Ebenezer Howard and the Garden City Movement

* Introduction

This essay concerns itself with the interpretation of Ebenezer Howards Garden City concept, how it was developed to approaching the social problems from the late 19th century to early 20th century and the impact on the later planning history. I will review the origins of this concept, and the process of the Garden City Movement, focusing on the following issues: the social reform ideal in the Garden City principles in coping with the increasing urban and rural problems at that period of time; the compromises of Howards original thoughts in the practice of Letchworth and Welwyn, and the reasons why the movement was becalmed; the Garden citys enlightenment to the birth of British town planning and its early concepts; The pioneers of Howards in the movement and their influences worldwide. In the last part of the essay, I will briefly discuss its implication for 21st century planning.

* The Origins

Firstly its essential to see the context of Howards work and the problems hes responding to. The 19th century saw the impact of the Industrial Revolution on the growth of major industrial and port cities in Britain. This was caused by the shift of rural population to urban areas, as the result of the increasing appeal of urban jobs and the parliaments enclosure act. However, there were not adequate social arrangements for this change, two major social problems emerged as the consequences. The first was the Public Health problem, the polluted water supplies, and the insufficient system of waste disposals, the lacking of medial treatment led to the spread of cholera epidemics in mid-19th century. The other was the Housing problem. By the late 19 th century, slums existed in the centers of all large urban areas, few working-classes or the underemployed had decent homes and living environment. Meanwhile, the land problem was also one of the most intensively debated topics in 1880s. The base of the debates arose from the concern over the depression of agricultural lands, which was expressed in the slogan Back to the Land or Three Acres and a Cow.

The two camps involved in the debates were Land taxation of Henry Georges English

Land Restoration League and land nationalization of Land Nationalisation Society led by Alfred Russel Wallace, whose gradual nationalism idea had impacted on Howard and the early development stage of the Garden City proposal.

Ebenezer Howard published the Garden Cities of To-Morrow in 1898, in which Howard claimed the Garden City concept was the unique combination of proposals: A carefully planned city by Benjamin Ward Richardson; The nationalization of land by Thomas Spence; The model of industrial town by James Buckingham, The necessity for a more systematic plan of colonization for distant land by Edward Gibbon Wakefield, Edward Bellamys Looking Backward (1889), the creation of new industrial colonies by Alfred Marshall.2 Howards idea was to use Garden City as the Master Key to solving all the social and economical problems. 3

Sir Peter Hall called him the exception among the utopian thinkers who never avoided the practical details of how to bring it(idea) about4. Therefore, its the details of the formation of the Garden Cities rather than its spatial plan I want to focus on in the following writings.

* The Original Vision of Howard

1 2

Ward S.V(2004) Planning and Urban Change, SAGE Publication London. Pp 15 Ward S.V(1992) The Garden City: past, present and future,Routledge, pp 35-36 3 Howard E and Osborn F.J (1965) Garden Cities of To-morrow, MIT Press, pp 10 4 Hall P(1992) Urban & Regional Planning 3rd Edition, Routledge London and New York, pp 61

Figure 1: The Three Magnet Diagram

The centre of Garden city idea is the Three Magnets Concept diagrams, in which Howard created a Town-Country magnet which combines the advantages of both towns and countries to give the residents access to works and services while enjoying a better living environment in the countryside.(Fig 1) Garden cities will restore the flow of migration from countryside to the town, to release the over-crowd in inner cities and the consequent problems. He also provide the details of how to achieve this,

Figure 2: The Garden City Diagram

The physical plan

The Garden cities are built in the middle of the countryside, isolated from the old major cities. It has a population limit of 32,000 people and land limit up to 1000 acres. (Fig 2)

Howards physical plan of the Garden city shows the following features, * Large rural lands surround the garden city; * Service and Municipal buildings are at the centre with houses and gardens belts around them, while the factories and railways are on the perimeter; * Six Boulevards divide the city into six equal wards, or neighbourhood units as Clarence Perry called later; * There are large farms and smallholdings in the rural land, together with miscellaneous institutions.

Financial details

The land on which Garden cities are built on would be bought at a depressed agriculture land values. As people and factories settled in the Garden city, its land value will grow and the rents could be paid off. The collective-ownership of the lands ensures any surplus revenue derived from the rents would be used for social purposes: it can be spent on the public amenities to maintain the Garden Citys attraction to residents, factories and farms, who would be more willing to pay the rent, hence a virtuous cycle is formed. In addition, Howard believed the garden city would function as a marketing device, which would cause the ground rents to fall in London.

His housing scheme was derived from varies of Housing reform ideas: the municipal housing was not needed( Ward, 2004, pp19).The citizens could build their own homes using the funding from community and volunteering sectors. One notable thing is that, contrary to common understanding, the residential housing Howard promoted was of high density(Hall, 1992, pp 37). Services would be provided by both municipal enterprises and private contractors, the citizens would benefit from the competition between providers. The health care, education and retail services are provided in each of the six wards, within the walking-distance for every local resident.

Figure 3: The Social Cities Diagram

The Social Cities

Howards treatment of the growth of the Garden City is to start another city some little distance away. A cluster of Garden cities, which may vary in design, are grouped around the Central City, this polycentric vision is what Howard called the Social City.(Fig 3) Here Howard promoted a convenient railway system to enhance the communication between each town and the central city. The Social Cities, not the individual isolated Garden city, was to be the physical realization of Howards third magnet.5

Howards Garden City proposal is not merely a spatial form planning, its fundamental purpose is to plan a social reform, that is, rebuilding the entire social and industrial order to create a new community, which would prevent the urban sprawl and empower the declining agriculture. It concerns with the relationship between the town and the surrounding rural land, the town finance and administration, the land reform, housing and service provision and other vital factors in the social development.

* The Spread of the Garden City Movement

Letchworth and Welwyn

Howard founded the Garden City Association in 1899, with the objectives to promote the Garden City movement and to lead the formation of Garden Cities in Britain. Howards followers in Land Nationalisation Society formed the first groups of members of GCA. In 1903, the First Garden City Company was registered to build the first actual Garden City-Letchworth. Raymond Unwin and his assistant Barry Parker were appointed as the architects, to work on the design of Letchworth from 1905. Although they generally respected Howards original plan, there were serious compromises of the social ideals: the common ownership of land, the public finance and the social cities were all left out of the design. At the end, Letchworth was merely a model of the environmental reform. Accompanied by his loyal follower Frederic Osburn, Howard started the second Garden CityWelwyn, in 1920, which was more detached away from his original idea of a selfcontained community: with the short traveling time to London, most of residents in Welwyn work in London instead of in local areas.

Hall, P and C, Ward (1999),Sociable Cities, Academy Press. Pp 25

The influence on early Planning ideas

The heyday of garden city movement was between 1900s and 1930s, which was also the period of time when the notion of town and country planning was initially developed in UK. The first planning Act-the Housing, Town planning was introduced in 1909; before this, the closest action to planning by the government were the public controls over the street width, the height, structure and layout of the buildings, as stated in The Torrens Acts 1868, the Cross Acts 1875 and Building Act 1894.

Raymond Unwin inherited Howards idea of reformed working-class housing: not only in the form of tenements in industrial cities, but of single-family houses in new planned towns, which later greatly influenced the birth of British council housing. From 1929 to 1933, as the Chief Technical Adviser to the Greater London Region Planning Committee, Unwin proposed a decentralization plan of people and jobs to satellite towns for London.

During 1943 to 1945, Patrick Abercrombie prepared a Greater London Plans, in which he combined the ideas from Howard, Unwin to Patrick Geddes who developed Garden Cities in a more realistic direction. In fact the Plan shared the same objectives as Howards: decentralizing the population in major industrial cities and restoring them in a planned community, which at the beginning could be self-contained towns for working and living. (Hall, 1992, pp 52)Hence Howards Garden City was part of reasons why London is like today. In fact, Howard had stated the impact of Garden cities on the future London in the last chapter of Garden City of To-morrow- new garden citieseffects upon London and the population of London; upon its land values; upon its municipal debt, and its municipal assets; upon London as a labour market; upon the homes of its people; upon its open spaces(Howard,E and Osborn F.J, 1965,pp 154)

The movement also spread around the world, most widely in the US, the parkways, which are roads running through landscaped countryside, was developed in 1920s; this was actually an adaption of Howards idea of railways system in social cities. The neighbourhood-unit idea, as developed by Clarence Perry, was an extension of Howards wards in original diagram of Garden City. Taken the neighbourhood concept, several

garden cities were built in US, such as Radburn by Clarence Stein(1933) and Woodbourne near Boston.

However, throughout the movement, Howards principle was broken down and the fragments were used to pursue new ideas, including greenbelts, garden suburbs and satellite towns. This was part of the reason the Garden City movement, at least the most original as led by Howard himself was gradually becalmed, the other reason was, after WWII, the New Town Act, as part of the Greater London Plan, was passed in 1946; the new towns replaced the garden cities to be the centre of practice: more than 14 new towns were designated from 1946 to 1950. The new towns were slightly drifted away from Howards idea of self-containment, as they were tightly interdependent with the major cities.

The Garden City principle was the main source of ideas in the early stage of the planning activities. Besides, It continued to inspire the planning ideas today: the Town and Country Planning Association (originally the GCA) is now dedicated in the promotion of sustainable community, which is adapted on Howards original ideas of Garden Cities: Secure a decent home for everyone; empower communities; better use of our land, 6

* Conclusion

Ebenezer Howards Garden City concept was a marriage of utopian thinking and practical details. Its greatest success was not merely the physical model, but the social reform ideology of a social city, which fundamentally was a sustainable solution to control the urban sprawl and rural land problems. It was the inspiration behind the birth of town planning, and continued to influence planning ideas throughout the century. Today, new challenges have emerged in agricultural economy, class conflict and service provision in the countryside, hence its important to reinterpret the Garden City idea and use it to prepare a sustainable solution for the future.

TCPA, Towns and countryside for a new age of challengea manifesto from the tcpa, 2009

References, Ward S.V(2004) Planning and Urban Change, SAGE Publication London. Ward S.V(1992) The Garden City: past, present and future,Routledge London and New York. Howard E and Osborn F.J (1965) Garden Cities of To-morrow, MIT Press Hall P(1992) Urban & Regional Planning 3rd Edition, Routledge London and New York Hall, P and C, Ward (1999),Sociable Cities, Academy Press. TCPA(2009) Towns and countryside for a new age of challengea manifesto from the tcpa