Sir Ebenezer Howard And The Town Planning Movement

Ebenezer Howard's iconic "Garden Cities of To-Morrow," published in 1902, spawned an international movement for the creation of Garden Cities in the early twentieth century and serves as a foundation text for modern planning theory. Contemporary planning efforts such as New Urbanism and Smart Growth look to Howard's concepts for inspiration, and this volume introduces fundamental ideas such as green belts and lays the foundations of Transit-Oriented Development. Also included in this new edition is the Garden Cities and Town Planning Association's follow-up work "The Garden City Movement Up-To-Date," published in 1913, fifteen years after Howard's first edition. This update provides valuable information, including plans and photographs, of the early years of the movement for Garden Cities like Letchworth and Hampstead. Supplemental information such as "missing" diagrams from Howard's earlier edition "To-Morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform" and up-to-date financial figures are also included in this volume. This work, one of the "Foundations of Urban Planning" series, is required reading and deserves to be included in any urban planner's or architect's bookshelf.

Originally published in 1898 as To-Morrow: A peaceful path to reform, "the book", writes F.J. Osborn "holds a unique place in town planning literature, is cited in all planning bibliographies, stands on the shelves of the more important libraries, and is alluded to in most books on planning; yet most of the popular writers on planning do not seem to have read it - or if they have read it, to remember what it says." The book led directly to two experiments in town-founding that by imitation, and imitation of imitation, have had a profound influence on practical urban development throughout the world. The book was responsible for the introduction of the term Garden City in numbers of languages - Cite-Jardin, Gartenstadt, Ciudad-jardin, Tuinstad - and set into motion ideas that have helped transform the scientific and political outlook on town structure and town growth. With urban renewal and the development of suburban communities as features of the contemoprary American scene, Garden cities of To-Morrow becomes "must" reading. In the words of Lewis Mumford: "This is not merely a book for Technicians: above all it is a book for citizens, for the people whose actively expressed needs, desires and interests should guide the planner and administrator at every turn." This book was first published in it's current form in 1965.

To celebrate the centenary of the first garden city at Letchworth, the Town and Country Planning Association has performed a service to planners everywhere by initiating the republication in facsimile form of the very scarce original first edition of To-Morrow. Accompanied by a running scholarly commentary on the text, and by a newly-written editorial introduction and postscript, jointly written by three leading commentators on Howard's life and work To-Morrow will immediately become a compulsory purchase for every serious student and practitioner of planning and for teachers and students of modern social, economic and political history.

Garden Cities of To-morrow Ebenezer Howard Garden Cities of To-morrow is a book by the British urban planner Ebenezer Howard. When it was published in 1898, the book was titled To-morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform. In 1902 it was reprinted as Garden Cities of To-Morrow. The book gave rise to the garden city movement. This book offered a vision of towns free of slums and enjoying the benefits of both town (such as opportunity, amusement and high wages) and country (such as beauty, fresh air and low rents). Howard illustrated the idea with his "Three Magnets" diagram. His ideas were conceived for the context of a capitalist economic system, and sought to balance individual and community needs. Two English towns were built as garden cities, Letchworth and Welwyn. Though they did not completely measure up to the ideal, they provided a model for controlling urban sprawl.

In this book, Stanley Buder examines the Garden City movement from its origins in mid-nineteenth-century England to its subsequent development and elaboration in twentieth- century America. The Garden City movement emphasized green belts around cities but was not identified exclusively with suburban development. Much of the city planning which formed the basis for the Garden City movement was based upon designing the ideal community. But this sense of idealism was soon lost with the transfer of the movement to America, and indeed it was unable to sustain itself in the communities of its origin in England.

Ebenezer Howard is recognised as a pioneer of town planning throughout the industrialised world; Britain's new towns, deriving from the garden cities he founded, are his monument. But Howard was more than a town planner. He was first and foremost a social reformer, and his garden city was intended to be merely the first step towards a new social and industrial order based on common ownership of land. This is the first comprehensive study of Howard's theories, which the author traces back to their origins in English puritan dissent and forward to Howard's attempt to build his new society in microcosm at Letchworth and Welwyn.