from the failure of the 1970s Amer-
ican new towns, market forces will always
favour the fragment over the grand design.
Planners therefore will always be working with
162 THE AMERICAN GARDEN CITY: STILL RELEVANT?
incomplete, messy, and contradictory elements.
This means that a single archetype like
Howard's garden city diagram or even the more
complex new town model can never hope to
guide reality. Instead, planners and citizens will
necessarily inhabit what Colin Rowe has called
'collage city' (Rowe and Koetter, 1978). This
fragmentation makes fundamental change im-
possible, but it does free the planner to deal
imaginatively with the complex ecological and
economic problem that each site presents.
In the United States planners must work to
assemble a landscape from the fragments of
design created within individual developers'
projects. Office campuses and industrial parks
where post-modern structures are built in the
midst of elaborate landscaping point in the right
direction. Such juxtapositions must become
an integral part of the larger environment. If,
as is often the case, a massive mega-mall is
built next to corn fields, we must preserve those
fields as well as other scattered agricultural sites
that give character and openness to the region.
The 'marriage of town and country' is thus
re-defined not as a tightly-planned new town
within a carefully-preserved greenbelt but as the
continuous juxtaposition and interpenetration
on a regional scale of urban and rural elements.
Similarly, Howard's ideal of community re-
mains of permanent value, even if the people
no longer wish to confine their lives within the
bounds of a new town. Americans in particular
are quick to praise the virtues of 'community'
while shunning the limitations that any true
community necessarily imposes. Yet precisely
because people live on a regional scale, they
have begun to seek out places that can main-
tain some identity and repose in a seemingly-
limitless environment where, as Gertrude Stein
once said of Oakland, California, 'There is no
there there'. Identifying one's 'community' by
the number of the closest freeway off-ramp - 'I
live near Exit 15' - is no longer enough.
In the United States, developers have re-
sponded to these feelings with 'master-planned
communities' or 'planned unit developments'
(PUDs). These large-scale projects often base
their master plans on one element of the Rad-
burn design: cutting down on the land around
each house to provide extensive landscaped
public spaces. PUDs also feature elaborate
shared leisure facilities such as tennis courts,
swimming pools, and golf courses. By new town
standards, PUDs are at best fragments of com-
munities, because they usually exclude industry
and commerce. Indeed, many are surrounded
by walls and must be entered at gatehouses
where guards admit only residents and their
guests (Langdon, 1988).
Despite such socially-regressive practices,
the planned-unit developments raise many in-
teresting questions for the garden city tradition.
Is the spatial containment of a new town really
a necessary condition to create a community?
Or can community thrive within a well-planned
fragment of the megalopolis? If so, then what
is the present-day equivalent of Howard's gar-
den city neighbourhood 'ward' with its houses,
schools, playgrounds, and gardens? In short,
the challenge to the garden city tradition is to
separate the ideal of 'community' from its tra-
ditional container - the spatially-defined and
isolated small town - and seek out the physical
forms that can preserve community in the age
of the megalopolis.
Any a priori idea of community form must
therefore respond to the question: what is the
new town ultimately to achieve? This question,
I believe, is the real nub of the long debate
between Frederic Osborn and Lewis Mumford
on the question of proper new town densities.
Both men kept this technical point foremost,
perhaps because they hesitated to broach too
directly so troubling a question. Osborn's in-
sistence on low densities reflected his concern
for a 'life in and centring on the home'. But, as
Mumford replied in a telling riposte, 'if this
is all you want Los Angeles, rather than the
New Towns, should be your goal, or that even
more spread-out suburban nightmare which we
find growing up in the rural no-man's land of
Megalopolis' (Hughes 1971, pp. 341-342).
 BEYOND THE NEW TOWN
Mumford's advocacy of relatively high den-
sities reflected his growing anxiety to preserve
in the modern world those 'highly attractive
focal points - cities in the historic sense, strik-
ing in form and character - where a diversity
of organizations, institutions, associations, along
with primary family and neighbourhood groups,
necessary to maintain this complex social order,
can come together and profit by the constant
give-and-take' (Mumford, 1968, p. 137). Mum-
ford, of course, hoped that the new towns could
become small cities in this special sense. But
one might ask why it is important to divert
scarce resources to build new towns - which
have never really succeeded in Mumford's terms
- when so many actually-existing 'cities in the
historic sense' are suffering from depopulation,
de-industrialization and bankruptcy.
BEYOND THE NEW TOWN
This crucial problem brings us back to Howard's
conception that urban form must embody the
ideals of social justice; or, as he put it, that we
must reject cities 'that are entirely unadapted
for a society in which the social side of our
nature is demanding a larger share of recogni-
tion .. .' (Howard, 1902, p. 146). The garden
city movement was founded to address the
urban crisis of the turn of the century; in con-
trast, the new town model seems to have little
to offer to the urban crisis of the late twentieth
century. As Brian Rodgers argues, 'For half a
century planned decentralization was prescribed
as the cure for the social and environmental
ills of the urban community. Today this is seen
as at least the proximate cause - but within a
context of perhaps irretrievable economic de-
cline - of the crisis of the inner city' (Rodgers,
1986, p. 55).
Howard and his followers at the turn of the
century could take the vitality of the great
metropolitan centres for granted, even as they
planned to depopulate them. Now, at the end
of the century, we must recognize that a valid
'marriage of town and country' must respect
163
the rights of both partners, and in particular
the needs of the inner cities. Indeed, Howard
always recognized that his 'garden city', far from
being self-contained, could never reach its full
potential unless it was part of a larger regional
network. In his 'social city' diagram from the
original 1898 edition of To-morrow, Howard
shows a regional network of six garden cities
arranged in a circle around a 'central city'. If
the garden city were to be truly a 'social city',
he thought, then it must be linked with a vital,
urban 'central city'.
To be sure, the 'central city' in Howard's
diagram was to be a new creation, and limited
by its own greenbelt to 58,000 people. We have
since learned that only the great historic cores
have potential to be the 'highly attractive focal
points' that Howard and later Mumford thought
could be created anew. The very decentraliza-
tion of a region creates the need for a vital
centre that provides orientation and identity.
Even the most robust decentralized culture can
never duplicate the cultural and architectural
heritage that already exists, however precari-
ously, at the core. More importantly, the cen-
tral cities are a repository of human resources,
often so tragically wasted. Economically, so-
cially, and racially, a region divided against itself
cannot stand. Finally, the suburban problems
of sprawl and congestion can never be solved
unless a region can achieve a healthy and co-
herent centre. By a strange twist of history, the
garden city tradition must now seek to preserve
the great cities it once sought to undermine.
As Mumford always emphasized, one of
Howard's great strengths was that he never
tied his ideas to a specific picture of the ideal
city. The pragmatism inherent in Howard's
characterizing his garden city plans as 'merely
suggestive [they] will probably be much de-
parted from n.b. a diagram only' (Howard,
1902, p. 51 and diagrams 2 and 3) encouraged
Barry Parker and Raymond Unwin to produce
a much better design for Letchworth. This
pragmatism also enabled Unwin, Osborn, Mum-
ford, Stein and Wright to go beyond Letchworth
164 THE AMERICAN GARDEN CITY: STILL RELEVANT?
and Welwyn to create the new town model.
But that model, still enshrining the ideal of the
self-contained community, was built on con-
cepts of town and country, centre and periph-
ery, that no longer apply to the decentralized
urban regions of today. Now we must go be-
yond the new town.
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towns? Harvard Business Review, Vol. 49 (Jan.-
Feb.), pp. 90-109
Breckenfeld, G. (1971) Columbia and the New Cities.
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Canty, D. (ed.) (1972) The New City: The National
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Cherry, G. (1986) Settlement patterns and the
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Howard, E. (1902) Garden Cities of To-morrow (ed.
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Howard, E. (1904) Appreciation to Professor
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ization of the United States. New York: Oxford
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Landscape Architecture (1988) Edge Cities (special
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Monthly, March, pp. 39-60.
Leff, L. (1987) New town [Columbia] still coming of
age. The Washington Post, July 5.
Llewelyn-Davies, L. (1972) Changing goals in design:
the Milton Keynes example, in Evans, H. (ed.)
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New York Times (1978) HUD Sec. Patricia Harris
approves plan to close HUD New Communities
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Osborn, F. J. and Whittick, A. (1969) The New
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Legacy of Raymond Unwin. Cambridge, Mass.:
MIT Press.
 9
THE BRITISH GARDEN CITY:
METAMORPHOSIS
Michael Hebbert
Garden city building in Britain has begun a fresh
metamorphosis. This time, the lead is being
taken by commercial house-building companies.
While their first schemes struggle through the
planning system we can opportunely review the
previous phases of garden city development
in Britain, paying particular attention to some
neglected earlier involvements of the property
industry.
For our purposes the garden city has three
aspects. There is first of all the decentralist idea
- outward movement from crowded metropolis
to open countryside. Secondly, the word garden
implies low-density layout and a well-planted
urban landscape. Thirdly, the word city implies
a community of municipal scale and diversity,
underpinned - in the original conception at least
- by communal landownership. The combina-
tion of these elements in Ebenezer Howard's
original blueprint left no place for commercial
developers. The garden city settlers were to be
pro-municipal pioneers, joining with kindred
spirits on a plane above the ordinary competi-
tive struggle. Their success would spell the
collapse of property markets in London and
other great cities as population migrated to the
better life in the new towns. Every element of
the garden city - location, physical design and
ownership - set it apart from ordinary suburbia.
More than this, the one was part of a larger
purpose to abolish the other and the entire
system of land and property speculation on
which it rested (Howard, 1946, chapter 12). All
three elements of the garden city ideal have
proved resilient and fruitful over the ninety
years since Howard devised his utopia for to-
morrow. But the speculative builder was to play
a larger part in shaping that tradition than he
imagined.
BUILDING SPECULATION 'ON GARDEN
CITY LINES'
Initially, the influence ran the other way. Specu-
lative builders in the early years of the century,
faced with declining demand for their product
after 1904 and in increasingly critical public
opinion of monotonous schemes of terraced
housing, were receptive to new ways to add
value to their schemes (Jackson, 1973 pp. 61-
62). Many of them seized on the novelty value
of Ebenezer Howard's experiment. Develop-
ment 'on garden city lines' was often noth-
ing more than a marketing device applied to
unmodified bye-law housing. Gaskell (1981,
p. 45) cites the 1909 scheme for Fernville Park
Garden City in Leeds. 'Here was a not uncom-
mon example of an estate which called itself
a "garden city" but which was laid out with
virtual disregard of all garden city principles
166 THE BRITISH GARDEN CITY: METAMORPHOSIS
and where the straight line had been pressed
at the expense of any natural beauties.' Some
developers of middle-class housing schemes
went rather further, incorporating layout and
design innovations from Letchworth and dem-
onstrating the commercial validity of Raymond
Unwin's arguments for informal layout and
low-cost estate roads (Gaskell, 1981, pp. 22-
29).
The Garden Cities Association responded to
all such homage with dismay (Purdom, 1913,
pp. 201ff). Its Secretary, Ewart G. Culpin
commented in The Garden City Movement Up-
to-Date (1914, p. 9) that 'many of the schemes
that are called garden city schemes have nothing
in common with the garden city movement but
the name, which they have dishonestly appro-
priated. Schemes of the wildest speculation,
land-sweating and jerry-building have all been
promoted in the hope that the good name
would carry them through.' Yet Culpin's own
book demonstrated the difficulty of distin-
guishing real from counterfeit. Of the fifty-seven
projects covered all but one (Letchworth) were
suburban developments without the decentralist
inspiration of the garden city. Some were
promoted by industrialists, others by muni-
cipalities, and the greater part by progressive
housing agencies of various kinds ranging from
co-operative and co-partnership schemes to
semi-commercial public utility companies. At
the margin no clear boundary separated model
schemes from the better Edwardian speculative
development, laid out on behalf of investors
willing to take a long-term view, with land-
scaping, communal parks, bowling greens and
tennis courts, and protection of the local
amenities through mechanisms of private law
such as the restrictive covenant.!
After the war the British housing market
became polarized as provision concentrated in
the hands of either the state or the speculative
developer. Garden city imagery and influence
retained their hold on both. Local governments
built 'garden cities' as working-class housing
under the 1919 and 1924 Acts, and were crit-
icized for this misappropriation (Purdom, 1925,
pp. 33, 51, 170; Gaskell, 1981, pp. 48-56). So
were commercial developers building their own
versions speculatively for the middle-class
renter or purchaser. Jackson's history of the
London suburbs mentions twelve garden city
or garden suburb schemes, besides Hampstead
Garden Suburb and 'London's Smallest Garden
City' in Warminster Road, South Norwood. The
label seems to have retained some selling power
throughout the building boom of the 1930s, as
well as setting a standard of design excellence
that was widely acknowledged by private de-
velopers if not so often emulated (Howkins,
1938). Private enterprise was not, however, to
win its place in the garden city tradition by
building 'on garden city lines', but rather by
transforming that tradition from within.
HOWARD'S GARDEN CITIES AND
SHAW'S PROPHECY
The fact is that the Letchworth and Welwyn ex-
periments were by no means as insulated from
wider land and property markets as Ebenezer
Howard had intended (Daunton, 1987, pp. 47-
49). The physical accomplishment of the two
garden cities was achieved only by jettisoning
the communitarian principles which for Howard
and many of his more idealistic followers were
- in C. R. Ashbee's words - 'the essential gar-
den city idea' (Ashbee, 1917, p. 43). The full
story of this unhappy process of compromise
has been told in Robert Beevers' book, The
Garden City Utopia (1988). The keystone of his
account is a remarkably prescient letter from
George Bernard Shaw to Ralph Neville KC,
the newly elected chairman of the Garden City
Association. Shaw drafted this letter immedi-
ately after his return from the garden city con-
ference at Bournville in September 1901, which
he had attended in his capacity as vestryman
for the parish of St Pancras. Despite some his-
torical uncertainty whether he ever put it in
 HOWARD'S GARDEN CITIES AND SHAW'S PROPHECY
the post, it remains an important and sub-
stantial critique of Howard's scheme. Shaw
challenged the initial premise of the garden
city movement, that a non-capitalist utopia
could be built upon money market borrowings
(£240,000 at 4 per cent was Howard's original
estimate) held under a trust deed. The garden
city's need to compete for private capital and
offer competitive terms would preclude at-
tempts to appropriate the benefits of rising land
values for a self-governing garden city com-
munity. Capitalists had risked their money in
garden city shares or land - and risk would
seek its reward (Beevers, 1988, p. 73-78).
Shaw's prophecies were at least partially ful-
filled over the next three decades in Letchworth
and Welwyn Garden Cities. The movement
succeeded in raising the capital for Letch-
worth only when direction of the venture was
taken in hand by its leading industrialists -
Aneurin Williams, Thomas Idris, W. H. Lever
and Edward Cadbury - who presented it to
subscribers in business terms as a sound, and
socially responsible speculation. Howard was
moved to a non-executive role after he tried
publicly to maintain the principle of dividend
limitation. The directors regarded his schemes
for community government, in Beevers' words,
as 'dangerous irrelevancies' and jettisoned, on
the advice of the company solicitor, the concept
of a local trust to administer the estate on be-
half of the residents. Howard was pointedly
not called on to deliver the speech he had
written for Letchworth's formal opening in 1903
(Beevers, 1988, pp. 88-89). The company's
difficulties in raising investment capital for land
assembly and infrastructure were repeated
when the first Letchworth sites were placed on
the market. Interest was so limited in the spring
of 1904 that the soap magnate W. H. Lever
urged for plots to be offioaded freehold to
speculative builders. He resigned from the First
Garden City Company when Ralph Neville
successfully persuaded the majority to stick by
the leasehold principle. Ten years later, Aneurin
167
Williams resigned the chairmanship of the
company because of the garden city's failure to
yield a dividend on the capital invested in it.
'Until it does this,' he concluded his resignation
speech at the 1915 annual general meeting, 'it
will not be considered, and will not deserve to
be considered, practical politics by our fellow-
countrymen, and its example will not be fol-
lowed as it ought to be and must be' (Purdom,
1925, p. 147).2
Though the land of the Letchworth Garden
City remained in one ownership, the tenure that
was offered on residential and business sites
bore little resemblance to the communalism of
Garden Cities of To-morrow, enshrined as Point
4 in the Garden Cities and Town Planning
Association's (GCTPA) Articles of Association:
to teact a lesson in cooperation applied to the hold-
ing of land and to show that by combination, the
increased value of the land created by its popula-
tion, hitherto paid without return to the landlord,
may be retained for the benefit of the community'
(Beevers, 1988, p. 94).
To attract householders and manufacturers,
the Letchworth leases were on 99-year terms.
Howard's original scheme provided for an
annually revised ground-rent, so that socially-
created land values could be promptly recap-
tured for the common benefit. But when early
leases incorporating a ten-yearly revision clause
proved unsaleable, a fixed ground rent was
substituted. Neville and the majority of the
board were clear that the immediate economic
viability of Letchworth was more important
than a doctrinal attachment of Point 4. The
only encumbrances on the leases were the re-
strictive covenants to protect the amenities of
the garden city. As Neville himself explained
to the Inter-Departmental Committee on Phys-
ical Deterioration in 1904, there was nothing
intrinsically peculiar about this leasehold mech-
anism: 'it is done over and over again in the
case of private development of estates for gain'
(PP. 1904, q 4728).
168 THE BRITISH GARDEN CITY: METAMORPHOSIS
The policy of the First Garden City Company
was always to encourage private enterprise,
not compete against it (Purdom, 1925, p. 293;
Osborn, 1946, p. 72; PRO: HLG/84/5). Com-
mercial developers built all the town's facto-
ries and shops and a good proportion of the
housing. Paradoxically, its maturing land assets
and growing rental revenue were in later years
to expose the company to predatory raids.
Under a private act of Parliament in 1962 the
equity-holders were bought out for compensa-
tion of over £3,000,000, and the estate was
transferred, uniquely, to a trustee body to ad-
minister on behalf of the community. Part of
Howard's concept was thus realized, albeit in a
roundabout way that has never been replicated
in the British garden city tradition. 3
Ebenezer Howard launched the GCTPA's
second experiment at Welwyn Garden City as
a deliberate 'private enterprise' riposte to his
colleagues within the GCTPA who were look-
ing to the state to carry on the momentum of
garden city development. 4 Though a statutory
route had been opened under the Housing Act
1921 for garden cities to be promoted with
public loans and powers of compulsory pur-
chase, Welwyn was developed under company
law, with investment capital raised from pri-
vate shareholders - 'those seemingly endlessly
well-disposed, idealistic and well-heeled men
and women on whom so much depended' (de
Soissons, 1988, p. 60). The initial prospectus of
the garden city did include provision for com-
munity participation in its direction and equity,
but once again, Shaw's prophecies took effect
as the board of directors of Second Garden
City Ltd, individually liable for the security of
the company's bank loans, found themselves
impelled towards a commercial property logic
in order to dispose of serviced sites and recoup
their huge site acquisition and infrastructure
costs.
As 99-year leases were now unusual and un-
popular, residential sites were offered on a 999-
year term, and initial provision to revise ground
rents every 80 years abandoned. In some re-
spects, though, the company's controlling hand
was tighter at Welwyn than it had been at
Letchworth. It held out against the grant of
long leases for retail and business; applied
stronger design control; and instead of re-
lying on speculative builders for construction,
it built most of the town's housing through
its own subsidiary, Welwyn Builders Ltd (de
Soissons, 1988, p. 46). The town was developed
and marketed in the first decade as a middle-
class dormitory for city commuters, and its
values protected in a manner not envisaged by
Ebenezer Howard involving the segregation of
factories and weekly rented housing to the fur-
ther side of the railway tracks. The Company's
zoning policies were commercially sensible, but
betrayed garden city ideals - with fatal effect,
for they incurred the enmity of the town's six
residents who were Labour MPs and so may
have contributed directly to subsequent na-
tionalization of Welwyn Garden City by the
postwar Labour government (de Soissons, 1988,
pp. 110-116). Despite the success of its middle-
class housing, the company's financial liabilities
continued to mount. As bankruptcy loomed, it
was restructured in 1928-30. In the process,
Howard's personal disciples F. J. Osborn and
C. B. Purdom were fired from the management
of Welwyn Garden City, the civic directors were
abolished and share and debenture holders
given the full equity, excluding the garden city
residents from any further interest in the com-
pany or its profits (Beevers, 1988, pp. 169-175).
Ebenezer Howard's followers now had to
decide where to carry the torch of the garden
city tradition. For Osborn and Purdom the para-
mount issues were not communal ownership
but geographical decentralization and low-
density housing design. Their Letchworth and
Welwyn experiences convinced them, and sub-
sequently the GCTPA, renamed as the Town
and Country Planning Association (TCPA) in
1941, of the inadequacy of private initiative.
In 1936 the GCTPA formally shifted towards
 PRIVATE DEVELOPERS AND POSTWAR NEW TOWNS POLICY
campaigning for a national programme of
publicly funded garden cities (Hebbert, 1981 ,
pp. 180-184). From 1936 Osborn devoted his
considerable skills as a lobbyist to this cause,
with such good effect that when the Commit-
tee on the New Towns was appointed in Octo-
ber 1945 under Lord Reith's chairmanship, the
question was no longer whether there should
be a national new towns programme but only
how to carry it out.
PRIVATE DEVELOPERS AND POSTWAR
NEW TOWNS POLICY
Reith was asked to report rapidly on the choice
of agency for new town building. His committee
could draw upon three prewar precedents of
large-scale planned development. Local au-
thorities might build the new towns as they had
built council estates, inside or outside their own
boundaries. Alternatively, they could be built
by some kind of intermediate, non-profit or-
ganization, as under the (so far dormant) pro-
vision for Authorized Associations to develop
garden cities under Section 35 of the 1932 Town
& Country Planning Act. s As we have seen,
Letchworth and Welwyn offered ambivalent
precedents for such a limited-dividend ap-
proach. The third alternative was that new
towns might be built by ordinary private de-
velopers, seeking normal profits. Even before
the 1945 general election, the Co-operative
Permanent Building Society had been making
informal approaches to the Ministry of Town
and Country Planning to develop a private new
town at Ongar in Essex or Brickendon Bury in
Hertfordshire (Cullingworth, 1979, pp. 10-11).
The larger house-builders, who had prewar
experience of developments of up to 10,000
houses, were now looking to resume civilian
work after the great construction projects of the
war years, from which - thanks largely to Lord
Reith's interventions as first Minister of Works
and Buildings - they had emerged with a
strengthened oligopoly (see Smyth, 1985, p. 92).
169
Initial thinking within the Ministry on new
town development had, however, completely
excluded any private sector role (Cullingworth,
1979, pp. 8-9). The first, minuted reaction of
the Reith Committee was also to reject it out
of hand, even for purposes of consultation:
Development by a private company certainly would
not succeed unless capital were available as and when
required: strong majority view very doubtful if pri-
vate enterprise could supply necessary capital:
or if it could function with such degree of control
as was inevitable. There would almost surely be a
conflict between dividend and public service motive.
(PRO: HLG/84/4)
We can read that concluding remark as a new
gloss upon Shaw's prophecy. In the reconstruc-
tion climate of the mid-1940s it was feasible to
contemplate a more radical ring-fence against
market forces than in the pioneer garden cities.
To the Ministry and its architectural and socio-
logical advisers, the essential attraction of
new town development lay in the opportunities
it offered for community development and
social engineering - for a demonstration of
plan-rationality as against market-rationality
(Hebbert, 1983). To Reith, the agency best
suited for this purpose was clearly a fourth and
so far untried option, but one with which he was
already well familiar from the BBC: the cent-
rally appointed and funded ad hoc corporation.
The Reith Committee's only private sector
members were Sir Malcolm Stewart (Chairman,
London Brick Company) and L. J. Cadbury
(Chairman of Cadbury Bros Ltd). Cadbury
was uneasy at the assumption in favour of a
'public utility type of concern.' He observed
that agencies of this type placed a burden of
supervision on ministers and might find it dif-
ficult to recruit staff of the right calibre at a
time when they were in short supply. He urged
consideration of the private sector organizations
such as the insurance companies, building soci-
eties, the Co-operative Wholesale Movement
and major developers. 'If any such organisa-
tions can supply the finance, enterprise and
170 THE BRITISH GARDEN CITY: METAMORPHOSIS
Figure 9.1. Laurence Cadbury, Chairman of Cadbury
Brothers and member of the Reith Committee on New
Towns. His presence signalled a continuing family
connection with the garden city movement (see for ex-
ample figures 2.6, 10.1 and 10.2). He wanted to see
private developers given a bigger role in the New Towns.
management they should not be excluded from
working as the Ministry's Agents' (PRO: HLG/
84/8a). The Committee, which had originally
limited its consultation on the choice of agency
to the eight local authority associations, the
London County Council, and the City Cor-
poration, now invited the views of the associa-
tions of the building and contracting industries
and related financial institutions, and some in-
dividual developers. Though the associations
were cautious about involvement in new town
development, the major developers who sub-
mitted verbal and oral evidence were almost
unanimously enthusiastic.
Frank Taylor and T. P. Bennett of Taylor
Woodrow Ltd. told the Ministry that their
company had paid up capital of £250,000, large
Figure 9.2. Frank Taylor, founder of Taylor Woodrow.
He made his name and fortune as a young speculative
developer of housing in the 1930s. By the 1940s he was
'ready to take a risk and build a town'.
reserves, and assets worth £300,000 and would
be able to complete the development of a town
of 50-70,000 population in five years. Taylor
Woodrow envisaged two-thirds ofthe buildings
would be sold to the occupants, on 99-year
leases. The firm would provide non-economic
buildings, such as public halls and community
centres, out of its profits on the land develop-
ment. Taylor Woodrow Ltd. 'were ready to take
a risk and build a town as soon as they could
get a site, and they thought they should receive
every encouragement.' The choice of site was
regarded as a matter for the Ministry but the
firm would plan the town itself. They anticip-
ated that government would use a private bill
procedure to assemble a 1500-2000 acre site
and emphasized the advantage of giving the
firm a single contract for the job. Mr Bennett
 PRIVATE DEVELOPERS AND POSTWAR NEW TOWNS POLICY
Figure 9.3. Thomas Bennett was Frank Taylor's close
associate in Taylor Woodrow's town building ambitions.
He was to chair an Executive Committee of 'men of
high standing and aesthetic sense' to oversee planning.
would chair an Executive Committee of 'men
of high standing and aesthetic sense who would
be concerned with good planning on ideal lines
in relation to economics.' Taylor Woodrow
identified three benefits of using private enter-
prise to build the new towns: practicality, sim-
plicity of procedure, and speed. On the first,
the company underlined that private enterprise
would tend to make sure that all the theoreti-
cal and idealistic proposals which may be
brought forward are immediately sifted, sub-
jected to a utility of business view, and thus
secure the best combination of idealism and
utility' (PRO: HLG/8417, 13a). Having had
evidence from Taylor Woodrow, the Commit-
tee decided to meet representatives of two other
companies, Henry Boot and Son Ltd, another
developer with wide experience of estate de-
velopment around London in the 1930s, and
John Laing & Son Ltd.
171
Henry Boot echoed Frank Taylor's optimism
about the potential contribution of the private
sector. His proposal was that the firm should
develop the new town through a subsidiary
Authorized Association, operating on a limited-
dividend basis under the 1932 Town and Coun-
try Planning Act. He believed that an adequate
profit would be made on site development and
the building of factories, shops and hotels 'even
in an ideal new town extravagantly provided
with amenities' (PRO: HLG/84/8c). John Laing
& Son Ltd were also of the view that a single
firm given a free hand was the most expeditious
way of getting a new town built. However, in
their meeting at the Ministry the company's
representatives expressed reservations at the
monopoly position of a private new town de-
veloper; a joint venture company or Authorized
Association, they suggested 'would be of con-
siderable status and above suspicion' (PRO:
HLG/84/8d). This luke-warm endorsement
seems to have displeased the chairman, John
Laing, who soon afterwards wrote personally
to Lord Reith that if the government opted for
private enterprise new towns
we wish to say that it would be a pleasure to us to
undertake the development of such a town and that
such an enterprise would be after our own heart
(PRO: HLG/84I13b).
Lord Reith also received unsolicited evidence
from N. E. Wates of Wates Ltd who wrote to
indicate that his company, too, were willing to
take on a contract for a new town. Like Frank
Taylor, he envisaged that the lead developer
would sell building land on a leasehold basis,
subject to overall control of materials and
design. He showed his foresight in emphasiz-
ing to Lord Reith the advantage of extending
owner-occupation beyond proprietors, foremen
and 'key man types': 'I think it would be desir-
able generally if the workers also had the op-
portunity for ownership' (PRO: HLG/84/13c).
Both Wates and Laing offered to meet Lord
Reith to discuss their ideas further, but he
172 THE BRITISH GARDEN CITY: METAMORPHOSIS
Figure 9.4. John Laing was head of another major
construction company that emerged out of the 1930s
building boom. Like Frank Taylor, he was eager to be
involved in a private new town venture in the post-war
period.
seems not to have responded. The unexpected
interest of private builders in the proposed new
towns programme struck no echo with the New
Towns Committee, which was more taken by
the cautious opinions of Richard Costain who
appeared on behalf of the National Federation
of Building Trades Employers to state, from
his prewar experience as a developer of large
dormitory towns of up to 10,000 houses, that
he thought a new town for overspill population
an unsuitable enterprise for a private building
firm (PRO: HLG/84/8e).
The financial institutions, however, shared the
enthusiasm of Wates, Laing, Taylor Woodrow
and Henry Boot at the prospect of participation
in a programme of private sector new towns,
Figure 9.5. Norman Wates, one of four brothers who
greatly expanded their Croydon-based building business
in the 1930s. He shared the enthusiasm of the other
main volume private house-builders for private new
towns, foreseeing the rapid widening of working-class
owner occupation in the post-war years.
under broad government direction and guaran-
tees. The Prudential indicated that institutional
investors could be willing to provide 3lf2 per cent
financing to a commercial new town developer,
provided the company had a free hand to plan
the town and set rents and was led by directors
and management 'with considerable experience
in the property and financial worlds' (PRO:
HLG/84/3). A. R. Rogers, Chairman of the
British Insurance Association, told Lord Reith
that his members would be 'only too anxious'
to put funds into a successful new towns pro-
gramme, and underlined the considerable vol-
ume of investment available (PRO: HLG/84/
4). As already noted the Co-operative (Perma-
nent) was already setting the pace amongst
the building societies with its own schemes for
 PRIVATE DEVELOPERS AND NEW TOWN BUILDING
new towns, to which it added a proposal for
Meopham in Kent while the committee was
deliberating.
The Interim Report on Choice ofAgency was
submitted early in the spring of 1945. The
committee expressed a strong preference for
the public corporation, appointed and funded
by government. Of the readiness of individual
building firms to take on the task of new town
development, they commented:
Whilst it is desirable to provide every opportunity
for private development, we have come to the con-
clusion that in an undertaking of so far-reaching and
special a character as the creation of a new town,
ordinary commercial enterprise would be inappro-
priate. Apart from the risks involved, both in matters
of finance and in execution, such a policy would of
necessity result in the creation of a private monopoly.
And even to the promoters themselves, when it came
to the point, we believe that the controls which the
public interest would demand would render such a
project unattractive (PP, 1946, p. 10).
The Committee did not close the door on pri-
vate enterprise, however. It recommended that
the legislation should allow for a variety of
agencies, including Authorized Associations, 'if
only to direct the energy and experience of
building and estate-developing firms into town
building.'
The Minister, Lewis Silkin, announced in
March 1946 that he intended to reject this as-
pect of the Reith Committee's recommenda-
tions (Cullingworth, 1979, p. 17). The New
Towns Bill made provision for one type of
agency only - the government-sponsored cor-
poration, empowered
to acquire, hold, manage, and dispose of land and
other property, to carry out building and other op-
erations, to provide water, electricity, gas, sewerage
and other services, to carry out any business or
undertaking on or for the purpose of the new town,
and generally to do anything necessary or expedient
for the purposes of the new town or for purposes
incidental thereto.
At the Minister's insistence, a first draft of the
bill with provision for new town development
173
by limited liability companies was redrafted
explicitly to exclude ordinary commercial enter-
prise and place as much discretion and control
in his hands as possible (Cullingworth, 1979,
p. 24). Silkin's personal aversion to the prin-
ciple of new town development by private
enterprise was to be underlined by his much-
criticized nationalization in 1948 of the most
successful extant example - Welwyn Garden
City Ltd (de Soissons, 1988, pp. 110-119).
PRIVATE DEVELOPERS AND NEW TOWN
BUILDING
The Ministry did envisage a subsidiary role for
the property industry within the state's new
towns. Their financial viability rested on an
assumption that private enterprise would build
half the middle-class houses, 'a large part' of
the shops, offices and factories, and all the
cinemas, banks and hotels (Cullingworth, 1979,
pp. 22, 46). This proved to be wishful think-
ing. Having been excluded by statute from the
planning and direction of the towns, and by
ministerial prerogative from membership of the
directing development corporations, private
developers were to play little part in the early
years of the programme. Almost the entire
burden of building as well as land development
fell on the corporations, which is to say, on the
Exchequer.
As development of the first generation new
towns gathered momentum, stimulated after
1951 by Harold Macmillan's housing drive, the
Treasury found growing cause for concern at
the capital outlay, and the significantly higher
unit cost of public sector housing. R. A. Butler
as Chancellor of the Exchequer prepared a
memorandum in May 1953 entitled 'Can We
Afford the New Towns?' The programme re-
quired urgent review - 'in particular we must
try to find sources of capital finance other than
the consolidated fund, and here I have particu-
larly in mind the private developer who may
have a substantial role to play in the future
174 THE BRITISH GARDEN CITY: METAMORPHOSIS
as he has done in the past.' To ensure greater
private sector participation Butler wanted the
development corporations to be brought under
direct ministerial control. This would have re-
quired legislation, which Harold Macmillan
resisted for fear of spoiling the momentum of
the housing programme. However, he promised
to try and encourage private developers to build
in the new towns, and the development cor-
porations to sell stock for owner-occupation
(Cullingworth, 1979, pp. 122-128).
Whilst Macmillan succeeded in saving the
new towns programme, his attempt to open it
up to greater private sector participation met
with mixed and complicated results. Developers
scented the opportunity offered by town centres
and (to a lesser extent) industrial estates and
their active interest was reciprocated by some,
though not aU, development corporations. With-
in central government, the New Towns Division
within the Ministry of Housing and Local Gov-
ernment (MHLG) tried to promote the in-
volvement of private capital in town centre
development, only to run into opposition from
an unexpected quarter - the Treasury. Recent
research by Carol Heim shows that Treasury
officials began around 1954 to recognize the
singular potential for development gain in the
new town centres. Having carried all the initial
risks and outlays of towns development, they
saw no sense in relinquishing the most valuable
central sites to private developers. So we find
the Treasury, paradoxically, exempting the new
towns from public sector borrowing restrictions
imposed in 1955, and encouraging the develop-
ment corporations to tackle town centre de-
velopment themselves even when there were
private companies such as Ravenseft able and
willing to do it for them (Heim, 1990).
Attempts to boost private participation fared
less well in the housing front. The residential
land allocated for private development was
hedged around by paternalistic restrictions
based on the Reith philosophy (see Nicholson,
1961). To achieve 'self-containment', the
corporations imposed conditions preventing the
sale of units to people not working in the town
(Schaffer, 1970, pp. 115-116). To achieve social
mix, houses for sale to executives were (in the
words of Macmillan's successor Henry Brooke)
'dribbled along in narrow bands where they will
be pressed in on all sides by the houses of these
men's employees' (Cullingworth, 1979, p. 420).
The design and landscaping of private schemes
were closely supervised by development cor-
porations' architects to protect the sense of total
environmental design which gave the early
towns their unique and delightful character
(Esher, 1981, p. 46). Private developers found
this market difficult and in the relaxation of
controls of the 1950s found plentiful develop-
ment opportunities elsewhere (Powell, 1980,
pp. 159-160). They built little of the housing in
the Mark I new towns. The development cor-
porations had either to build for sale themselves
or offer large building plots for individually
commissioned managerial housing, and both
expedients had a remarkably high failure rate. 6
New town housing in the first two decades
was almost as monolithic in its tenure and
standards as the massive council estates of the
interwar years. PeterIee, for example, had only
six privately-built houses in 1960, for a popula-
tion of 11,000 (Nicholson, 1961, p. 46).
Besides militating against the Reithian ob-
jective of achieving balanced communities of
all social classes, the exclusion of private de-
velopment and ownership had serious implica-
tions for the financing of new town growth. The
issue was brought to a head in 1966-67 by a
combination of public expenditure controls and
the publication of research by Barry Culling-
worth and Valerie Karn which documented
the disproportionately low level of owner-
occupation amongst new town residents and the
high latent demand for it (Cullingworth and
Karn, 1968; Aldridge, 1979, p. 94). The Labour
government directed in August 1967 that the
development corporations should henceforth
restrict their role to housing the less affluent
 PRIVATE DEVELOPERS AND NEW TOWN BUILDING
wage earners on up to £25 a week (MHLG,
1967). At least half the new housing should
be for sale and should mostly be built by pri-
vate enterprise. Another circular to the new
town development corporations in December
1968 introduced further· measures to encour-
age private building. The government allowed
sites to be sold without recouping the land
development costs - a hidden subsidy. It indic-
ated that private developers should not be sub-
jected to public sector standards for space and
heating or 'unduly restricted' by detailed layout
and design requirements (MHLG, 1968). Most
new town authorities seem by now to have
conceded to developers' preferences for large,
well-favoured sites for owner-occupied hous-
ing, though the 'segregation' of the better-off
was a source of regret in the new towns move-
ment and was criticized by academic com-
mentators: 'social idealism,' in Ray Thomas's
words, had 'succumbed to the influences of
the market place' (1969, p. 416; and see Heraud,
1968; Schaffer, 1970, p. 184). Some corpora-
tions continued to develop the housing them-
selves rather than release land to speculative
builders, in order to retain full control over
design and allocation. The cautious approach
of building societies towards lending in the
unfamiliar new town environment also en-
couraged corporations to devise their own
mortgage schemes for local owner-occupiers
(Aldridge, 1979, p. 97).
So it was that the private sector's share of
housing completions in the English new towns
remained less than one in ten at the turn of the
1970s, and there were reports of houses that
had been built for sale standing empty. Even
in Bracknell, the town most favoured by its
location on the London-Reading growth axis,
the private sector contributed only just over
a quarter of completions in 1967-73 (Ogilvy,
1975, p. 12). Owner-occupation remained well
below average in all new towns. Further meas-
ures introduced by the next (Conservative)
government included discounts of up to 20 per
175
cent of market price to encourage tenants to
buy their homes - the first such inducements;
in 1971 the development corporations were
urged to dispose of land on a freehold basis,
without restrictions as to purchasers, layout,
dwelling types or architectural treatment; they
were forbidden to build for sale themselves,
except where the market was unable to supply
dwellings of a specific type (MHLG, 1971).
At long last, the pendulum began to swing.
By the mid-1970s the new towns had matured
into an established feature of settlement system.
They were economically prosperous with a
strong pent-up demand for blue-collar owner-
occupation. Serviced land was being made
available, often at publicly subsidized prices,
on a scale to attract the volume builder. The
private developers who had been excluded from
the new towns programme by the crucial de-
cisions of 1945-46, began eventually to enter it
on a substantial scale. Their share of housing
completions grew steadily during the 1970s, and
was complemented by a growing sale of cor-
poration stocks to tenants, a forerunner of the
'sale of the century' of urban council housing
under Mrs Thatcher. By 1980, half of all new
dwellings completed in the British new towns
were built speculatively for sale, climbing to
90-95 per cent from the mid-decade.
A national decision to terminate the new
towns programme had already been taken
before the Conservatives returned to power
in 1979. Public investment in the new towns
continued during the 1980s only to service the
remaining publicly-owned building land for sale
to private developers. From 1982 onwards gov-
ernment pursued a vigorous policy of privat-
ization of new town assets. The mechanism
for this had been created in 1962 - a central
Commission for the New Towns (CNT), set up
to take over the land and property of the de-
velopment corporations once they had com-
pleted their development tasks and were ready
to make the transition to normal local govern-
ment. After twenty years during which it had
176 THE BRITISH GARDEN CITY: METAMORPHOSIS
discreetly managed its large estates and rein-
vested the increment in the completion of the
new towns programme, the Commission for the
New Towns was transformed into an aggressive
privatization agency, selling almost all revenue-
earning assets on the open market except for
small numbers of shop, factory and public house
leases made over to local authorities to balance
(in principle) their inheritance of loss-making
properties such as rental housing, parks, land-
scaping and community premises (PP, 1986-7a
& b). New town residents in Stevenage at-
tempted to follow the Letchworth precedent
and establish - by private bill - a local succes-
sor body to hold remunerative property in trust
for the benefit of the community. The govern-
ment was adamant. All proceeds should go to
reduce the national debt out of which the
original developments had been financed. New
town shopping centres and industrial estates
proved to be highly attractive investments,
finding a ready market amongst institutional
investors and conglomerates. By the end of the
decade the programme of disposals had moved
on to the smaller properties left in CNT owner-
ship, such as leisure centres, sports facilities,
and open land. The unique ownership pattern
of the British new towns had all but disap-
peared, and in years to come, as the purchasers
of the sold-off sites redevelop or refurbish them
on standard commercial lines, their distinctive
physical appearance will begin to change too.
FROM NEW TOWNS TO 'NEW
SETTLEMENTS'
The recapture of the garden city tradition by
private enterprise has gone yet a stage further.
In 1983, as the terminal sale of public new town
assets got under way, ten of the largest housing-
building companies, jointly responsible for 30
per cent of the country's total housing output,
formed a company - Consortium Developments
Ltd (CDL) - specifically in order to develop a
new generation of entirely private green-field
settlements.? They were advised by the con-
sultants Conran Roche, themselves a privatized
team of former planners and architects from
the Milton Keynes Development Corporation.
Fred Lloyd Roche, former architect of Milton
Keynes, set out the case for 'New Communities
for a New Generation' in Town lInd Country
Planning, the house journal of the TCP A. The
towns would occupy up to 1000 acres, contain
at least 5000 houses and be developed over
ten years. The consortium would finance the
development entirely, paying for the infra-
structure out of the enhanced land values. No
public sector subsidy would be required except
for social housing, to be financed by local or
central government. A 'balanced community'
would be achieved by mixing, not segregating,
housing for rent and for sale. Roche promised
a high design standard, arguing that the poor
general standard of design in speculative
building was due to high land prices.
Consortium Developments Ltd, by working on a
relatively large scale, can negotiate a keen price that
allows investment in a quality product. High quality
infrastructure in the paving and road surfaces, high
quality landscaping, sensitive selection of street fur-
niture, sensitive design of public spaces, variety in
both form and tenure of housing provision and a
wide range of supporting facilities. This is the
cornerstone of the proposal. (Roche, 1986)
In 1985 CDL submitted a planning applica-
tion for Tillingham Hall, a new town of 15,000
population on a 761-acre site in the London
Green Belt. It was rejected on appeal early
in 1987, as were two further applications for
small new towns in the north east of Hamp-
shire ('Foxley Wood') and in South Oxford-
shire, under the lee of the Chiltem Hills ('Stone
Bassett').
Their fourth scheme for a settlement of 7500
population near Cambridge, called 'Westmere',
was surprisingly refused by the Environment
Secretary in December 1991 on road access
grounds, a matter of detail rather than principle.
This refusal was despite its being the preferred
 FROM NEW TOWNS TO 'NEW SETTLEMENTS' 177

Figure 9.6. Consortium Devel-

opments Ltd produced four major
proposals for new country towns
during the six years of its exist-
ence. The last was for a settle-
ment of some 7500 at Westmere
in Cambridgeshire, planned by
Conran Roche Planning.

Figure 9.7. Proposals for the town centre and green at Westmere. The garden city lineage of the proposal is clear
in this artist's impression, though none of Consortium Development's proposals has been realized.
178 THE BRITISH GARDEN CITY: METAMORPHOSIS
option in the official planning inspector's re-
port. Given these circumstances, it may well
ultimately go ahead with amendments, but the
position is still unclear at the time of writing at
the end of 1991.
By this stage the main Consortium Develop-
ments organization had been mothballed, after
six years of making ambitious but unproduc-
tive planning applications and bearing the pro-
digious costs involved in fighting unsuccessful
planning inquiries. Although its Westmere sub-
sidiary continues and the main organization
may be re-activated, the overall experience of
Consortium Developments has clearly fallen
well short of the hopes of its originators. It has
demonstrated that even the presence of the
most radical free enterprise British government
of recent times is no guarantor of profitable
large scale private developments on green field
sites.
But although Consortium Developments has
been by far the boldest attempt to open up
entirely new settlements for private develop-
ment, there were precedents. Back in 1956 a
subsidiary company of Richard Costain Ltd
attempted to develop a town of 25,000 popu-
lation - designed by Sir Frederick Gibberd
and directed by W. E. Adams, late General
Manager of Harlow - on the Isle of Grain in
Kent. The planning application was summarily
rejected by the Minister on appeal (Culling-
worth, 1979, pp. 162-163). Ten years later
Span Developments Ltd, an idealistic firm of
architect-developers, did win permission on
appeal to build a new country village (6000
population on over 400 acres) in the London
Green Belt at New Ash Green in Kent. The
village made a brave attempt to break free of
the cliches of the suburban housing scheme.
Laid out in woodland, with generous com-
munal landscaping, it is hardly recognizable as
a settlement from the other side of the valley.
The houses, designed by Eric Lyons, have a
Scandinavian simplicity. The promoters aimed
'to attract people from all ages and all walks of
life and enable them to identify with the place,
participate in the activities within it, form local
ties, and live there permanently - or at least
for a long time' (Edwards, 1981, p. 179). But
like all garden city schemes its financing was
precarious: the untimely credit squeeze of 1967
pushed Span into bankruptcy. New Ash Green
was bought in 1969 by Bovis Homes who com-
pleted only the housing, omitting both the
planned provision of local employment and the
modest allocation of 135 rental housing units.
Leslie Bilsby's verdict was that 'it is not pos-
sible to build good housing and make money'
(Edwards, 1981, p. 180).8
Just a few other precedents exist of private
villages on green-field sites (Potter, 1986). The
design and layout of all these schemes has stuck
closely to the standard formula favoured by the
volume builders, based on discrete clusters of
houses along loops or culs-de-sac, to maximize
marketability and minimize capital locked up
in the ground (see Ball, 1983, chapter 3). Per-
haps the best example is Martlesham Heath
(3500 population), developed by the Bradford
Property Trust on the 600-acre site of an old
aerodrome in Suffolk. The land had come to
the Trust as a windfall - by reversion of the
lease from the Air Ministry - and had clear
development potential because of its location
on the edge of Ipswich and nearby the expand-
ing container port of Felixstowe. The owners
and their advisers, Bidwells of Cambridge,
declared at the outset that their aim was to
build 'a village', not 'a housing estate', Le. a
place with:
groups of houses rather than rows of identical
buildings
a village store
shops and pub overlooking a green
schools
open space
variety
a community pride in itself. (Jackson, 1985)
Martlesham Heath received planning per-
mission in 1973 and was completed in 1990.
 FROM NEW TOWNS TO 'NEW SETTLEMENTS'
Described in its publicity brochure as 'an inter-
nationally admired model of town planning'
comparable to the public new towns of the
1950s and 1960s, the master plan by Clifford
Culpin provides for housing to be developed in
twelve hamlets strung along a looping distribu-
tor road. There is a village centre, built around
a square with shops and a pub. The messes,
barrack blocks and hangars of the aerodrome
have been transformed into a thriving light
industrial estate, and the premises of two ma-
jor employers - the British Telecom Research
Centre, and the Suffolk County Police Head-
quarters - stand on adjacent land. Since 1988
the county and district planning authorities have
given Martlesham the accolade of designating
it a village and approving policies that should
protect in perpetuity the landscaped spaces
between the hamlets (Suffolk Coastal District
Council, 1989). Gillian Darley has described
Martlesham Heath as 'a tasteful prosperous
one-off enclave but a place of distinctive and
179
Figure 9.8. The town centre,
Martlesham Heath, Suffolk.
Completed in 1990 and housing
a population of some 3500,
Martlesham Heath was developed
with a concern for community
development that set it apart
from most examples of private
housing development.
original character' (Darley, 1979). The devel-
opers have achieved all their original objectives
except that of social variety, for although some
of the stock has been developed for renting,
none of it is affordable to the manual worker.
The only new settlements to have achieved a
town-sized scale and social variety are products
of public-private partnership, a local authority
assembling land and carrying the principal in-
frastructure burden, a developer putting up the
buildings. Cramlington, the largest new town
not to owe its existence to the New Towns Act
of 1946, is the fruit of collaboration between
Northumberland County Council, the district
council of Seaton Valley (Blyth Valley since
1975) and the local developer William Leech
Ltd, and today houses more than 60,000 popu-
lation on more than 6000 acres (Byrne, 1989,
pp. 54-59). Essex County Council assembled a
site of almost 1300 acres around the village of
South Woodham Ferrers and since 1975 has
sold off blocks to thirty developers and three
180 THE BRITISH GARDEN CITY: METAMORPHOSIS
housing associations to build up a community
of 17,500 with its own employment base and
(in lieu of a high street) a large ASDA super-
store (Potter, 1986).
PLANNING POLICIES AND NEW
SETILEMENTS
Though precedents exist, it is true as a general
rule that the planning system in postwar years
has prevented large-scale development on free-
standing green-field sites, and canalized private
development into peripheral expansion of exist-
ing towns and settlements. Some of these new
suburbs have been very large in scale indeed,
particularly in the prosperous parts of the coun-
try where demand has run strongest. Reading
in Berkshire is a well-documented case, doub-
ling its built-up area in the 1960s and 1970s
with high-density suburbs dismally lacking in
services and amenities (Hall, 1973, pp. 465-477;
1989, pp. 24-26). During the 19805, local po-
litical opinion became increasingly hostile to
such allocations of land for suburban expan-
sion. The turnover of large-scale development
on which the volume housebuilders depended
could, to an increasing extent, only be met from
windfall sites such as former public utility or
hospital land, or old industrial and rnineralland.
Mrs Thatcher's Environment Secretaries were
continually lobbied for more greenfield acre-
age to be released for building. Developers
could point to the widening burden of land
costs upon house prices, the possible inflation-
ary consequences and bottleneck effects of an
over-tight land supply. The expectation that a
strongly market-oriented Conservative govern-
ment would eventually relax its stance and
deregulate planning restraints encouraged them
to invest widely in options (conditional con-
tracts) on favourably located farmland, and the
larger volume builders also have extensive land
portfolios of their own (Ball, 1983; Rydin, 1986).
However, the Thatcher governments proved
exceedingly cautious in deregulating town and
country planning, by contrast with their root
and branch radicalism with other parts of the
postwar welfare consensus. Political support for
rural protection is strong in Britain, nowhere
more so than in the Conservative heartland of
south-east England. It is a fact that the restraint
policies of local councils have operated quite
as strictly in the 1980s as in previous decades
and for the most part have been upheld by
central government.
Though Consortium Developments have yet
to build anything they did create the intended
policy opening for private sector new town
building. The decision letter rejecting their first,
Tillingham Hall, scheme included the phrase,
'the Secretary of State considers that well-
conceived schemes of this kind in appropriate
locations may have a part to play in meeting
the demand for new housing' The Department
of the Environment (DOE) elaborated its posi-
tion in a policy statement issued early in 1988:
In a few cases it may be practicable to consider
making provision for new housing in the form of
new settlements. These might range in scale from
moderate sized townships to small villages. Well-
conceived schemes of this kind may have a part to
play in meeting the demand for new housing, espe-
cially where the development provides for meeting
all or most of the costs of local infrastructure needed
to service the site and to meet the need for commu-
nity facilities generated by the new development.
(DOE, 1988b)
Ministerial support for small new rural settle-
ments of 200-1000 dwellings was also given in
the DOE's 1988 discussion paper Housing in
Rural Areas: Village Housing and New Villages.
Developers welcomed the shift in policy, though
they were wary that government blessing for
smaller schemes might weaken the principle of
larger (Adams, 1988).
By the slow process of trickle-down typical
of the British planning system, the concept is
now beginning to appear in local authority
development plans. Several county councils
have indicated acceptance of the principle of
 CONCLUSIONS
private new settlements (Amos, 1990). The idea
was seized most energetically in Cambridge-
shire, where rapid population and employment
growth coupled with rigid planning prohibition
of growth around Cambridge have produced
severe housing shortages. The revised county
structure plan of 1988 proposed that demand
for 18,000 houses could best be met by a pair
of new towns located somewhere in two speci-
fied 'areas of search' to the north of the city
(Cambridgeshire County Council, 1989). Al-
ready planning applications for fifteen schemes
had been submitted by 1991, and an indication
of the level of interest to be anticipated else-
where in Britain once the precedent of an urban
development on open farmland has been es-
tablished (Amos, 1991; New Settlements Re-
search Group, 1990-).9
CONCLUSIONS
Private new town developers have invoked the
garden city tradition, and have received a
qualified blessing from the TCPA, the moral
guardian of that tradition (Hall, 1989). Is it
deserved? In terms of the three original ele-
ments of the garden city idea, the new settle-
ments qualify clearly enough in terms of their
decentralized location. Private developers are
not interested today, as they were before the
war, in using the garden city as a marketing
device for ordinary edge-of-town suburbs. A
physically-discrete location is crucial for the
viability of these new settlements in two senses.
Politically, it opens up farmland sites which are
out of the way of existing settlements and so
may be less harassed by amenity groups on
the path to planning consent. Economically, it
offers the potential for spectacularly large land
profits. Average arable agricultural use values
in lowland Britain are a little over £5000 per
hectare. Even in the depressed property market
of late 1991, bulk land for sale with residential
planning permission commands upwards of
£500,000 per hectare and at the peak of the
181
late 1980s boom was worth more than twice
this figure (Valuation Office, 1991). The fur-
ther removed from existing urban centres, the
greater the prospective betterment to be won
by a planning consent. Of course, the site must
be well linked to the communication network;
but because of planning controls, hundreds of
rural locations have acquired a high potential
accessibility from new road building in the past
thirty years which has never been reflected in
building activity.
The second intrinsic element of the garden
city is its gardened, green aspect and the design
quality of its building stock. All the private
sector settlements so far proposed include land-
scaping that is lavish when compared with the
urban-edge schemes of the same developers.
The housing itself is not innovative. The volume
builders who established Consortium Develop-
ments work with a limited range of stock types
and are adept at ringing the changes on facing
materials and layout to create 'kerb appeal'.
Most local authority engineers require devel-
opers to follow rigid highway standards, with
broad grass verges and wide visibility splays at
junctions, which guarantee a suburban rather
than urban character. Precedents such as South
Woodham Ferrers in Essex tend to confirm one
design consultant's bleak assessment that 'the
current proposals will lead to nothing more than
out of town shopping centres surrounded by
suburbia' (Huntingford, 1988).
For commercial developers, the most taxing
of the three criteria of the true garden city
identified at the top of this chapter is the third
- that is to say, their claim to constitute a
rounded community. Their planning applica-
tions lay emphasis on a high level of community
provision. Developers are proposing to build
and donate a full range of community facilities,
as in the US Levittowns of the 1950s and 1960s
(Christensen, 1986, chapter 6). Unlike the
Levittowns, there is also talk of some provision
of rental housing for those unable to afford
owner-occupation, though the economics of this
182 THE BRITISH GARDEN CITY: METAMORPHOSIS
remain questionable, since a developer will have
to give away serviced land for free to achieve
a 'social' rent of £40 per week in newly-built
housing. The practical likelihood is that any
privately built settlements will be socially ho-
mogeneous, this segregationist aspect being
indeed a selling point in the marketing of simi-
lar schemes to prospective house-buyers in the
United States, even to the point of a barbed
wire ring-fence with a permanent private guard
(Tomioka, 1984, pp. 166-167).
No explicit provision is made in today's com-
mercial new towns for capturing increments of
land value for the community. However, it
could be argued that a high level of owner-
occupation is a contemporary method of achiev-
ing the same end. In place of the original
leasehold conception of garden city citizenship,
the present new town developers are following
the path pioneered by the City Housing Cor-
poration at Radburn in 1928 (Christensen, 1986,
p. 59) and Span at New Ash Green in 1967
(Edwards, 1981, p. 180) - selling freeholds
with private covenants and trusts to protect the
planting and ensure the upkeep of communal
grounds. All of Consortium Development's
schemes have included a provision to set up
local trusts or associations to run the towns'
amenities. The deal would be formalized as
a 'planning gain' through a legal agreement
between local authorities and developers. In
the words of the application for Stone Bassett:
The extensive and comprehensive nature of the pro-
posals by CDL in effect represents a new form of
relationship, or social contract, between the devel-
opment industry, whose role is traditionally one of
building houses, offices shops etc; and the local au-
thorities whose role has traditionally been one of
servicing the development. The new form of social
contract envisages consultation and cooperation
between the private sector, public sector and public
representatives in the creation of a new community
and represents a qualitative improvement in the tra-
ditional approach to providing for the needs of the
community. (Consortium Developments Ltd (n.d.)
Stone Bassett: Development Proposal for a New
Country Town §§ 4.13-14).
It is on the strength of this new sociaL contract
that the speculative developer now claims a
place at the heart of the garden city tradition.
History suggests that this place may be pre-
carious. The new town developer has to sell
housing at prices competitive with those of infill
and edge-of-town sites, while carrying sub-
stantial extra costs of urban infrastructure, good
design and social provision. The enormous ini-
tial capital requirements of town layout and
the cyclical character of the property market
combine, in Clarence Stein's words (and this
was the voice of experience), to leave unaided
private enterprise 'small chance of more than
temporary success' (Stein, 1951, p. 68). When
questioned by a Parliamentary committee on
the cost to the public sector of new villages,
Tom Baron affirmed that Consortium Devel-
opments would meet the cost of aLL net infra-
structure extensions - roads, sewers, pumping
stations, sewage treatment, gas, water, elec-
tricity - and provide free serviced sites and a
building subsidy for local community facilities
(PP, 1983-84, q 929).
The special costs of new urban development
are financed out of enhanced land values. The
initial expectation of British developers in the
early 19808 was that they would be granted
planning permission on protected farmland
of low current value. Tom Baron's economics
depended, in effect, on bucking the planning
system. That is, of course, a game that can only
be played once or twice for, as soon as the
precedent has been set for non-conforming
development, land prices will rise and margins
narrow; already in the late 19808, huge volumes
of speculative money were being punted on
farmland options and outright purchases on any
sites with development potential throughout
south-east of England. But in the event, gov-
ernment decided that the game would not be
played at all. It chose to hold the line that
 NOTES
private developers may only obtain planning
permission for new settlements envisaged in
local authority plans. The government's stance
has removed a threat to the stability of the
planning system but it has also jeopardized the
viability of private new towns, hinging as they
do on land development gains. Unlike the de-
velopers of US 'master plan communities', Brit-
ish property companies cannot secure the cheap
land they need by travelling outwards from the
metropolitan fringe to buy a 15,OOO-acre ranch.
It seems they must depend on sites or areas
targetted by the planning system, with the
corollary of raised site values, lowered de-
velopment profits, and diminished scope for
those special features that distinguish building
in the garden city tradition from run-of-the-
mill suburbia.
The implication is that if the private sector is
to make a sustained contribution to garden city
building in late-twentieth-century Britain, it
will need the help of government. When Ralph
Neville, chairman of the First Garden City
Company Ltd, was interviewed by a parlia-
mentary committee in 1904 he took a more
sober view of the economics of the enterprise
than did Tom Baron in an adjacent committee
room sixty years later:
You could not go on indefinitely with this matter by
private enterprise, it would be impossible; first of
all, because you would not get the sites at a reason-
able price again. We have had enormous difficulties
ourselves ... but the thing started, the idea taking
on, the price would be prohibitive. (PP, 1904, q 4775)
Neville hoped for a partnership with govern-
ment to overcome the problem of land assembly
- the model envisaged, as we have seen, by Sir
Frank Taylor when interviewed by the Reith
Committee, and put into effect by central de-
velopment corporations in the later new towns
and by county councils at Cramlington and
South Woodham Ferrers. Of the various meta-
morphic combinations of public and private
initiative to be found in the history of the British
183
garden city movement, partnership holds the
most promise for the post-Thatcher years.
NOTES
1. This could be illustrated by the cases of Chorlton-
ville to the south-west of Manchester, described
by Gaskell and Harrison (Sutcliffe, 1981, pp. 35;
133-134); or of Somerdale near Bristol (Skilleter,
1989). Weiss (1987) tells the full story of high
quality residential developments in the United
States and their central role in the evolution of
public urban planning. See also Stack (1989).
2. 1915 was also a year of disillusionment for many
working-class tenants in Letchworth: They staged
a rent strike and sought Ebenezer Howard's sup-
port. He declined it on the grounds that it would
be incompatible with his position as a company
director engaged in building and letting cottages
and houses (Payne, 1982, p. 34).
3. Today, the main threat to the integrity of the
Letchworth estate comes from the right of lease-
holders to buyout the freehold of their proper-
ties under the Leasehold Reform Act of 1967:
some 43 per cent had done by 1991. Once en-
franchised the owner pays no ground rent to the
community, though under a High Court ruling of
1972, Letchworth Garden City Corporation re-
tains special (private) powers of management over
appearances, amenity and building development,
as do the other major leasehold land-owners
such as Dulwich College, Bournville Village Trust,
and the Calthorpe Estate. See McAuslan (1975,
pp. 335-349).
4. Beevers (1988, p. 162) cites Howard's secret letter
of April 30th 1919 to Lord Salisbury: 'I remember
the remark you made about the great value of
private enterprise, and that in this connection you
referred with much appreciation to the Garden
City movement in its relation to Housing. In that
remark I was one of the few present who agreed
with you. For I believe most fervently that pri-
vate enterprise when it is pervaded by public spirit
can accomplish really marvellous things.'
5. §35 of the Act defines an Authorized Associa-
tion as 'any society, company or body of persons
approved by the Minister whose objects include
the promotion, formation or management of
garden cities and the erection, improvement or
management of buildings for the working classes
and others and which does not trade for profit
184 THE BRITISH GARDEN CITY: METAMORPHOSIS
or whose constitution forbids the issue of any
share or loan capital with interest or dividend
exceeding the rate fixed for the time being by the
Treasury'.
6. For example the cases of Wick Hill (Bracknell)
in Parris and Parris (1981, p. 46); Rickleton, Don-
well and Blackfell (Washington) in Hole, Adder-
son & Pountney (1979, p. 50); or East Kilbride,
where 44 per cent of the population expressed an
interest in owner-occupation but only 2 per cent
of the stock was private - see Smith (1979, p. 74).
7. The consortium's membership changed margin-
ally during the 1980s. In 1991 it was:
Barratt Developments pic
Beazer Homes Ltd
Bovis Homes Ltd
John Laing pic
Y J Lovell (Holdings) pic
McCarthy & Stone pic
Tarmac pic
Wilcon Homes Ltd
Wimpey Homes Holdings Ltd.
8. New Ash Green did, however, demonstrate a vi-
able mechanism for maintaining a high quality of
communal landscaping around speculative hous-
ing. It was no longer possible to employ the
traditional method of long-term leasehold that
had been used in the early garden cities (as in
privately planned schemes of the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries). In earlier developments -
the Priory (Blackheath) and Templemere
(Weybridge) - Span had remained ground land-
lords with open spaces maintained by a residents'
association, an arrangement which ran into op-
position from building societies. Maintenance at
New Ash Green is in the hands of a management
company.
9. Amongst the competing projects was the fourth
new town proposal by Consortium Developments
Ltd: 'Westmere', a settlement of 7500 on 161
hectares.
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 10
THE GARDEN CITY CAMPAIGN:
AN OVERVIEW
Dennis Hardy
At the beginning of the twentieth century two great
new inventions took form before our eyes: the aero-
plane and the Garden City, both harbingers of a
new age: the first gave man wings and the second
promised him a better dwelling-place when he came
down to earth. (Lewis Mumford, in his preface to
the 1946 edition of Ebenezer Howard's Garden
Cities of To-morrow, p. 29.)
With hindsight, writing in the last decade of
the twentieth century, it is difficult to be even-
handed about Mumford's above assessment
of aeroplanes and garden cities. Both were,
indeed, harbingers of a new age, and the tech-
nology was in place to achieve all that was
promised. But there the similarity ends.
While few would dispute the enormous im-
pact, in peace and in war, of the aeroplane, the
garden city offers a different story. In its in-
tended form (as purists would have it) attempts
to put it into practice have been few and far
between, and, for all its technical simplicity as
compared with the aeroplane, it has nowhere
achieved its potential. Ebenezer Howard's
original vision of communities owning their own
land in partnership, in small, detached settle-
ments that could provide those who lived there
with all their needs (including the benefits of a
good environment) remains a pipedream for
most people. Various obstacles have served to
constrain the fulfilment of an idea that was, in
principle, very easy to put into practice. It
might, to modify Mumford's appraisal of the
impact of these two great inventions, be con-
cluded that the aeroplane took off while the
garden city remained grounded.
In fact, tempting though such generalizations
are, an assessment of garden cities in the twen-
tieth century is rather more complex. Although
the Mark 1 version has remained a collector's
item - and even a pilgrimage to the world's
first garden city at Letchworth, Hertfordshire,
will demonstrate important points of difference
with Howard's original blueprint (Adams, 1903)
- the global impact of the concept is consider-
able. As a model for decentralization to small
settlements, characterized by a humane envir-
onment for all to enjoy, it has played a signi-
ficant role in the past and continues to do so.
Indeed, this acknowledgement of a continu-
ing role for garden cities provides a basis for
retracing some of the steps along an earlier
campaign trail. This is not simply a journey
down memory lane, but can more usefully be
taken to shed light on current developments.
Throughout its history the garden city idea has
been actively promoted, and we might reason-
ably ask what form this campaign has taken
and how it has been adapted over the years to
meet new circumstances? How effective was it,
and what lessons can be drawn for a continuing
188 THE GARDEN CITY CAMPAIGN: AN OVERVIEW
quest for what has always been at the heart of
the garden city movement, namely, provision
of a decent, sustainable environment?
A common implication of these questions
is that ideas alone are not enough, but that
to gain widespread acceptance they have to be
actively promoted. In the case of the aeroplane,
promotion was largely in the hands of military
and commercial interests; for garden cities we
will find more altruistic motives. Either way,
the campaign is the fuel that drives the motor.
GETTING ON THE AGENDA
The first and overwhelmingly important response
to the Victorian city was the garden-city concept of
Ebenezer Howard ... (Hall, 1988, p. 8)
With the benefit of hindsight, one may quite
plausibly claim for the garden city a leading
role in the saga of urban reform. At the time
of the conception of the idea in the 1890s, how-
ever, the historical importance of the idea was
certainly not obvious. Howard, the social in-
ventor, made a number of false starts (Beevers,
1988) before the publication in 1898 of his book,
To-morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform.
Even then, for all his own personal conviction
in the significance of his proposals, it might
well have suffered the fate of other social
panaceas before and since, as just another good
idea of no practical importance. The numerous
reviews that the book attracted reflected a
degree of cynicism as well as enthusiasm; critics,
especially socialists, dismissed it as utopian and
a digression from where the main efforts to
change society should be directed. (Beevers,
1988, pp. 57-58)
However, what marks out the garden city
from other ideas of, arguably, equal merit, and
sets it on its twentieth-century course of wide-
spread adoption is the early formation of a pres-
sure group to promote the idea. Eight months
after the publication of To-morrow, in June
1899, a small group of friends and associates met
with Howard in the City office of Alexander
Payne (Treasurer of the Land Nationalisation
Society, and just one of six members of that
organization present at the meeting) to pre-
pare the ground for what was to be initiated a
few days later as the Garden City Association.
The new organization was constituted with just
two aims - to promote the ideas in Howard's
book and to set in motion plans for the build-
ing of the first garden city. Well-intentioned
but with little substance the Garden City As-
sociation was initially more effective on the first
front than the second, its members 'talkers'
rather than 'doers'. A first attempt to raise
capital for a garden city project failed, and it
was only from 1901 when an eminent barrister,
Ralph Neville, became Chairman and appointed
Thomas Adams as full-time Secretary that the
Association moved beyond a worthy but inef-
fective role of discussion group.
Adams very quickly enhanced the standing
of the Association and took the garden city
idea to a wider audience, with the aid of two
well-publicized national conferences, the first
in Bournville in 1901 and the second (attract-
ing more than a thousand delegates) at Port
Sunlight in the following year. Both conferences
were widely reported in the press, new mem-
bers joined the movement, and a leading activist
in years to come later reflected that these events
were 'decisive steps in the propaganda which
led to the creation of Letchworth' (Purdom,
1951, p. 25). Indeed, the quickening of the de-
bate and progress towards the establishment of
the first garden city went hand in hand. Shortly
after the Port Sunlight conference, in July 1902,
the First Garden City Pioneer Company was
formed, and, under Neville's leadership, the
company won the support of industrialists like
Edward and George Cadbury, Alfred Harms-
worth, W. L. Lever and T. W. Idris. The re-
quired capital was raised, and within a few
months, in the Spring of 1903, contracts were
signed for a greenfield site in Hertfordshire. Its
work completed, the Pioneer Company was
 GETTING ON THE AGENDA
duly wound up and superseded by First Garden
City Ltd.
Although the subsequent story of the evolu-
tion of Letchworth is, in one sense, central to
an understanding of the garden city in the
twentieth century (see, especially, Miller, 1989)
in another sense it provides only a partial view
of what became a much wider campaign. The
significance of Letchworth in relation to other
189
Figure 10.1. The directors of
First Garden City Limited. Ralph
Neville (centre) was a key figure
in 'respectablising' the whole
movement. Other directors in-
clude Edward Cadbury (top left),
Howard himself (centre right)
and Howard Pearsall, caricatured
in figure 1.4 (bottom right).
interests was recognized by Thomas Adams as
early as 1903. In an internal paper (Adams,
1903) he questions whether the future of the
Association (and, implicitly, the whole of the
garden city movement) should be bound up
entirely with the fortunes of Letchworth, or
whether it should concentrate on pursuing
broader aims. His advice (which led to a re-
definition of the aims of the Association) is
190 THE GARDEN CITY CAMPAIGN: AN OVERVIEW

Figure ID.2. The garden city movement gained much from the support of businessmen like Cadbury and Lever.
However there were also reciprocal advantages for manufacturers associating their products with the garden city
'image', as this box cover, portraying Boumville, quite explicitly suggests. It seems however to have been a pilot
which was never marketed.

quite clear. The Association should see itself
as an educational and propagandist body, leav-
ing the practicalities of building Letchworth to
the company formed for that purpose: 'The
function of the Garden City Association is
surely the higher one of the teaching of sound
principles in regard to a particular aspect of
social reform, and not in acting as an advertising
agent of the Company' (Adams, 1903).
For the future of the British garden city
movement (and, indirectly on how the garden
city idea was spread to other countries), this
redefinition of aims was significant. Letchworth
(and Welwyn, in turn) was used to demon-
strate the practical application of essential
principles, rather than being seen simply as an
end in itself. This very soon opened the way
for the Association to adopt a still wider brief
through attaching itself (and attempting to as-
sume a leadership role) within an emerging
lobby for town planning. Particularly in the
hands of its new Secretary, Ewart Culpin, the
Association was encouraged to throw its weight
behind the campaign for national town plan-
ning legislation, on the basis that this provided
the most effective means of achieving the kind
of environment that Howard had originally
envisaged.
Culpin, like Adams before him, was an ef-
fective propagandist, and he too organized na-
tional conferences to promote the case. The
first of these, in March 1906, attracted 150 rep-
resentatives from Parliament and from local
authorities. More important was the second
conference, in October 1907, which was held
when legislation was already being drafted. An
air of immediacy surrounded this, and every
local authority was urged to prepare itself for
the coming legislation.
Throughout 1907 and 1908 the propagandist
work of the Association increased, and it was
reported that 'a large part of the endeavours of
the Association have been concentrated on the
question of Town-planning' (Garden City As-
sociation, 1908a, p. 66), which pamphlets pro-
duced and lectures arranged in all parts of the
country. In due course, with the passing of the
1909 Housing, Town Planning, etc. Act, a vic-
tory was claimed for the garden city movement.
In the Tenth Annual Report of the Association
 GETIING ON THE AGENDA 191

ACTUAL DEVELOPMENT OF AN ESTATB THE SAME ESTATE ON GARDEN CITY LINES

Figures 10.3 and 10.4. Garden Suburb Revisionism in Birmingham. The principles of low-density residential de-
velopment that characterized Letchworth (see figure 7.12) were soon being recommended for existing towns as an
attractive alternative to monotonous streets of bylaw housing. Comparisons of the kind shown were common.

(when the legislation was still at a draft stage)
the Association credited itself for preparing the
political ground so thoroughly, and reference
was made to a newspaper article which included
the comment: 'Actually, of course, the author-
ship of the Bill belongs to Ebenezer Howard'
(Garden City Association, 1908a).
Reflecting its wider interests, the passing of
the Act was followed by a name change of the
propagandist organization to that of Garden
Cities and Town Planning Association. This
was the way that Culpin thought that things
should go, and other pioneers in the movement
(like Thomas Adams, who assumed the chief
planning role in the Local Government Board,
and Raymond Unwin, one of the architects of
Letchworth, who became the chief technical
officer in the Ministry of Health) shared this
view. But not everyone was so enthusiastic.
Howard, for instance, could never reconcile
himself to the idea of the State playing a major
role in housing and environmental matters. He
remained throughout his life a 'gentle anarchist',
putting his faith in individuals and groups act-
ing voluntarily to improve their own lives rather
than devolving responsibility to a remote gov-
ernment body. After the First World War, when
all around him were coming to accept the in-
evitability of an enhanced role for the State,
Howard was unrepentant. 'If you wait for the
192 THE GARDEN CITY CAMPAIGN: AN OVERVIEW
Government to do it you will be as old as Met-
huselah before they start', he warned (quoted
in Osborn, 1970, p. 8) before going to Welwyn
to initiate, almost single-handed, the second
garden city.
It was not, however, the question of the role
of the State which struck most directly at the
heart of the garden city movement. Instead,
the new town planning brief of the Association
raised the wider issue of whether there was any
longer an organization that existed solely to
promote the idea of the garden city. While it
could be accepted that national legislation might
facilitate the formation of additional garden
cities, it could not be denied that such legisla-
tion would by no means be directed solely to
such ends. Indeed, the Act was designed to lead
to improved standards of development in new
suburban extensions, rather than for the kind
of venture which led to Letchworth as an auto-
nomous settlement.
Culpin responded to these new possibilities
with enthusiasm, finding little difficulty in re-
interpreting the essential creed of the garden
city. The future of the movement, he argued,
lay not in a preoccupation with garden cities in
Figure 10.5. New Towns After
The War (1918) marked a re-
assertion of 'purist' garden city
thinking, but it also heralded the
beginning of the process by which
the concept was superseded by
that of the statist New Town. Its
message of the post-war recon-
struction possibilities of the garden
city model carried greater weight
after World War II.
the mould of Letchworth, but in the promotion
of a much broader swathe of developments 'on
garden city lines'. In a review of progress in
1913, Culpin included not only Letchworth
Garden City but also what were more properly
termed garden suburbs and garden villages. He
was referring to developments where, 'although
the Garden City scheme may not be carried
out in its entirety, there is the satisfaction of
knowing that thousands of acres are being de-
veloped upon better lines than there was a
probability of securing beforehand ...' (Culpin,
1913, p. 9).
For some this pragmatism was all too much.
During the First World War, when thoughts of
reconstruction were in the air, a small group of
'fundamentalists' (led by another leading figure
in the early movement, C. B. Purdom) got
together to consider how best the movement
might be drawn back to its essential and ori-
ginal task of promoting garden cities rather than
hybrid schemes. According to Purdom, the
Association was 'failing as custodian of the
garden city idea' (Purdom, 1951, p. 61). One of
their number, F. J. Osborn, was persuaded to
write a small book, New Towns after the War
 GARDEN CITIES AROUND THE WORLD
Figure 10.6. C. B. Purdom (1883-1965) led this reas-
sertion of garden city ideas. He had begun as an assistant
accountant at Letchworth in 1902, but soon became
one of the leading figures in the movement.
(published in 1918 under the author's pseud-
onym of 'New Townsmen'), reaffirming a be-
lief in the basic idea of the garden city (Osborn,
1918). The main body of the Association, which
Was meanwhile aligning itself with a national
postwar housing campaign, thus found itself
divorced from the cause that had brought it
into being in the first place. This, it accepted,
could not be allowed to continue without seri-
ously harming the garden city movement
as a whole and steps were duly taken to rein-
corporate the dissenters within the Association.
This episode of factional activity illustrates
what is commonplace in any pressure group
of longstanding, namely, that if it is to remain
topical there will quite likely be periods of
adjustment and reappraisal. What it also illus-
trates is that there was no unanimity as to what
the garden city movement should be espous-
ing; indeed, the very concept of the garden city
was variously interpreted along the way. On
one thing, though, there was agreement. The
193
term 'garden city', used publicly for the first
time time in 1898, had very soon become a
part of the English language and, more im-
portantly, an essential part of the political
debate on housing and urban improvement.
Writing shortly before the outbreak of the First
World War, Culpin could claim that 'in less
than a generation the Garden City movement
has attained to a place of supreme importance
throughout the world, and its founder has been
hailed as one of the greatest men of his gen-
eration' (Culpin, 1913, pp. 12-13). Even allow-
ing for some exaggeration, Culpin was right in
asserting that the Association could take credit
for promoting the idea of the garden city and
for getting it onto the public agenda.
GARDEN CITIES AROUND THE WORLD
There is not a portion of the civilised world to which
the Garden City message is not now being sent
regularly. (Culpin, 1913, p. 10)
In their first phase of campaigning (through to
the outbreak of the First World War) the pro-
ponents of garden cities succeeded not only
in securing a place for their cause on the do-
mestic political agenda but also in arousing
interest worldwide. Howard himself was an
internationalist who actively promoted the
spread of Esperanto as well as his own garden
cities. But it was not Howard personally so
much as the garden city organization as a cor-
porate body that was responsible (almost from
the outset) for a global campaign.
The publication of To-morrow (soon to be
translated into French, German, Russian and
Czech) immediately caught the eye of overseas
reviewers, and when the Garden City Associa-
tion was formed it attracted correspondence
from enquirers and fellow campaigners in vari-
ous countries. As well as from within Europe,
letters were received from as far away as Japan,
the United States and Australia. The first In-
ternational Garden City Congress was held in
London in 1904, and overseas delegates - like
194 THE GARDEN CITY CAMPAIGN: AN OVERVIEW
others in the years ahead - made what was
akin to a pilgrimage to Letchworth, to see
Howard's blueprint taking shape on the ground.
Germany, France and Belgium offered par-
ticularly strong links in the early years, with
each of these countries forming its own garden
city organization. For instance, the Association
des Cites-Jardins de France charged its mem-
bers one franc for the benefit of belonging to
une association d'etude. In fact, its aims and
activities went well beyond those of mere study.
It used propagandist techniques that were very
similar to those used by its British counterpart,
and, as well as disseminating ideas, held to the
practical goal of creating garden cities in France
(Association des Cites-Jardins de France un-
dated). A thirteen-point credo des cites-jardins
included declarations of belief ranging from la
noblesse de la vie to a commitment that chaque
Figure 10.7. Purdom's 1920 pro-
posals for a series of satellite towns
around London were an early
articulation of a scheme which, a
quarter of a century later, became
the new towns programme.
famille devrait avoir son foyer, et chaque maison
son jardin.
Close contacts were developed between the
early organizations, and reciprocal visits, espe-
cially between Germany and Britain, became a
feature of this period. However, behind the
mutual respect of professionals was a lurking
fear on both sides that each country was seeking
to learn from and outstrip the other country in
terms of industrial (and, later, military) supre-
macy. Garden cities, in offering a healthy envir-
onment for their workers, were seen as a key
to economic success. 'We must see to it', warned
the Chairman of the Garden City Association
in 1905 (Garden City, 1905) looking to the
United States as well as Germany, 'that we are
not outstripped by others in the practical ap-
plication of our own remedy.' He consistently
returned to this xenophobic theme, seeking to
 GARDEN CITIES AROUND THE WORLD 195

Figures 10.8, 10,9, 10.10 and 10.11. Versions of the famous Three Magnets diagram in German, French, Russian
and Japanese underline its potency as a diagrammatic representation of Howard's ideas, Compare with the English
original (figure 2.2).
196 THE GARDEN CITY CAMPAIGN: AN OVERVIEW
protect the interests of the Empire as a whole
as well as the Mother Country. Speaking in
1913 (at the Fourteenth Annual Meeting of
the Association) he admitted that 'glad as I
am to see the idea spreading and the efforts
made to carry it out in other countries, I must
say with me the Empire stands first. It would
be rather a sad thing if England, after having
saved others, herself should be a castaway'
Figure 10.12. Although Howard's
original diagrams were translated,
this charming Credo des Cites
Jardins suggests the vitality of the
garden city movement in other
countries in developing their own
images and devices to put across
the message.
(Garden Cities and Town Planning Association,
1913).
Such reservations did not, however, inhibit
an active programme of visits by Association
officers to those countries that showed an inter-
est in the garden city idea. Some epic journeys
were made. In 1913, for instance, Ewart Culpin
travelled some 30,000 miles on a lecture tour
that took him across the Atlantic and to major
 GARDEN CITIES AROUND THE WORLD
centres and small towns in the United States
and Canada. He returned with copies of letters
of gratitude from civic leaders, and evidence of
new organizations being set up to promote
higher standards of town-building. At the same
time as Culpin was spreading the message in
North America, another pioneer, William
Davidge, was hard at work in Australasia,
showing lantern slides and speaking to local
groups. 'Throughout the whole tour', he was
pleased to report, 'the utmost enthusiasm was
experienced, and the reports and statements
received indicated that a good deal of perman-
ent good work had been done' (GCTPA
General Minute Book, 22nd October 1914).
A logical sequence of the lively exchange of
ideas and visits between countries in all parts
of the world was the formation in 1913 of the
International Garden Cities and Town Plan-
ning Association. Representatives from Ger-
many, France, Norway, Poland, the United
States and Japan came to London to launch
the new organization, but it was the British
contingent that assumed the key posts. Howard
was elected President, Montagu Harris the
Chairman, and Culpin the Secretary. The First
Congress of the International Association was
held in the following year, but delegates barely
had time to visit Letchworth and other at-
tractions like Hampstead Garden Suburb be-
fore the first rumblings of war put paid for the
time being to international collaboration of this
sort.
The First World War, though it swept away
so much, certainly did not see the demise of
this infant body. On the contrary, the idealists
who started it could see amidst the ruins an
added reason for the protection of international
links. As a focus for its concerns in the war
years the rebuilding of Belgium became some-
thing of a cause celebre. In the wake of so much
destruction, there was even talk of building an
international garden city on Belgian soil, 'where
all the forces of civilisation shall unite in produc-
ing a perfect city of health, a city residential,
197
commercial, industrial and agricultural, re-
sponding to all the several and varying needs
of humanity, preserving the facilities of the
city, and above all, serving as a monument and
a testimony from humanity the world over to
the valour and the honour of Belgium today'
(Culpin, 1915, p. 91).
Fittingly, when the war ended, although the
idea of an international garden city was not to
materialize, the International Association held
its first meeting in the country for which it had
campaigned so passionately. Delegates made
a solemn visit to the battlefields of Western
Flanders, before turning their thoughts to the
future. The immediate postwar period was a
time for looking forward, and enthusiasm for
international proposals (like the League of
Nations) served indirectly to support the work
of those in the garden city movement who were
seeking to restore and to strengthen their own
links between nations. Annual conferences were
held, and although officers from the Garden
Cities and Town Planning Association were still
to dominate things for some years to come,
gradually their influence was lessened. In 1923,
the Chairmanship, for the first time, was taken
out of British hands, with Montagu Harris
giving way to the French garden city pioneer,
Henri Sellier.
During the 1930s, the organization (which
was by then known as the International Fed-
eration for Housing and Town Planning) could
not escape the growing turbulence of European
politics. Purdom (himself a keen international-
ist) observed that 'the Federation passed back
into a nominal phase of existence, the Germans
secured control, removed the central office to
Brussels, but allowed the British to hold presid-
ential and other positions' (Purdom, 1951, p.64).
The wave of enthusiasm for international move-
ments that was apparent in the aftermath of
the First World War had subsided. Although
the case for garden cites was by then well es-
tablished, in many countries this was becoming
less an outcome of the work of the International
198 THE GARDEN CITY CAMPAIGN: AN OVERVIEW
Federation and more a product of continuing
domestic campaigns.
PRESSING THE CASE
I think it was the persistency with which our group
stuck to one objective, and even over-simplified it,
that lodged the idea in the political mind. (F. J.
Osborn, in a letter to Lewis Mumford, 7th January
1947, in Hughes 1971, p. 145)
At home and abroad, the first quarter century
or so of the garden city campaign yielded re-
sults. On the positive side, Howard's concept
attracted worldwide attention, and there was no
shortage of attempts to put ideas into practice.
To set against this record, there were, in fact,
only two settlements underway which came any-
where near to the essence of Howard's model
(namely, Letchworth and Welwyn), with the
majority of so-called 'garden city' schemes only
loosely related. Most 'garden cities' were really
little more than garden suburbs. The more that
the original blueprint was mediated through
various disciples of the cause, and the more
that cultural factors came into play, the greater
was the degree of deviation (Hall, 1988).
However, in spite of limited success in direct
terms, campaigners remained undaunted, and
in Britain the Garden Cities and Town Plan-
ning Association emerged from the First World
War to launch a vigorous peacetime campaign.
Amidst talk of 'homes for heroes' the campaign
started well enough, only to waver when the
political momentum for greater governmental
involvement in housing provision itself slowed
in the early 19208. But certain trends were ir-
reversible (the war had challenged old beliefs
and demonstrated the possibilities of a new role
for the State) and in housing, as in other areas
of social policy, new legislation was gradually
introduced.
On the ground, municipal estates in the sub-
urbs, characterized by houses with their own
gardens, became a feature of interwar urban
change. Although these estates fell a long way
short of garden city ideals - significantly, be-
cause the new developments were not self-
standing settlements - it was generally conceded
that at least they contained some of the environ-
mental elements that had been pioneered in
settlements like Letchworth. Using the greater
powers that had been given to municipalities,
there was even hope at one stage of a third
garden city, at Wythenshawe, to the south of
Manchester (Deakin, 1989). But in spite of the
involvement at Wythenshawe of Barry Parker
(who with his partner Raymond Unwin, had
produced the original Letchworth plan) what
transpired was little more than another large
estate, with an eventual population of 100,000.
For ten years or so from the middle of the
1920s there is a sense in which the garden city
campaign was rather getting left behind by
events. No new settlements were in sight, and
yet the campaigners persevered with the old
message. Even F. J. Osborn (one of the funda-
mentalists in the movement) warned that the
campaign was becoming outdated. Referring to
Letchworth and Welwyn, he criticized the
movement for 'petting our two ewe lambs with
almost indecent fondness, but we show no real-
ization that they are already threatened with
old-maidish sterility' (Osborn, 1926, p. 194).
Instead, he urged a more aggressive stance, re-
fusing to compromise with 'second best' garden
suburb schemes, and reminding the organiza-
tion that it had a specific propagandist job to
do.
Significantly, it was Osborn who from 1936
(when he became Honorary Secretary) led the
Association in a new direction. It was not that
garden cities as such were abandoned - far from
it, for these remained at the heart of it all - but
what he did was to advocate a wider strategy
of settlement dispersal. What was needed to
make real progress, argued Osborn, was a sys-
tem of national land-use planning. And to
achieve that the State had to break with a lin-
gering reliance on the market as an allocative
mechanism and, instead, to assume a more
 PRESSING THE CASE
Figure 10.13. Frederic}. Osborn (1885-1978), the pro-
pagandist victorious, photographed outside his home at
Welwyn Garden City in 1954. He led the garden city
movement in Britain during the critical period from the
late 1930s to the 1950s.
assertive role. In this way, the seemingly inno-
cuous concept of garden cities was suddenly
catapulted into a highly-charged political arena.
A result of this changing emphasis was that
the garden city campaign, in the second half
of the 1930s, was conducted at two levels. One
dimension was that of contributing to a growing
groundswell of informed 'middle opinion' that
was predisposed towards a greater role for the
State. Particularly in the context of a world
economic recession and Britain's declining com-
petitive position, the case for policies to achieve
industrial restructuring and to cope with the
social effects of large-scale unemployment
199
was hard to deny. Politicians from different
parties, industrialists and intellectuals joined
forces in an influential lobby to change the
terms of the political debate as to what should
be done. Not everyone was equally enthusias-
tic about the idea of planning in principle, as,
for instance, the young Conservative politician,
Harold Macmillan, who admitted: '''Planning''
is forced upon us ... not for idealistic reasons
but because the old mechanism which served
us when markets were expanding naturally and
spontaneously is no longer adequate when the
tendency is in the opposite direction' (quoted
in Marwick, 1964, p. 287).
The other dimension of the Association's
activity was more directly concerned with its
immediate priorities, namely, to see the intro-
duction of a comprehensive system of land-use
planning and a national commitment to dis-
persal policies. Opportunities were taken in the
early 1930s to make representations to two gov-
ernment committees (Chelmsford and Marley)
which each, within their remit to investigate
ways of relieving unemployment, considered the
building of garden cities. These committees
yielded little, however, in contrast to the Royal
Commission that was set up in 1937 under the
Chairmanship of Sir Montague Barlow. The
very brief of the Barlow Committee addressed
those issues that were of central concern to the
Association, charged as the former was to look
at the nation's distribution of population, to
consider what disadvantages accrued from the
then concentration of industry and people, and
to see what might be done to alleviate the situ-
ation. Various individuals and organizations
were asked to give evidence, and for the Asso-
ciation Osborn wrote and presented a power-
ful case in favour of planning. His submission
extended over forty-three pages, and its con-
tents marked the break with the earlier phase
of the Association's campaign - acknowledg-
ing a vital role for the State and calling for a
strong planning framework as a basis for new
policies. Amongst the recommendations was
200 THE GARDEN CITY CAMPAIGN: AN OVERVIEW
a proposal for a central body to be established,
as part of the national planning framework, with
responsibility for building garden cities and
satellite towns, and for the development of
existing small towns (Garden Cities and Town
Planning Association, 1938).
By the time that the Barlow Report was
published, the context had radically changed.
Britain was already into the first year of the
Second World War, and it was no longer un-
employment and congestion that commanded
immediate attention, so much as survival and
thoughts of what might be done when peace
returned. At an earlier stage than in the First
World War, largely because of the blitz in 1940-
41, reconstruction became a political issue and
the prospect of planning on a national scale was
no longer hypothetical. Barlow's own recom-
mendations contributed to this debate, at least
to the extent of giving a further boost to the
idea of national planning machinery. Subsequ-
ent reports on land utilization and the country-
side (Scott Report 1942) and on land values
Figure 10.14. One of Osborn's
main achievements was to broaden
the garden city campaign making
it into an argument for compre-
hensive planning. The plight of
the depressed 'Special Areas' in the
19305 was a particular focus of pro-
pagandist concern, comparable
with developments in the USA in
the same period (see, for example
figures 8.3-8.5).
(Uthwatt Report 1941 and 1942) completed a
trio of wartime reports that laid a philosophical
and practical foundation for legislation to come.
For the garden city campaign these years
marked a watershed; if it were to miss the
opportunity to go forward then it could easily
slip back into the realms of history, but if the
moment could be seized much that it sought
was within reach. Osborn worked overtime to
make sure that the opportunity was not lost.
Reflecting the direction in which the campaign
was already moving, in 1941 he secured a name
change for the organization to that of the Town
and Country Planning Association. One reason
for this, he argued, was that the term 'garden
cities' in the title created the wrong impression.
For all the virtues in the concept, garden cities
were too often associated in people's minds with
'bad speculative building, and with cranks,
sandals, "long-hair", etc.' (persisting images
engendered in the pioneering days of Letch-
worth). It was thought that amongst two groups
in particular (intellectuals who were drawn to
 PRESSING THE CASE
the idea of planning, but not necessarily to
garden cities; and countryside preservationists
who confused garden cities with indiscriminate
sprawl) the terminology was particularly dam-
aging to the campaign (Garden Cities and Town
Planning Association, 1941).
The winning of public opinion was an import-
ant part of Osborn's wartime efforts, and he,
especially, worked tirelessly to persuade all who
would listen to him (including through radio
broadcasts to reach the whole nation) that the
proper way to rebuild after the war was through
a planned process of dispersal. Britain's big
cities needed to be 'thinned out' in favour of
new, decentralized settlements beyond a green
belt. This model of dispersal was, in fact, most
clearly expressed in Patrick Abercrombie's 1944
Greater London Plan - something that was by
no means coincidental in that Abercrombie had
been a member of the Barlow Commission and
had been lobbied incessantly by Osborn.
If the ground was well-prepared, in terms
of shaping opinion, it was the end of the war
and the election of the first majority Labour
Government which finally saw planning (other
than as an emergency wartime measure) emerge
from the drawing board and into the statute
books. Various measures were of importance
to the Association, each a component in a new
system, but none was more closely identified
with the garden city campaign than moves to-
wards legislation for a national programme of
new towns.
Just a few months after taking office, the
Minister of Town and Country Planning, Lewis
Silkin, established a departmental committee
under the chairmanship of Lord Reith to pre-
pare the ground for a new towns initiative. In
August 1946, less than ten months after the
committee was formed, legislation was passed
in the form of the New Towns Act. The speed
of the process and the absence of political
opposition tells a story in itself, for the Act
was, potentially, a highly contentious measure
involving a degree of State intervention which
201
would previously have been regarded as un-
tenable. Although the explanation for this rapid
acceptance is complex, the Association could
rightly claim some credit for its own part, work-
ing over a long period to persuade others of
the basic sense and humanity in creating new
settlements and reducing congestion in the con-
urbations. Osborn was not unjustified in making
the qualified comment that the commitment to
new towns 'certainly looks like some success
for the TCP Association's campaign .. .' (in a
letter to Lewis Mumford, 21st October 1945, in
Hughes, 1971, p. 106).
Regardless of where credit should be attrib-
uted, empirically, the 1946 Act can be seen to
mark the culmination of a long campaign that
started with the publication of Howard's book
nearly half a century before. It was not that
garden cities, as such, were now to be built (for
some important compromises were made along
the way, and it was the concept as well as the
name that was changed) but the idea of planned
decentralization was at last accepted as official
policy. Thereafter, the nature of the garden city
campaign could never be the same again.
It was Lewis Silkin, the Minister responsible
for the new measure, who most pertinently des-
cribed the change of direction that had become
inevitable. In the past, he observed, the Asso-
ciation had concentrated on propaganda, but it
was no longer necessary to preach for remedies
that had now been adopted. Instead, the As-
sociation could acknowledge 'the triumph of
passing from the propaganda stage to the stage
of action' (Town and Country Planning Asso-
ciation, 1946). As events have since shown,
propaganda would continue to be an important
part of the Association's activities in the years
ahead (more, in fact, than Silkin appears to
have envisaged) but so, too, would a close in-
volvement in some of the practical details of
new town building. Osborn's 'real anxiety as to
what the new towns will be like' (in a letter to
Lewis Mumford, 20th August 1946, in Hughes,
1971, p. 129) is a key to the new agenda.
202 THE GARDEN CITY CAMPAIGN: AN OVERVIEW
Figure 10 .15. Photographed c.1911, this shows one of the many ways in which the message of the garden city was
spread. What happened to the model is not known.
WAYS AND MEANS
Things like the TCPA do have some running effect
on the national situation ... (F. J. Osborn, in a let-
ter to Lewis Mumford, 6th March 1949, in Hughes,
1971, p. 173).
The passing of the New Towns Act by no means
marks the end of the garden city campaign, but
the history of the period up to 1946 is, if only
as an episode, revealing in terms of the work-
ings of a pressure group. In a book which re-
views the garden city concept it is salutary to
reflect on the role of the one body which de-
voted itself wholly to Howard's agenda. One
might speculate as to whether, without a con-
certed campaign, the garden city idea might
have remained just another late-Victorian fan-
tasy. Would the force of the idea have been
enough, or was the role of the Garden City
Association (and its successors) decisive in
promoting it onto a world stage? While these
are impossible questions to answer, it is gainful
(if only because of lessons that might be passed
on to environmental pressure groups now) to
consider some of the 'pros' and 'cons' surround-
ing this campaign.
In some respects, as a model for effective
action, the Association was exemplary. For a
start, it proved responsive to new sources of
propaganda as they became available, and, in
general, used these to good effect. At the time
of its inception, the range of propagandist
techniques was relatively limited. Howard's
book provided the basic way of disseminating
information, with good use made of reviews
in a wide range of publications. Thereafter, the
 WAYS AND MEANS
archives reveal lengthy, handwritten letters
as existing and new contacts were explored,
along with the circulation of fresh tracts to
spread the gospel. Perhaps most characteristic
of early campaigning was the use of the public
lecture, in an age when knowledge was im-
parted and received with an assurance that has
since disappeared.
The garden city campaign (although maligned
in some quarters) was also adept at securing
a wide press coverage, including through the
newspapers of one of its important benefactor
families, the Harmsworths. Exhibitions and
conferences also played a part throughout the
campaign, including a prominent place in the
Daily Mail Ideal Home Exhibition which got
underway as a popular annual event in the
1920s. From an initial set of lantern slides, the
Association progressed to the use of occasional
films, and to radio broadcasting. In many ways,
though, the most effective means of promoting
its cause was through 'behind the scenes' lob-
bying and through the incorporation of 'the
great and the good' into honorary positions
within the Association.
Another measure of effectiveness is that
(although sometimes it was rather slower than
it might have been) it proved to be remark-
ably adaptable in redefining its aims to meet
new sets of circumstances. From its closely
circumscribed origins - with only the spread of
Howard's ideas and the start of a practical pro-
ject on the agenda - it was to make a number
of significant modifications. Once Letchworth
was underway, for instance, the garden city
campaign assumed a wider role on the town
planning stage. As a source of influence on early
twentieth-century planning philosophy and on
the leading professionals of the day it is diffi-
cult to underestimate the importance of the
campaign.
The effectiveness of the campaign was also
enhanced by the national reputations enjoyed
by a succession of influential leaders. Howard
was himself a person of ideas and a persuasive
203
speaker, but not particularly notable as a prac-
tical leader of the campaign. In the early stages,
it was left to others like Thomas Adams to
create an effective organization; to Ralph
Neville to spread the word amongst people of
influence; and to Ewart Culpin to broaden the
scope of the campaign. Later, the stage was
dominated by F. J. Osborn, who served his
apprenticeship through residency at both Letch-
worth and Welwyn in their formative years,
before going on to orchestrate an enormously
influential campaign at what proved to be a
time of great opportunity. Osborn's role re-
mains to this day a fascinating model of pres-
sure group leadership.
If the above factors offer positive evidence
to support the argument that the Association
played a decisive role in ensuring the spread of
the garden city idea, there is also another side
to the story. Effective though the Association
was in some respects, in others it fell short of
its own targets. It has, for instance, never been
able to achieve a large membership total (its
peak of a little over 2500 dates back to the start
of the century and the interest surrounding the
formation of Letchworth); its finances have in-
variably been slender, and on occasions the very
future of the organization has been brought into
question on this issue. Moreover, while it has
been able to enjoy the benefit of leaders who
have been pioneers in modern planning, there
have also been times (for much of the 1920s,
for instance) when the ship has been rudderless.
The main reservation that one can note from
observing the campaign has, however, little to
do with failings within the organization itself
and more to do with the context in which the
campaign was conducted. In this sense, it re-
mains questionable as to how much a pressure
group is really able to influence policy; or, in
this case, the extent to which the campaigning
of the Association finally forced the State to
respond with an official programme of new
settlements. Pressure group theory rests firmly
within a pluralist mould, with assumptions that
204 THE GARDEN CITY CAMPAIGN: AN OVERVIEW
political power is accessible and that decisions
can be influenced by rational argument. The
whole rationale for the garden city campaign
was consistent with that belief, and the open-
ing words of Howard's 1898 credo point un-
equivocally to the potential of persuading others
from across the political spectrum: '... a single
question having a vital bearing upon national
life and well-being on which all persons, no
matter of what political party, or what shade
of political opinion, would be found to fully
and entirely agreed' (Howard, in 1946 edition,
p.41).
The garden city campaign was nothing if not
consistent in its attempt to persuade others of
the worth of its ideas, and it was by no means
without influence. At the same time, it is ap-
parent that those periods when it was most
effective coincided with certain events of nat-
ional and international import. A background
of political concern over national efficiency in
the Edwardian era, the economic crisis of the
19308, and two world wars each provided a
stimulus to thoughts about resettlement and
reconstruction. Most significantly, the 1946 Act
was itself conceived and enacted in the context
of a portfolio of radical reforms that were in-
troduced at the end of the Second World War.
The garden city campaigners had played their
part in implanting the idea of new settlements,
but in the end there were compelling reasons
of a structural nature that help to account for
the ease with which the Act was passed. Quite
simply, the economic viability of postwar Brit-
ain required the renewal of much of the infra-
structure, including housing and industrial plant,
and new towns offered unprecedented oppor-
tunities towards this end.
The point made is that, no matter how ef-
fective the campaign of a pressure group, in
the last resort it has to be assessed in the light
of broader socio-economic considerations as
well. In shedding light on the work of environ-
mental pressure groups in general, what the
garden city campaign reveals is that the work
of campaigners is important - in getting issues
on the political agenda, and in sowing seeds
for future action. At the same time, the evid-
ence suggests that this work alone does not
provide the whole explanation, and that struc-
tural factors also have to be taken into account.
Garden cities, it might be concluded, have to
be seen as a part of rather than apart from
broader currents of twentieth-century history.
POSTSCRIPT: GARDEN CITIES OF
TOMORROW?
The garden city ... is the most sensible, practical,
well-tried, environmentally sound, socially beneficial,
economic and flexible device available for the cre-
ation of good urban environments. Having neglected
and under-used it for too long, let us now have the
commitment and vision to apply it to everyone's
benefit. (David Hall, in RTPlffCPA, 1989, p. 13)
In the last decade of the twentieth century, the
garden city is recalled not as a period piece but
as a robust concept that might still have its day.
No-one could seriously claim that Howard's
blueprint is still valid in its entirety, but the
essence of his proposals retains an enduring
lure. Settlements of a manageable size with a
sense of identity, the provision of a good living
and working environment, and a way of deal-
ing with escalating land values and of securing
benefits for the whole community remain at-
tractive goals.
In some respects the applicability of the gar-
den city idea is greater now than it was nearly
a century ago. Not only are there still basic
housing and community needs to be met, but
in the last decade of the second millennium
attention is becoming more focused on environ-
mental and quality of life issues. This concern
is expressed most completely in the modern
environmental concept of 'sustainable develop-
ment', defined in the 1987 Brundtland Report
as development that meets the needs of the
present without weakening the abilities of fu-
ture generations to meet their own needs. The
 POSTSCRIPT: GARDEN CITIES OF TOMORROW?
terminology certainly differs from Howard's but
such modern environmental concerns encom-
pass the very same notions of balance and
harmony which were central to his concept of
the social city.
However, it is clear that many environmen-
talists see the garden city idea as an unsustain-
able form of development best avoided in the
environmentally conscious 1990s. There have
been important direct or implied criticisms
of the garden city tradition on environmental
grounds. Thus the European Commission's 1990
Green Paper on the Urban Environment offers
implicit condemnation by strongly pressing
the case for compact big cities and criticizing
the notion of peripheral development (which
would appear to include garden cities) on en-
vironmental and social grounds. More recently
Friends of the Earth and the Policy Studies
Institute (Elkin, McLaren and Hillman, 1991)
have been forthright in their condemnation of
the perceived wastefulness of garden city de-
velopment and have argued for the mainten-
ance of high densities in existing cities.
There is a depressingly familiar ring about
these kinds of criticism, which involve either a
lack of knowledge or misunderstanding of what
the garden city ideal represents (Lock, 1991).
The Green Paper for example equates peri-
pheral development with poorly serviced dorm-
itory housing estates which are the complete
antithesis of what the garden city movement
has sought. It also criticizes the excessive func-
tional segregation of different land uses which,
it claims, the garden city movement bequeathed
to modern town planning. While the movement
certainly popularized (though did not invent)
zoning, the critical point is that garden city plan-
ning has always sought to ensure that housing,
employment and services were developed sepa-
rately but in reasonable proximity to each other,
to reduce rather than increase the need for
energy-expensive movement. Nor is it at all
clear how the compact cities advocated by both
organizations will be able to cope with existing
205
and future housing needs. Both reports, espe-
cially that by the FOE and PSI, exhibit a belief
in the perfectibility of high-density living which
is at least questionable given recent experiences.
In fact no definitive research results yet exist
which enable any convincing evaluation of the
environmental sustainability of compact big
cities versus decentralized social cities. How-
ever the garden city's environmental creden-
tials appear at least as impressive as its rival.
The garden city movement's traditional con-
cerns to promote rural protection, to create
compact and efficient smaller urban forms
within defined boundaries as an alternative to
suburban sprawl, to minimize commuting and
even to promote gardening remain impressively
'green' goals. Recently the movement has be-
gun to encourage self-build projects, most no-
tably at Lightmoor in Telford New Town, and
actively embrace other aspects of the emergent
environmental agenda.
More importantly the notion of sustainable
development itself is also limited by its lack
of emphasis on the social dimensions of urban
policy, a theme which has always figured
strongly in the garden city tradition. Thus the
pursuit of an allegedly sustainable goal of big
city urbanity to the exclusion of any other
metropolitan strategies must inevitably offer
least to the less well off because they will suffer
most in the increased competition for limited
urban space. Of course the less well off have
also gained least through the presently dom-
inant pattern of urban change, metropolitan
decentralization, where this has been a market-
led process shaped by demand rather than
need.
As has been noted earlier in this book, such
a model has reached its most complete expres-
sion in the United States. Schaffer and Fishman
both show how the absence of any government
commitment to a new communities decentralist
strategy for metropolitan areas has reinforced
the immense social and spatial polarization of
American society. The poor are imprisoned in
206 THE GARDEN CITY CAMPAIGN: AN OVERVIEW

Figures 10.16 and 10.17. The

propaganda and imagery of the
movement has relied greatly on
celebrating nature, for example
in the famous banner produced
in Letchworth for the 1911
Coronation (figure 10.16).

But there has been remarkably

little serious scientific discussion
of the ecological strengths of the
garden city; Benoit-levy was
unusual in highlighting this as-
pect (figure 10.17). We may ex-
pect rather more of this as green
issues become more prominent in
the late twentieth century.
 POSTSCRIPT: GARDEN CITIES OF TOMORROW?
the metropolitan core areas (inner-city regen-
eration notwithstanding); the outer city and sur-
rounding countryside are increasingly reserves
for the better off. By contrast the limited im-
plementation of a garden city-inspired planned
decentralization in Britain has, as a matter of
measurable fact, offered absolute and relative
social betterment to certain sections of the
working class. That such betterment remains
woefully incomplete cannot negate what has
been achieved and is certainly not an argument
for allegedly sustainable compact cities which
are unlikely to bring any equivalent social gains.
Howard clearly understood that concern for
nature could not involve any rejection of hu-
manity; rather it was to be a harmonious recon-
ciliation of environmental and social needs. His
deceptively simple yet profound understanding
of this ideal and its practical reiteration and
development within the garden city movement
sends a potent message to the environmental-
ists of the 1990s, who have not yet perhaps
fully appreciated this simple truth. Quite simply
no environmental strategies can be sustainable
in the long term if they involve locking the poor
and disadvantaged into their existing or worse
conditions, by refusing to countenance the de-
velopment by which they can better themselves.
The challenge is to meet human needs in ways
that protect and enhance the environment.
But we must readily concede that the en-
vironmentalists, at least those who have been
dominating recent discussions, have not so far
chosen to accept these pro-garden city argu-
ments. How realistic then are the optimistic
words with which this book opened? The Town
and Country Planning Association continues to
preach the Howardian gospel, though given its
historic role as the guardian of the garden city
faith this may not itself be particularly signi-
ficant. However, even the most jaundiced ob-
server must concede that such propagandizing
has carried a good deal more conviction in
recent years. In Britain certainly the welter of
private proposals for new settlements has been
207
the most positive signal of a revived interest, as
Michael Hebbert has shown. But recession in
the development industry and an extremely re-
strictive planning system have so far prevented
the most garden city-like of these from realiza-
tion. This may well change, particularly if local
planning authorities more fully embrace such
proposals through the plan-making process,
rather than simply reacting to developer pres-
sures. An upturn in the housing market will
also reactivate many of the pro-new settlement
arguments of the late 1980s.
The 1990s may also see some revival of stra-
tegic regional planning, which has lain inert in
the iron lung of Thatcherism during the 1980s.
On the whole this bodes well for new settlement
proposals as the recent calls for an East Thames
corridor of urbanization to capitalize on the new
Channel Tunnel rail links suggest. Authored
by Peter Hall, an influential though flexible ad-
vocate of Howardian social cities, the scheme
is for a 'Thames-la-Vallee' linear new town
on the model of Marne-la-Vallee, the eastern
Parisian new town which is poised to achieve
international prominence as the location of the
recently-opened EuroDisneyland.
As these French developments imply the
expansion of the Parisian new towns continues,
though as in Britain the dominant policy em-
phasis has tended to shift into the regeneration
of existing urban core areas. However French
intellectual and professional interest in the
garden city tradition is certainly buoyant as
the cite jardins discussed by Jean-Pierre Gaudin
have been rediscovered. Elsewhere in Europe
the regular appearance of garden city-like new
settlement proposals suggests that the tradition
is alive and well. In the former Soviet Union
particularly, the end of communism seems to
have triggered a real revival of interest in the
garden city tradition in several of the former
republics (see, for example, Hall, 1991, p. 323).
The signs then are hopeful but tentative.
In circumstances of recurrent international
recession, new settlement proposals obviously
208 THE GARDEN CITY CAMPAIGN: AN OVERVIEW
appear less viable than the limited-growth
compact city model currently favoured on en-
vironmental grounds or the incremental peri-
pheral expansion model in which such growth
as occurs can be pragmatically tacked on to
existing settlements without incurring massive
front end infrastructure costs. It is certainly
possible though that in individual countries the
latter situation might be nudged into something
closer to the social city model. Britain, the home
of the garden city idea, is currently closest to
this position. However the wider context may
change, which would certainly introduce new
options.
The world in the 1990s is presented with
unprecedented options for change, far more
fundamental than mere national or local read-
justments of planning or urban design. The
collapse of communism makes possible but does
not guarantee an unprecedented era of peace
and (sustainable) prosperity. Much depends on
the size and mode of disposal of the peace
dividends, and on the commitment and courage
of political leaders in constructing a new
democratic world order that incorporates both
developing and developed countries. If such a
change does occur we are likely to see real and
widespread economic growth and associated
social demands that will necessitate new
strategies of planned urban growth that must
incorporate garden city thinking if they are to
be sustainable. The signs so far are not optim-
istic, but it is a challenge that Ebenezer Howard,
great internationalist that he was, might well
have relished.
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to the 'raison d'etre' of the Association, its
relationship to the Garden City Company, and other
matters which require consideration. London:
Garden City Association.
Association des Cites-lardins de France (undated)
Statuts. Paris.
Beevers, R. (1988) The Garden City Utopia: A
Critical Biography of Ebenezer Howard. London:
Macmillan.
Brundtland, G. H. (1987) World Commission on
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University Press.
Commission of the European Communities (1990)
Green Paper on the Urban Environment (EUR
12902 EN). Brussels: Commission of the European
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Culpin, E. G. (1913) The Garden City Movement
Up-to-Date. London: Garden Cities and Town
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Culpin, E. G. (1915) The reconstruction of Belgium.
GCTP New Series, Vol. V, No.5, p. 91.
Deakin, D. (ed.) (1989) Wythenshawe: The Story of
a Garden City. Chichester: Phillimore.
Elkin, T., McLaren, D. and Hillman, M. (1991)
Reviving the City: Towards Sustainable Urban De-
velopment. London: Policy Studies Institute/
Friends of the Earth.
Garden Cities and Town Planning Association (1913)
Annual Report. London: GCTPA.
Garden Cities and Town Planning Association (1914)
General Minute Book. London: GCTPA.
Garden Cities and Town Planning Association (1938)
Royal Commission on the Geographical Distribu-
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GCTPA. London: GCTPA.
Garden Cities and Town Planning Association (1941)
Name of the Association: confidential note to
members.
Garden City (1905) Vol. 1, No.2, p. 12.
Garden City Association (190Ba) Annual Report.
London: GCA.
Garden City Association (1908b) Town Planning:
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Hall, D. (1989) The case for new settlements, in
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Hall, D. (1991) Direct line: reviving, reforming -
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Hall, P. (1988) Cities of Tomorrow: An Intellectual
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Howard, E. (1946 edition) Garden Cities of To-
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planning, progress and political agreement. English
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298.
Miller, M. (1989) Letchworth: The First Garden City.
Chichester: Phillimore.
Osborn, F. J. ('New Townsmen') (1918) New Towns
after the War. London: Dent.
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garden cities: An accusation of failure. Garden
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Osborn, F. J. (1970) Genesis ofWelwyn Garden City:
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Purdom, C. B. (1951) Life Over Again. London: Dent.
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Utilization in Rural Areas: Report (Cmd. 6378).
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11899-1946. London: Spon.
Hardy, D. (1991) From New Towns to Green Politics:
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21946-1990. London: Spon.
 INDEX

Abercrombie, P. 10, 13, 14, 19,
116, 122, 124, 150, 201
Abercrombie Plan for Greater
London (1944) 150, 201
Aberdeen and Temair,
Marchioness of 38
Ackerman, F. L. 129
Adams, T. 49, 188, 189, 191,
203
Adams, W. E. 178
Adelaide 110, 113, 118, 123,
124
Agache, A. 64
Agnew, S. T. 160
Agricultural belt 119
Agriculture 31
Aintree 33
Albertslund 17
Albury-Wodonga 123
Allotments 45, 48, 57
Anarchism 3, 20, 40, 41, 68,
108, 191
Anti-Corn Law League 45
Appalachian Trail 130, 135,
137
'Ararat Garden City' 21
Armenia 21
Arts and crafts influences 5,
12, 15, 37, 59, 61
Ascher, C. 129
Ashbee, c.R. 166
Association des Cites-Jardins
de France 194
Association Franc;aise des Cites
Jardins 53, 54
Atlanta, Georgia 133
Auburtin, M. 58
Australia 21, 22, 60, 107-25,
193
Bakunin, M. 40, 41
Barlow Commission, 13, 199,201
Barlow, M. 118
Barlow Report 200
Barrett, Sir James 111
Bauer, C. 129, 130, 142
Beaux arts 59
Beevers, R. 21, 39, 42, 166
Belgium 8, 56, 60, 65, 67, 194,
197
Bellamy, E. 35, 36, 41, 46, 47,
49,108
Bennett, T. P. 170, 171
Benoit-Levy, G. 22, 53, 55, 57,
206
Berlepsch-Valendas, E. 91
Bestor, A. E. 41
Betterment 54, 57, 67, 78, 81,
84, 85
Bing, A. 130, 131
Birmingham 191
Blatchford, R. 31
Blyth Valley District Council
179
Boot, H. 171,172
Boston 133
Bournville 8, 33, 73, 109, 114,
148, 166, 188
Bovis Homes 178
Bracknell 175
Bradford Property Trust 178
Breslau 12, 91
Brickendon Bury 169
Brisbane 110, 199
Bronx 138
Bruggeman, A. 56
Brundtland Report 1987,204
Buckingham, J. S. 35
Buckley, W. F. 137
Buder, S. 24
Burford, W. H. 117
Burns, J. 114
Bush, G. 136, 143
Butler, R. A. 173
Cadbury, E. 167, 188, 189
Cadbury family 32, 38
Cadbury, G. 5, 8, 34, 80, 148,
188, 190
Cadbury, L. J. 169, 170
California 17, 152, 154
Canada 17, 197
Canberra 123
Carpenter, E. 31, 37
Carter, J. 127, 136
Central Lancashire New Town
18, 19
Chamberlain family 38
Chartists 45
Chase, S. 129
Chatham Hills, Pittsburgh 139
Chfttenay-Malabry, 59, 66
Chelmsford Committee 199
Cherry, G. E. 150
Chicago 3, 41, 132
Christaller, W. 96, 97, 98, 100,
103
Christian Socialist 43, 45
Chiijo, S. 74
Cite jardin 9, 12, 13, 15, 22,
52-67, 196

Cites satellites 13
City Housing Corporation 130
City Planning Act 1919 79, 81
City Planning Investigation
Committee 191879
Clark, G. B. 47
Coghlan, T. 108
Collings, J. 45
Colonel Light Gardens,
Adelaide 118
Columbia, Maryland 17, 153,
154, 156, 157, 158, 159,
160, 161
Commission de I'Extension de
Paris 57
Commission for the New
Towns 175, 176
Commission on Housing and
Regional Planning (New
York) 130
Commission Superieure de
Amenagement des Villes
54
Committee on the New Towns
169
Commonwealth Housing
Commission 122
Communitarian reform 67
Compact cities 205, 208
Conran Roche Planning 176,
177
Conseil General de la Seine 56,
58
Consortium Developments Ltd
21, 176-181
Coolidge, C. 142
Co-operative 2, 4, 9, 15, 20, 29,
32,40, 41, 42, 54, 56, 108,
166
Co-operative agriculture 44
Co-operative
communitarianism 11, 20
Co-operative housing 44
Co-operative Permanent
Building Society 169, 172
Co-partnership 166
Copenhagen 17
Cornudet Act 60
Costain, R. 172
Costain Ltd, Richard 178
Cramlington 179, 183
INDEX
Crane, W. 29
Croly, H. 137
Culemann, K. 98, 99
Cullingworth, B. 174
Culpin, C. 179
Culpin, E. G. 166, 190, 191,
192, 196, 197, 203
Daceyville, Sydney 118
Dallas 133
Dautry, R. 57, 58
Davidge, W. 110, 197
Deb, E. 134
Decentralization 39, 90, 94,
113, 123, 146, 165, 187,
205
planned 10, 12, 13, 14, 15,
16,20,23,146-64,207
Den-en toshi 9, 69-85
Denver 133
Department of the
Environment 180
Detroit 132
Deutsche Bund Heimatschutz
89
Deutscher Lebensraum 94, 95
Development corporation 15,
173, 175
Developers, private 165-84
Donat 64
Douai 61
Draney 58, 59
Dreiser, T. 137
Dry Creek 117
Dusseldorf 80
East Thames Corridor 207
Eberstadt, R. 90
Edwards, T. 115
Electrona, 117, 118
Elizabeth, Adelaide SA 123
Environmental reform 4, 5, 24,
29
Equitable Pioneers 42
Essex 169, 179
Estcourt, R. 47
Eugenics 38, 111
EuroDisney 207
European Commission Green
Paper on the Urban
Environment 1990 205
211
Farm colonies 44
Farsta 17
Fellowship of the New Life 41,
108
First Garden City Company
167, 168, 183, 189
First Garden City Pioneer
Company 188
First Six New Cities
Movement 123
Fisher, R. A. 38
Fitzgerald, J. D. 113, 117
Food reform 42
Ford, G. 136
Foxley Wood 176
France 8, 22, 52-68, 194, 197
Frankfurt-am-Main 12, 13, 91
Friends of the Earth 205
Garden Cities and Town
Planning Association 110,
167, 168, 191, 197, 198,
200
Garden City Association 4, 5,
8, 32, 46, 166, 188, 190,
194,202
Garden Cities of Tomorrow 4,
28, 29, 146, 147, 148, 167
Garden City, Melbourne 118
Garden suburb 4, 8, 9, 10, 11,
13, 22, 24, 74, 80-4, 112,
115, 117, 120, 121, 122,
124, 192
Garden town 22, 24, 116, 120,
121
Garden village 8, 9, 24, 74, 80,
109, 120, 121, 192
Gartenstadt 9
Gaunt, W. 6, 8
Geddes, P. 10, 11, 38, 64, 67,
146
General Ordinance for
Planning and Design of
Towns 1942 99
George, H. 33, 35, 43, 44, 45,
108
German Letchworth 9
Germany 8, 10, 12, 17, 22, 60,
65, 67, 81, 88-103, 194,
197
Gibberd, Sir Frederick 178
212
Gide, C. 53
Goulburn 117
Greater London Plan 1944 14,
150,201
Greater London Regional
Planning Committee 13
Green belt 13, 15, 30, 49, 54,
92, 99, 116, 122, 124, 152,
156, 157, 162
Greenbelt, Maryland 12, 152-4
Greenbelt towns 122, 149, 153
Greendale, Wisconsin 12
Green girdles 13
Greenhills, Ohio 12
Green movement 21
Griffiths, W. S. 113
Gross Siedlungen 92
Guesde, J. 55
Guest, Keen and Nettlefold 117
Guild of St Matthew 43
Haberfield, S. 117
Habitations a bon marche 54,
57, 58, 60, 61
Halbwachs, M. 57
Halloran, H. 116
Hall, P. 3, 24, 39, 207
Hammer, B. 94
Hampstead Garden Suburb 8,
74, 114, 124, 166, 197
Harding, W. G. 127
Harmsworth, A. 5, 188, 203
Hattori 75
Haussmann, G. 57
Headlam, S. 43
Hellerau 9, 22
Helsinki 17
Hertfordshire 169
Himmler, H. 96, 99, 101, 102
Hitler, A. 94, 96, 99
Hobart 117
Holsworthy/Campbelltown 123
Home Ministry 70, 71, 73, 74,
81, 82, 83, 84
Home ownership 115
Hottenger, G. 64
Housing, 5, 9, 11, 19, 21, 40,
48, 50, 54, 55, 56, 61, 74,
80, 107, 109, 111, 116, 118,
132, 161, 166, 174, 175,
193, 198
INDEX
Housing and Regional
Planning Commission
(New York) 130
Housing and Urban
Development Act 1970
158
Housing companies 81
Housing estate management
81
Housing, Town Planning, etc
Act 1909 74, 190
Howard, E. 2-11, 15, 16,
18-24, 28, 31, 32, 35, 38,
39, 42, 44, 46-9, 52, 53,
56, 67-75, 88-91, 97, 98,
107, 108, 112, 117, 122,
130, 143, 146-9, 156,
161-8, 187-91, 194-6,
202-4, 207, 208
Hygeia 35
Hyndman, H. M. 37, 39, 44
Idris, T. 167, 188
Iiunuma, K. 83
Ikeda, H. 80
Ikeda-Takaracho 75, 76
Industrial estates 174
Industrial parks 162
Industrial paternalism 53
Inner city 20
Inner colonization 90, 94, 97
Inouye, T. 70-2
Interdepartmental Committee
on Physical Deterioration
1904 167
International Federation for
Housing and Town
Planning 197
International Federation for
Town and Country
Planning and Garden
Cities 83
International Garden Cities
and Town Planning
Federation 55, 56
Ireland 39, 48
Irish Land League 36, 46
Irish Land (Provision for
Sailors and Soldiers) Act
44
Irvine, California 17, 154, 157
Irvine, R. F. 111
Ishikawa, H. 83
Japan 8, 17,21,22, 60, 69-85,
193, 197
Jardins ouvriers 57
Johnson, L. 156
Jones, G. 38
Kalizoic Society 109
Kanto earthquake 81
Karn, V. 174
Kataoka, Y. 79-80
Kawakami, H. 73
Kemp, J. 131
Kent 173, 178
Kitimat 17
Klem, C. 120
Kobayashi, I. 76
Kohe, R. 129
Kropotkin, P. 3, 39, 40, 146
Kumar, K. 41
Laing, J. 171, 172
Land, communal ownership of
2,4,15,30,39,45,165
Land Nationalization Society
45, 46, 47, 108, 188
Land nationalization 33, 57
Land reform 2, 32, 33, 36, 37,
43, 44, 46, 48, 57
Land Reform Union 45
Land Restoration League 43,
45,47
Land Tenure Reform
Association 45, 46
Land use 9
Lane, Sir W. A. 38, 108
Langen, G. 91, 92, 97
Le Corbusier 151, 161
Leeton, 116
Lelystad 17
Letchworth 4-10, 15, 16, 28,
31, 32, 41-4, 49, 71, 72,
74, 76, 78, 114, 124, 141,
163, 165, 167-9, 187,
189-94, 197, 198, 200,
203, 206
Les Lilas 58
Lever, W. H. 8, 32, 35, 80,
148, 167, 188, 190

Levitt & Sons 159
Levitt-towns 17, 181
Lewis, S. 137
Lightmoor 21, 205
Light, W. 110
Lithgow, NSW 117
Littleton, Hobart 117
Litzmannstadt 101
Liverpool 13, 14
Llantrisant 20
Llewelyn-Davies, Lord 161
Local Bureau of the Home
Ministry 70, 72, 73
Local Government Board 191
Local Improvement Campaign
70,71
Lock, D. 21
London 10, 13, 15, 20, 165,
194, 197
London Country Council 12,
13, 170
London green belt 13
Looking backward 35, 36, 41,
47,108
Los Angeles 152, 162
Lutana, Hobart 117
Lyons, E. 178
Ma Bicoque 54
McKay, H. V. 117
MacKaye, B. 23, 128, 130, 135,
143
Macmillan, H. 173, 174, 199
Maeda, S. 74
Major Barbara 148
Manchester 13
Margaretenhohe 117
Marley Committee 199
Marne-La-Vallee 18,207
Marshall, A. 32, 35, 36, 146,
147, 148
Martlesham Heath, Suffolk
178-9
Marx, K. 32
Maryland 17, 153, 154, 156
'Master-Key' 33
Master-planned communities
162
Maurice, F. D. 43
May, E. 12, 13, 91
Mearns, A. 33
INDEX
Meath, Earl of 38, 39
Melbourne 109, 111, 116, 117,
118, 121, 123
Melton, Melbourne 123
Meopham, Kent 173
Metropolitan Public Gardens
Association 39
Meyer, K. 96, 103
Mill, J. S. 35, 45
Milton Keynes 18, 161, 176
Ministry of Health 13, 191
Ministry of Housing and Local
Government 174
Ministry of Town and Country
Planning 169
Miyake, I. 72, 73
Modernism 12, 59
Monarto, Adelaide 123
Montagu Harris, G. 73, 197
More, T. 3
Morrell, J. 113
Morris, W. 3, 9, 31, 146
Mortimer, J. 1
Moses 3
Mount Lawley, Perth 120
Mumford, L. 23, 39, 128, 130,
142, 143, 149, 150, 161-3,
187, 198, 201-2
Municipal housing 12
Musee Social 53, 54, 55, 57
Namae, T. 71, 72
National Committee on Urban
Growth Policy 158
National Federation of
Building Trades
Employers 172
Nazis 22-3, 88-103
Neale, E. V. 41, 42, 43
Neighbourhood 11, 15, 122,
137
Netherlands 17
Neville, R. 5, 166, 167, 183,
188, 189, 203
New Communities Program 17,
23
New country 24
New Earswick 117
New Health Society 38
New town 10, 14, 16, 18, 19,
20, 24, 123, 124, 128, 150
213
New town development
corporation 158, 159
New Towns Act 1946 15, 16,
150,201
New York 130, 132, 138, 139,
152
New York's Commission on
Housing and Regional
Planning 130
Nixon, R. 136
Non-conformism 33
Northumberland County
Council 179
Norway 197
Office 132, 151, 162
Oneida 42
Ongar 169
Orgemont 64, 65
Osaka 74-6, 79-81
Osawa, S. 74
Osborn, F. J. 33, 111, 124, 150,
152, 163, 168, 169, 192,
198-203
Owen, R. 42, 46
Owner-occupation 115, 175
Paraguay 108
Paris 12, 15, 18, 19, 21, 52, 55,
67,207
Paris Regional Plan 1965 17
Paris Region Master Plan 1919
67
Parker, B. 5, 8, 9, 13, 15, 78,
163, 198
Park Forest 17
Paternalism 53, 57
Pearsall, H. 6, 189
People's League of Health 38
Perry, C. 11, 15
Perth, W. A. 118, 120, 123
Peterlee 174
Philadelphia 132
Pinchot, G. 129
Pittsburgh 139
Planned unit developments 162
Planning 79, 107
Planning legislation 117
Plessis-Robinson 59, 66
Poland 23, 103, 197
Policy Studies Institute 205
214 INDEX

Port Sunlight 8, 35, 71, 148, Roosevelt, T. 134 Social Darwinists 40

188 Rosebery, Lord 39, 114 Social hygiene 38
Posen 97, 99, 101 Rothschild Foundation 57 Socialism 20, 23, 29, 32, 33,
Price, T. 113 Rouse, J. W. 153, 158, 160 40-3, 46-8, 53, 55, 65, 67,
Private developers 165-84 Rowe, C. 162 68, 112, 127, 188
Prost Plan 56 Rowntree, S. 38 Social reform 2, 4, 5, 8, 20, 21,
Proudhon, P. J. 40,41, 67 Royal Commission on the 22, 24, 28, 29, 32, 39, 43,
Prudential Assurance Distribution of the 48, 67, 68, 74, 75, 91
Company 172 Industrial Population 13 Social Works Investigation
Purdom, C. B. 13, 111, 168, Royal Commission on Housing Committee 81
192, 193, 194 (Victoria, Australia) 1914 Societe Centrale de Credit
116 Immobilier 54
Radburn, New Jersey 11, 12, Royal Commission on the Societe de Credit des
15, 122, 130, 131, 132, 133, Improvement of Sydney Habitations a Bon Marche
134, 135, 137, 139, 141, 1909114 54
143, 149, 150, 151, 154, Rural reform 28-50 Sone, T. 74
162 Ruskin, J. 3 South Australia 117
Railway 74-5 Russia 8 South Australian Housing
Raumordnung 88-103 Trust 123
Raumplanung 88-103 Satire, W. 137 South Australian Town
Ravenseft 174 Sakurai 75, 76 Planning and Development
Reade, C. 110 Salvation Army 35, 44 Act 1920 116
Reading, Berks 180 San Diego 133, 152 South Bronx 138
Reagan, R. 23, 127, 135, 136, Satellite town 9, 10, 12-15, 17, South Wales Regional Survey
140, 142, 143 24, 91, 92, 116, 122-4 1921 13
Reclus 40 Schmidt, K. 9 South Woodham Ferrers 179,
Regional Planning Association Schultze-Naumburg, P. 89, 92 181, 183
of America 128, 129, 130, Scotland 45, 48 Soviet Union 21, 207
133, 138 Scott Report 200 Span Developments Ltd 178
Reith Committee 15, 146, 169, Second Garden City Ltd 168 Special areas 200
183 Self-build 21 Speke 13, 14
Reith, Lord 15, 19, 169, 171, Self-contained communities 9, Spence, T. 35, 44
172, 174,201 10, 13-15, 17-19,23, Spencer, H. 35
Residential site layout and 146-9, 154, 155, 164, 174 Stiidtebau 89
planning 9, 11, 74, 83 Seki, H. 79 Stein, C. 11, 17,23, 128, 130,
Resettlement Administration Sellier, H. 12, 13, 21, 55, 56, 58 131, 142, 143, 149, 163
12, 128 Sennett, A. R. 70 Stevenage 16, 176
Reston, Virginia 17, 152, 153, Shakers, the 42 Stewart, Sir M. 169
155, 157, 161 Sharp, T. 115 Stockholm 17
Rey, A. 57 Shaw, G. B. 32,39,42, 148, Stone Bassett 176
Rhodes, C. 37 166, 167 Stonehouse 20
Richardson, B. W. 35 Shopping 151, 153, 156, 173, Suburbization 88
Risler, G. 54, 55, 57, 64 179, 180 Suburban sprawl 84, 128, 129,
Rist, C. 53 Shopping centres 176, 181 130, 138, 152, 157
Rix, H. 31 Siegfried, J. 54, 55 Suburbs 49, 151, 181
Rocard, M. 21 Silkin, L. 173, 201 Sulman, J. 109, 110, 113, 117,
Rochdale 42 Simple Life 4, 42 119
Rodgers, B. 163 Small Holdings (Colonies) Act Sunbury, Melbourne 123
Rogers, A. R. 172 44 Sunshine, Melbourne 117
Roosevelt, F. D. 128, 136 Social city 4, 10, 30, 88, 90, 91, Sunnyside Gardens, New York
Roosevelt's New Deal 12, 153 98, 149, 163, 205, 207-8 130, 139, 143

Suresnes 55, 56, 62, 63, 67
Sustainable development
204-8
Sutcliffe, A. 111
Swinton, A. C. 47
Switzerland 67
Sydney 111, 113, 118, 124
Tamagawa 75, 77
Tamagawadai 76, 77, 78
Tapiola Garden City 17
Taylor, F. 170, 183
Taylor Woodrow 170-172
Telford 18,21,205
Territorial order
(Raumordnung) 88-103
Territorial planning
(Raumplanung) 88-103
'Thames-la-Vallee' 207
Thatcherism 20, 207
Thatcher, M. 21, 175, 180
Theodore, QLD, 116
Third Garden City 21
Thompson, F. M. L. 48
Three magnets 29, 39, 147,
195
Tillingham Hall 176
Tokyo 76, 80-2
Tokyo Urban Improvement
Ordinance 79
Tokyo Urban Improvement
Programme 72
Tolstoyeans 41
Tomorrow: A peaceful path to
real reform 2, 4, 21, 28,
33,39,44, 53, 108, 147,
163, 188, 193
Town and Country Planning
Act 1932 169, 171
INDEX 215
Town and Country Planning Wakefield, E. G. 35
Act 1947 150 Wales 45
Town and Country Planning Wallace, A. R. 32, 45, 46, 47,
Association 21, 168, 181, 108
200, 207 Waller, P. J. 36
Town Development Act 1952 Wartheland 93, 96, 99, 101,
16 103
Town planning 74, 111 Wates, N. E. 171, 172
Toyonaka 75 Webb, S. 32
Treasury 174 Welwyn Builders Ltd 168
Troyes 60 Welwyn Garden City 10, 15,
Trump, D. 131 16,28,32,44,49, 147, 149,
Tsuchiya, J. 74 164, 166-9, 190, 198, 199,
Tucker, Rev. H. 108 203
Twycross, J. 112 Wells, H. G. 146
Tyson's Corner 153 Western Australia 117
Westmere 176, 177
Uchida, Y. 81, 82 West Preussen-Danzig 93, 96,
United States of America 3, 103
10, 11, 15, 17, 23, 24, 41, Whitlam, G. 123
74, 81, 122, 127-43, Whittick, A. 152
146-64, 193, 194, 197, 205 Wilkinson, L. 116
Unwin, R. 5, 6, 8-13, 15, 28, Will, G. 137
58, 59, 78, 91, 97, 124, 149, Williams, A. 167
163, 165, 191, 198 Wilson, W. 127,134
Urban decay 138 Winston, D. 125
Urban decentralization 113 Wolf, P. 98, 100, 101
Urban Environment Wright, H. Snr 11, 129, 130,
(European Commission 137, 143, 149, 163
Green Paper, 1990) 205 Wythenshawe 13, 14, 198
Urban reform 8, 32, 36, 38
Uthwatt Report 200 Yabe, K. 78
Yallourn, Victoria 116, 121
Vallingby 17 Yeats, W. B. 37
Vegetarianism 4 Yokoi, T. 72, 73
Verinder, F. 43 Yorkship Village 117
Verney Committee 44 Yuge, S. 83
Victoria, Australia 35
Virginia 17, 152, 155 Zoning 9, 109, 115, 116, 168