Garden city movement

Ebenezer Howard first posited the idea in 1898 as a way to capture the primary benefits of the countryside and the city while avoiding the disadvantages presented by both.

Howard's diagrams presented such a city in a concentric pattern with open spaces, public parks, and six radial boulevards, 120 ft (37 m) wide, extending from the centre, although he made it clear that the actual site planning should be left to experts.

[5] However, these donors would collect interest on their investment if the garden city generated profits through rents or, as Fishman calls the process, "philanthropic land speculation".

[8] In 1904, Raymond Unwin, a noted architect and town planner, and his partner Barry Parker, won the competition run by First Garden City Ltd. to plan Letchworth, an area 34 miles outside London.

Howard's successor as chairman of the Garden City Association was Sir Frederic Osborn, who extended the movement to regional planning.

[17] Garden City principles greatly influenced the design of colonial and post-colonial capitals during the early part of the 20th century.

[44][clarification needed] When interviewed in 1998, the architect responsible for introducing the design to public housing in New South Wales, Philip Cox, was reported to have admitted with regards to an American-Radburn-designed estate in the suburb of Villawood, "everything that could go wrong in a society went wrong," and "it became the centre of drugs, it became the centre of violence and, eventually, the police refused to go into it.

"[44] The concept of the Garden City was adopted again in the UK after World War II, when the New Towns Act spurred the development of many new communities based on Howard's egalitarian ideas.

In Bhutan's capital city Thimphu, for example, the new plan, following the Principles of Intelligent Urbanism, is an organic response to the fragile ecology.

The Epcot Center in Bay Lake, Florida, took some influence from Howard's Garden City concept while the park was still under construction.

Today there are many garden cities in the world, but most of them have devolved to dormitory suburbs, which completely differ from what Howard aimed to create.

[48] The campaign continued in 2013 with the publication in March of that year of "Creating Garden Cities and Suburbs Today - a guide for councils".

[citation needed] In 2014 The Letchworth Declaration[50] was published which called for a body to accredit future garden cities in the UK.

[54] A "Black Country Garden City" was announced in 2016 with plans to build 45,000 new homes in the West Midlands on brownfield sites.

"[58] The planned garden suburb emerged in the late 19th century as a by-product of new types of transportation were embraced by a newly prosperous merchant class.

Major innovations that defined early garden suburbs and subsequent suburban town planning include linking villa-like homes with landscaped public spaces and roads.

The suburbanisation of London was an increasing problem which Howard attempted to solve with his garden city model, which attempted to end urban sprawl by the sheer inhibition of land speculation due to the land being held in trust, and the inclusion of agricultural areas on the city outskirts.

Thanks to such strongly conservative local residents' associations as the Civic Society, both Hampstead and Gidea Park retain much of their original character.

Bournville Village Trust in Birmingham, UK, is an important residential development which was associated with the growth of 'Cadbury's Factory in a Garden'.

[citation needed] Howard's influence reached as far as Mexico City, where architect José Luis Cuevas was influenced by the garden city concept in the design of two of the most iconic inner-city subdivisions, Colonia Hipódromo de la Condesa (1926) and Lomas de Chapultepec (1928-9):[66] The subdivisions were based on the principles of the garden city as promoted by Ebenezer Howard, including ample parks and other open spaces, park islands in the middle of "grand avenues", such as Avenida Amsterdam in colonia Hipódromo.

The idea of garden suburbs was implemented by the Jewish settlers in Mandate Palestine and later in Israel, as well as in British and French colonial urban areas in Africa.