Ebenezer Howard: Garden Cities of Tomorrow (1902)

A précis of Ebenezer Howard's pioneering book by Juan Manuel Del Castillo

"How to stop the drift from the country? The labourer may perhaps be restored to the land, but how will the country industries be restored to rural England?" These are two of the main problems of the day. In order to give a proper answer to these questions, we need to consider two vital elements of English society, whose relationships shaped the aspect of present human settlements: the Town and the Country. Both present a series of advantages, like social opportunity and high money wages in the case of the Town; and the beauty of nature and fresh air low rents in the case of the Country. In contrast, they also present a series of disadvantages, like the isolation of crowds and the army of unemployed in the case of the Town; and the lack amusement and infrastructure in the case of the country. However, there is a third magnet, wich presents all the advantages of its predecessors and none of their disadvantages. The Town-Country magnet, thus, will preserve big chances of employment and public spirit with a sense of being close to forests and meadows. Since the average size of building lot in this Garden City is 20 by 130 feet, the density achieved will be of five and a half persons per house. Due to this condition, in order to obtain a general observance of street lines, municipal control is necessary. Moreover, regarding the services of the garden city and depending on proving capability, the private sector or the municipality can provide them for the whole town or for a section of it. Charitable and philanthropic institutions can also play an important role in the construction of public buildings. The Garden City, wich is to be built in the center of an area of 6000 acres, covers an area of 1000 acres and might be of circular form, 1240 yards from centre to circumference. It is divided in six equal parts by magnificent boulevards, that intersect each other in the centre of a circular space containing about five and a half acres, where a big garden is surrounded by all larger public buildings like the town hall, concert and lecture hall, library, theatre, museum and hospital. A wide glass arcade called the "Crystal Palace", runs all around the Central Park, encircling 145 acres with ample public recreation grounds within very easy access of all the people. Passing out from the Crystal Palace, we find a ring of excellently built houses and afterwards, we find the Grand Avenue with its 420 feet wide, that forms a belt of green dividing the part of the town which lies outside Central Park into two belts. In this splendid avenue we can find six sites reserved for public schools, playgrounds and gardens. On the outer ring of the town are a wide range of factories and markets fronting the circle railway, which encompasses the whole town and connects them with the main line of railway wich passes through the estate. All machinery is driven by electric energy, keeping the smoke well within bounds in the Garden City and resulting in a reduction of costs of electricity for lighting and other purposes.

The agricultural portions of the estate, which are to be held by various individuals in large farms, small holdings, allotments, cow pastures, etc., utilize the refuse of the town and are located after the first 1240 yards. The short distances between consumers and producers reduce the costs related to transportation and establish a fruitful relationship, that can lead, also, to the possibility of raising agricultural rents. It is an important part of the project that each ward, or one sixth part of the city, should be a complete town by itself. To this end, school buildings might serve, in the earlier stages, not only as schools but as places of religious worship, for concerts, for libraries, and for meetings of various kinds, so that all outlay on expensive municipal and other buildings might be deferred until the later stages of the enterprise. Before commencing on another, work would be practically completed in one ward. Those portions of the town site on which building operations were not in progress would also be a source of revenue, either as allotments, cow pastures, or, perhaps, as brickfields. The final scheme of the town would not be the work of one mind, but of many, the minds of engineers, of architects and surveyors, of landscape gardeners and electricians. The unity of design and purpose is essential, the town should be planned as a whole and not left to grow up in a chaotic manner. Four important elements of the project: 1. No landlord rent 2. A site clear of buidings 3. Economy arising out of a definite plan 4. The possibility of introducing machinery for engineering operations Parks are a significant portion of the scheme. Much of them will be left in a state of nature, but the municipality will also encourage sport clubs like cricket, tennis or football to place their facilities there. Democracy is the system chosen to rule the Garden City. A board of management will be elected to take charge of administrative affairs and it will be formed of a central council and departments, such as Public Health, Engineering and Social Purpose departments. Moreover, the board of management will also be in charge of controlling the shops and stores, specifically: 1. Induce tenants of the shopkeeping class to come and start in business, offering to the community adequate rate-rents 2. Prevent the absurd and wasteful multiplication of shops 3. Secure low prices, a wide range of choice, fair dealing, civility, etc. 4. Avoid the evils attending monopoly Regarding workers exploitation, it could be avoided encouraging the workers to do pro-municipal work, a well paid and rewarding kind of work. Finally, the way the Garden City should grow, in order to avoid a scattered form, should be a radial development. This is specially important when thinking about its application to London's present situation. The proposed siting of eight to ten new satellite towns and reservation of country belt is part of the radial and cellular future growing intended for the capital city. The most important matter for this respects, will be the building of one small Garden City as a working model, which eventually will lead to a group of cities that can interact with each other as has been previously described.

Ebenezer Howard: Garden Cities of To-morrow (1902)

Reviewed by Luke Butcher

Perhaps one of the most influential books in the field of urban planning in the past 150 years, Garden Cities of To-morrow was the second edition title (1902) of Ebenezer Howard’s book To-morrow: A Peaceful Path to Reform (1898). Within its pages Howard put forth designs for a “social city” that attempted to bridge between the individualist (capitalist) system of the time and the ideals of socialism that were gaining political impetus, with Trade Unions, Co-operatives and ideas of communal land protection (central to Howard’s argument).

Dreamt up during a time when countries were beginning to urbanize (15% of the world’s population were urban, a rapidly growing figure), there were squalid living and working environments and the working class were unable to afford a decent home. Howard’s response was just one of numerous utopian visions that spoke of a better future, with the key difference being that he aimed to produce a scheme that was both realistic and achievable.

The model of a “Garden City” set out in the first chapter of the book is ultimately the greatest legacy of the book, rightly or wrongly, with the subsequent formation of the Garden City Association in 1899 (that 42 years later would become the Town and Country Planning Association) leading to the “Garden City Movement.” The construction of two garden cities – at Letchworth (1903) and Welwyn (1919) – would act as further catalysts for change, that culminated, but was not way limited to, the post-Second World War New Towns Act.

Ebenezer Howard

Born the son of a shopkeeper in the City of London, on the 29th of January 1850, Howard, after schooling, took on a number of clerical posts. In 1871, aged 21, he emigrated to the ‘frontier country’ of America to become a farmer. This would prove unsuccessful and he subsequently spent four years living in Chicago, witnessing its’ rebuilding following the great fire. It was during this time he began to contemplate ways to improve cities. He eventually returned to London, in 1876, to a job producing the official verbatim record of Parliament. This would become the primary occupation for the rest of his life and meant he was constantly exposed to the political elite of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Howard began to move in certain social circles, originally through various religious groups, that saw him become involved in late-19th century English social reformism, without ever entering into the socialist mainstream. His political ideologies were more closely aligned to that of the co-operative movement, as opposed to trade union movement.

In addition to these socialist ideologies Howard was heavily influenced by the utopian visions of Edward Bellamy and his publication Looking Backway (1888). According to the ‘great admirer’ of Howard, Frederick J. Osborn, “under the impact of the book the conception of an ideal town came to him as essentially a socialist community.” Howard, in the book itself, highlights three major influences: the proposals for an organized migratory movement of population by Edward Gibbon Wakefield and Professor Alfred Marshall; the system of land tenure proposed by Thos. Spence; and the model city of James Buckingham. The ideas put forth in To-morrow were a synthesis of his personal experiences and the works of others.

The Evil of the City

“We are becoming a land of great cities. Villages are stationary or receding; cities are enormously increasing. And if it be true that the great cities tend more and more to become the graves of the physique of our race, can we wonder at it when we see the houses so foul, so squalid, so ill-drained, so vitiated by neglect and dirt?”
Dean Fararr

It is important to understand the context to which Howard’s work was a reaction. London (and other cities) in the 19th century were in the throws of industrialization, and the cities were exerting massive forces on the labour markets of the time. Massive immigration from the countryside to the cities was taking place with London compared to “a tumour, an elephantiasis sucking into a gorged system[s] half the life and blood and the bone of the rural districts” (Lord Rosebery). This situation was unsustainable and political commentators of all parties sought “how best to provide the proper antidote against the greatest danger of modern existence” (St. Jame’s Gazette, 1892) – the importance of the Boer Wall call up and the realization that the health of the English fighting man had greatly deteriorated can not be forgotten either.

The Three Magnets

To Howard the cure was simple – to reintegrate people with the countryside. In trying to understand and represent the attraction of the city he compared each city to a magnet, with individuals represented as needles drawn to the city. He set about comparing the ‘town and country magnets’ but decided that neither were suitable attractors for his utopian vision. Instead he believed that “Human society and the beauty of nature are meant to be enjoyed together” – his solution “the two magnets must be made one.”

The Town-Country Magnet

Building on the principles of the Three Magnets, Howard begins to establish a hypothetical scenario for the testing of his proposals for social reform. To do this the reader is asked to imagine a 6,000-acre estate, purchased for £240,000 and vested in trust to four honourable gentlemen. The Garden City itself was to cover 1,000 acres and be home to 30,000 people. Taking a circular form the city would be divided into six equal Wards, by six main Boulevards (named for pioneers of Human thought) that radiated from a central garden. Around the centre garden would be placed the civic institutions (Town Hall, Library, etc) and then a ‘Central Park,’ which in turn is enclosed by a ‘Crystal Palace’ – an arcade of indoor shops and winter garden. A series of concentric ringed tree-lined Avenues provide the major streets for houses, with a ‘Grand Avenue’ 420-feet wide that is both a 3-mile continuous public park and home to schools and churches. At the edge of the city Howard placed the ‘heavy’ industry of factories and warehouses, with direct access to a Municipal railway that aimed to alleviate pressure on the cities street network and connect the Garden City to the rest of the nation. Surrounding the city the remaining 5,000 acres are a designated Agricultural Belt, home to 2,000 people, with cow pastures, farmland and welfare services including an asylum.

Despite being incredibly descriptive in his proposal Howard repeats on a number of occasions that the design and ideas on planning he puts forth should not be taken verbatim, instead any design should be entirely dependent on the context. The principles, which Howard wanted to emphasise, were not morphological – with the exception of an agricultural belt to limit city growth and concentrate social life within the city (Robert Fishman) – but sociological.

Revenue and Expenditure

Central to Howard’s argument was that the Garden City could operate economically and allow the community to have ownership of the land. He goes to great lengths to demonstrate how the revenue derived simply from rents could be used to:
- Pay the interest with which the estate was purchased (providing a 4% return for the initial investors
- Provide a sinking fund for the purpose of paying off the principal
- Construct and maintain all the works typically undertaken by municipalities (including a detailed breakdown of associated costs)
- Provide a large surplus for other purposes including old age pensions, medical services and insurance

Administration

In dealing with the administration of the Garden City the first question to be dealt with is the extent to which municipal enterprise is carried out and to what extent it should supersede private enterprise. Howard does not advocate the complete municipalisation of industry or the elimination of private enterprise, instead he proposes a cautious and limited municipality that doesn’t attempt “too much.” The activities are to be closely related to the rate-rent of the tenants and would “grow in proportion as municipal work is done efficiently and honestly.”

With this in mind the structure of the municipality and its administration is proposed with a Board of Management composed of The Central Council and The Departments (Public Control, Engineering, Social and Education).

A Welfare Municipality

The Garden City proposal could be read as being in a state of tension between individual and social ideals. This is particularly evident in the explanation of how to create local choice, in terms of goods and services available to citizens, is made by heavily regulated private enterprise. Instead of “an absurd multiplication of shops” providing the same service – a single shop is allowed with the threat of competition (if the community feels the shop keeper is keeping prices to high, paying insufficient wages to his employees, etc) designed to keep prices low and service high. These local tradesmen are in essence municipal servants in all but title; not being bound in what Howard calls the “red tape of officialism.”

Howard hopes that, as opposed to other socialist (including communist) reform experiments of the day, that his proposal would appeal to not only individuals but to co-operators, manufacturers, philanthropic societies, and others experienced in organisation.

City Growth

Assuming the Garden City model was implemented and found to be successful Howard begins to describe how the City could grow and become part of an integrated network of Garden Cities. The principle of “always preserving a belt of country” around cities should always be maintained, argues Howard, so once a city has reached capacity a new one must be founded outside the agricultural belt (the influence of colonial-models prominent). The off-shoot city would grow organically, a ward at a time. Eventually there a central city (of perhaps 58,000 inhabitants) would be surrounded by a number of smaller off-shoot cities, connected by railroad and canal infrastructure.

Dystopian London

Howard ultimately turns his attention back to London, as an example of the “largest and most unwieldy” of 19th century cities, predicting that Garden Cities had the potential to dramatically change London: reducing population, clearing sums and ultimately turning it into a Garden City.

“The time for the complete reconstruction of London – which will eventually take place on a far more comprehensive scale than that now exhibited in Paris, Berlin, Glasgow, Birmingham or Vienna – has however, not yet come. A simpler problem must first be solved. One small Garden City must be built as a working model…”

These predictions are the most utopian of the book and perhaps would have come to fruition if not for a number of external factors that Howard either couldn’t have foreseen or failed to realise the importance of – notably the rise of the automobile.

Legacy of Howard and the Garden City

When To-morrow was first published the world was very different to the media-rich urban environment we currently inhabit. Despite this Ebenezer Howard is still regarded as one of the most important figures in the international development of urban planning. His simple diagrams of the model city have been taken up and reinterpreted a hundred times over across the globe but Howard’s most cherished ideas of social reform had very little impact – his social reformist message was lost.

“Very quickly, the Garden City came to be understood in a more limited sense, as an urban planning model to reform the spatial arrangement of social and economic life. It is through this understanding that Howard’s legacy has largely been experienced.” (Stephen V. Ward).

He set in motion new ideas about hierarchy of services within the city, the essential components of community, being planned with clear zoning principles. Whilst the ideas about hierarchy and zoning were not original in themselves, it was the holistic approach that Howard adopted that helped lend them legitimacy. The idea of the agricultural belt, the ‘bounded’ city, is directly responsible for policies of ‘Green Belt’ in the UK (and other parts of the world) that has since evolved and changed but essentially remains about constricting and controlling urban growth.

Additionally, the debate about the future of American Cities in the 1950s, with the infamous arguments between Jacobs and Mumford, can be traced back to the Garden City Movement. It will forever be associated with the ideas of suburbia and, increasingly, new urbanism.

If there was one enduring legacy though, beyond the physical make-up of the city, it is the importance Howard gave to creating a sense of community and harbouring relationships between human beings, enhancing them through good planning and design that promoted sociability.



Garden Cities of To-morrow Micro Site