Garden Cities

1. PLAN 3022: Planning History & Theory
Week 04: Emergence of the Planning Professional – Garden City
Anuradha Mukherji
Assistant Professor of Urban and Regional Planning

2. Planning Approach
PRAGMATIC APPROACH
• Planning as an activity that
optimizes development under
the existing rules
• Seeking to solve problems
within the existing urban
framework
GRANDER AMBITION
• Radical view: The proper role of
planning as rewriting the rules
• Radical reconstruction of the
cities would solve not just the
urban crisis of their time but also
the social crisis.
• Physical design as an active
force
• Restructuring NOT Improvement

3. Idealists (1890-1930)
Ebenezer Howard, Frank Llyod Wright, Le Corbusier
1850-1928 1867-1959 1887-1965

4. Idealists (1890-1930)
Ebenezer Howard, Frank Llyod Wright, Le Corbusier
Concerns over architecture, urbanism, economics, and
politics
The cities were never conceived of as blueprints for any
actual project
 “ideal types” of cities for the future
Designed to illustrate the general principles
“Here and now” – never any actual location, not any
calendar day or year
Transformation of the physical environment:
the outward sign of an inner transformation in the social
structure

5. Ebenezer Howard’s Vision
Voluntary self-governing communities
Vehicles for progressive reconstruction of capitalist society into cooperative
commonwealths
Influenced by ‘Back to the Land’ movement – fueled by urban growth and squalor,
agriculture depression, nostalgia, anti-Victorian conventions
Social visionary: Proposing a polycentric vision of a social city

6. Garden City – Self sufficient unit
This image is attributed to Public Domain (PD-US-1923)
IDEA OF THE GARDEN CITY
- Ebenezer Howard – Town-Country Magnet
- Overcrowding an urban ill
- Cities attractive due to higher wages and social
opportunities, recreation
- Hardship in cities – high rents, prices, long work
hours, commuting distance, isolation and
alienation, health hazards
- Rural life beautiful - offers land, fresh air, water,
sunshine
- Rural less compelling – dull and lack of
economic opportunities
- Combining features of urban and country life to
achieve balanced lifestyles and best of both
- Self contained garden cities of 30,000 people
around a larger central city
- Cities with higher wages, regular jobs and
healthier environments

7. Ebenezer Howard’s Garden City
THE HOW
Group of people (with commercial competence) would establish a limited-dividend
company
Borrow money to establish a garden city in the countryside
Buy land in the country at rock bottom price
Get leading industrialists to move factories there, workers would move as well
Residents would build own houses
As more people moved out, the garden city would reach its limit, another would be
started at a short distance away
Overtime, a vast planned agglomeration, within it, each garden city would offer a
range of jobs and services and connected through rapid transit

8. Ebenezer Howard’s Garden City
Town clusters, each town in the cluster being of different design from the others, yet the whole forming one large
and well-thought-out plan.

9. Ebenezer Howard’s Garden City
A vision of the city of the future, and a system of such cities

11. Ebenezer Howard’s Garden City (Reorganization of the City)
This image is attributed to Public Domain (PD-US-1923)
GARDEN CITY MOVEMENT
- Elements – zoning and
greenbelts
- Zoning – division of land
for different uses
- Green belts – ‘buffer’
zones between distinct
land uses
- Housing and community
facilities away from factory
and manufacturing areas
COMMUNITY PLANNING
- Traffic free housing areas
- Concept of the
neighborhood unit

12. Green Machines – Industrial, Technical, Utopian
This image is attributed to Public Domain (PD-US-1923)
- Boulevards - 120 feet from
center to periphery, dividing city
into six parts
- Central garden with civic
institutions around – town hall,
library, theatre, museum,
hospital
- Shopping area separated by
green belt (central park)
followed by housing
- Grand avenue occupied by
schools and churches
- Outer ring comprised of
factories, ware-houses, dairies,
markets, coal yards
- Circled by the railway line
- Agriculture farm holdings
beyond, ready market close by
for the urban farmer
- City managed by citizens

13. Ebenezer Howard’s Garden City
Less interested in physical forms than in social progress
Key Idea: Citizens would own the land in perpetuity within the garden cities
Based on local management and self-governance
Services would be provided by municipality or private contractors
People would build own homes with capital provided through building and other
societies
CHALLENGES
Attracting industries
Getting capitalists to agree to a trust deed, transferring power progressively to the
community
Became a device for preserving capitalism instead of a peaceful alternative

14. Letchworth Garden City
The first practical demonstration of Howard’s concept (1903)
Conditions for the site:
• Close to a big city
• Low land price
• Between 3,000-5,000 acres
• With good rail connections and a satisfactory water supply and good
drainage
The Letchworth estate acquired in the summer of 1903 and the first Garden City
Limited formed in September of that year, estate opens on Oct 9, 1903
Architect-planner, Raymont Unwin and Barry Parker, published their layout plan in
1904

15. Letchworth Garden City, Hertfordshire, Great Britain
This image is attributed to Public Domain (PD-US-1923)
FORMAL DESIGN ELEMENTS:
• Use of a grand axial layout
• The big central Town Square
dominated by major municipal
buildings
• Zoning of the land
• Condensed development in the city
• Green belt outer area
• Small size
• Connectivity with other cities/towns

16. Letchworth Garden City, Hertfordshire, Great Britain
This image is attributed to Public Domain (PD-US-1923)
OTHER ELEMENTS:
• Railway line bisected the site
• Industry in the center of the city

17. Letchworth Garden City, Hertfordshire, Great Britain
This image is attributed to Jonathan Billinger @ 2008 (CC BY-SA 2.0)

18. Letchworth Garden City, Hertfordshire, Great Britain
This image is attributed to Toby Bradbury @ 2005 (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

19. Town Center, Letchworth, Hertfordshire, Great Britain
This image is attributed to littlebitmanky @ 2005 (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

20. Townhall, Letchworth, Hertfordshire, Great Britain
This image is attributed to Robin Hall @ 2006 (CC BY-SA 2.0)

21. Railway Station, Letchworth, Hertfordshire, Great Britain
This image is attributed to Robin Hall @ 2006 (CC BY-SA 2.0)

22. Library & Museum, Letchworth, Hertfordshire, Great Britain
This image is attributed to Robin Hall @ 2005 (CC BY-SA 2.0)

23. Letchworth, Hertfordshire, Great Britain
This image is attributed to Bill Boaden @ 2011 (CC BY-SA 2.0)

24. Meadow Way, Letchworth, Hertfordshire, Great Britain
This image is attributed to Christopher Hilton @ 2011 (CC BY-SA 2.0)

25. Hampstead Garden City
• Dame Henrietta Barnett’s “garden suburb for all classes”
• Architect Raymond Unwin
• Not a garden city but a garden suburb
• No industry, dependent on commuting from an adjacent tube station
Hampstead
Garden Suburb

26. Design
• Standard street layouts to make
use of existing contours and
natural features
• Housing – Arts and Crafts style
• Central social club
• Proto-green-belt formed by the
meadows of the adjacent River
Brent
• Gently curving roads, intimate
closes and grand vistas
• St. Jude, the “houses of worship”
in Central Square

27. Radburn, NJ
• Among intellectual streams contributing to ideology of American Planning
movement, Radburn, a partially built planned, New Jersey settlement
represents the influence of English garden city theories.
• Represents the basic principles of planning theory from 30s to 60s.
• Radburn Objectives:
• Decentralized, self-contained settlements
• Organized to promote environmental considerations by conserving open space
• Harnessing the automobile
• Promoting community life
• Closely tied to the evolution of the
American Planning movement.
• A product of the progressive reform
activities of the late nineteenth century.
• A commuter suburb not garden city

28. Radburn, NJ
Brainchild of Regional Planning Association
of America (RPAA) members
Constructed under sponsorship of City
Housing Corporation (CHC), a private,
limited-dividend company
British garden city ideas tailored to the legal
and social customs of the US
Dividend restricted to 6%, sold enough
stock to raise sufficient capital
RPAA members worked as a
multidisciplinary team:
• Including social scientists on the project
• Bringing new planning methods -
current data and expert advice
• Looked at issues such as education,
health, governance, and race
• Henry Wright and Clarence Stein
designed the much noted interior parks

29. Radburn, NJ

30. Radburn, NJ
Planned community promoted as: ‘Town for
the Motor Age’
Design elements:
• Superblock – high density clustering of
single, double, and multifamily housing
around large areas of commonly held
parkland
• Demographic dimensions based on
neighborhood principles articulated by
Clarence Perry
• Separation of vehicular traffic from
pedestrian paths
• Hierarchical arrangement of roads to
eliminate traffic in residential areas
• Use of pedestrian underpasses
• Series of cul-de-sacs
• Development of community organizations
to administer public lands, enforce
restrictions and supply services

31. Radburn, NJ

32. Radburn, NJ

33. Radburn, NJ

34. Radburn, NJ
The 1929 national financial collapse
bankrupted CHC in 1933 and
prevented the full execution of the plan
– that included complete town with
housing, employment, and commercial
facilities for 30,000 people
A small fraction executed, housing for
3,000 and a commercial center
The Radburn imprint most on federal
housing activities – especially such as
the superblock, transportation systems,
and park arrangements
Many aspects of the plan included in
new town experiments of 1930s
Idea of large scale development
continued during pre-war and post-war
public housing and urban renewal

35. Radburn, NJ
Parts of the Radburn idea survived over time
Concepts of homogeneity and large scale
development extended in the influential work of
FHA – FHA housing was 25% of all new
construction from 1934-1970
Large development favored for economic and
moral reasons. Large sites had low
infrastructure costs, superblocks as safe islands
amidst crime ridden slums
American zoning prohibited clustering and mixed
use in new settlements
FHA administrators called for the use of cul-de-
sacs in government insured subdivisions
FHA endorsed the restrictive covenant for use
as ‘protection for residential development. At
Radburn, provision in homeowners’ deeds for
architectural controls. FHA requirement led to
racial & ethnic discrimination

36. Radburn, NJ
• By 1950s, associations such as American Society of Planning Officials (ASPO), public
officials’ group, promoted some Radburn principles
• Large-scale developments
• Hierarchical transport systems
• Did not fully endorse the clustered superblock
• Anti-Radburn principles such as single lot, large individual yard, residential zoning
The American Institute of Planners (AIP) promoted Radburn’s ideas, but on the whole
these remained textbook principles, too utopian for American adoption and undercut by
ASPO propaganda
Suburban property and energy were abundant and low-priced, the conservation aspects –
the superblock, mixed-density residential units, and regional organization of employment –
were not attractive to land developers and municipal officials who favored simpler and
cheaper subdivision arrangements
The superblock was widely applied in post-war housing projects but with a twist. The
carefully articulated human densities of Radburn were distorted as legislative, economic
and political considerations dictated the construction of high rise building for urban renewal
projects

37. Radburn, NJ

38. Radburn, NJ
1960s
• Critiques of the ‘mindless application of super block neighborhood unit principle in
public housing that was destroying the social structure of low-income communities’
(Jane Jacobs)
• Kevin Lynch criticized the use stereotypical plans, the repetition of garden city and
super block without reference to purpose
• Critics attached assumptions that design based on middle-class values could promote
social progress
• Critiqued the technical based procedures to produced physical plans that did not
include citizens in the planning process
1970s
• Researchers found Radburn’s design had important implications for energy
conservation. About 47% of its residents shopped for groceries on foot. Low figures on
average numbers of miles traveled by car per resident.

39. Radburn, NJ
CONCLUDING POINTS
• Post-war suburban development did not follow the Radburn pattern
• Although planners participating in the radical transformation of the American landscape
held the Radburn plan as an ideal
• The professional was too weak, practitioners too few, existence too market-oriented for
practicing planners to overcome deeply ingrained political, economic and social
traditions with the rational but radical goals of the Radburn concept
• Overall, a permanent reference for generations of planners and persists as an icon in
the field
• Failed to be a determining force as an applied pattern