Howard arrived in Chicago just after the great fire of 1871, which destroyed most of the central business district, and witnessed the regeneration of the city and the growth of its suburbs.

By 1876, he was back in England, where he found a job with Hansard company, which produces the official verbatim record of Parliament, and he spent the rest of his life in this occupation.

Sociologist Brett Clark describes Howard as a "humble and practical" inventor who used his spare time to create outlines of new cities.

[11][12] Howard's wife, Eliza Ann Bills (1853–1904), died in November 1904, shortly after work on the first garden city at Letchworth had begun.

[citation needed] Howard read widely, including Edward Bellamy's 1888 utopian novel, Looking Backward, and Henry George's economic treatise, Progress and Poverty, and thought much about social issues.

[5] Garden Cities were to avoid the downfalls of industrial cities of the time such as urban poverty, overcrowding, low wages, dirty alleys with no drainage, poorly ventilated houses, toxic substances, dust, carbon gases, infectious disease and lack of interaction with nature.

[15] It proposed the creation of new suburban towns of limited size, planned in advance, and surrounded by a permanent belt of agricultural land.

[5] The towns would be largely independent, managed by the citizens who had an economic interest in them, and financed by ground rents on the Georgist model.

In 1901, under the guidance of Henry Vivian, a new co-partnership housing development venture was started in the London Borough of Ealing that was to become the Brentham Garden Suburb, now a conservation area.

His acquaintance with German architects Hermann Muthesius and Bruno Taut resulted in the application of humane design principles in many large housing projects built in the Weimar Republic.

Walt Disney used elements of Howard's concepts in his original design for EPCOT (Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow).

[17] Howard constructed Letchworth as an example of how the Garden City could be achieved, and hoped that in its success many other towns would be built emulating the same ideals.

However, it can be argued the space is what makes Letchworth pleasant, and the architecture, while not highly impressive and uniform, has consistency of colour and is satisfying to the needs of the people.

[18] Welwyn Garden City is only 20 miles (32 km) from London, and captured the charm of the countryside and managed to stay unspoiled by urbanisation.

In almost 90 years, the medal has been awarded 11 times and the names are a stellar cast of Garden City giants beginning with Raymond Unwin in 1938 and ending with Colin Ward and Sir Peter Hall in 1999.

It includes Barry Parker, Lewis Mumford, Clarence Stein, Richard Reiss,[22] Patrick Abercrombie and Frederic Osborn[23] but only one woman, Elizabeth Buchanan Mitchell[24] in 1955.