CONCEPT OF GARDEN CITY :

TO-MORROW
BY
SIR EBENEZER HOWARD

SUBMITTED BY:
PRIYANKA MITTAL
1542018
 EBENEZER HOWARD

Sir Ebenezer Howard OBE (29 January 1850– 1 May 1928), the English founder of
the garden city movement is known for his publication
To-Morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform (1898), the description of a utopian city in
which people live harmoniously together with nature. The publication resulted in
the founding of the garden city movement, and the building of the First Garden
City, Letchworth Garden City, commenced in 1903.
 EARLY LIFE OF
EBENEZER HOWARD
• Howard was born in Fore Street, City of London, the son of
Ebenezer Howard (1818–1900), a baker, and Ann (née Tow,
born 1818).
• He was sent to schools in Suffolk and Hertfordshire. Howard
left school at 15 and began working as a stenographer in
London.
• Howard subsequently had several clerical jobs, including one
with Dr. Parker of the City Temple.
 EARLY LIFE OF
EBENEZER HOWARD
• In 1871, at the age of 21, influenced partly by a farming uncle,
Howard emigrated with two friends to America.
• He went to Nebraska, and after his farming efforts failed,
discovered he did not wish to be a farmer. He then relocated to
Chicago and worked as a reporter for the courts and
newspapers.
• In the US he became acquainted with, and admired, poets
Walt Whitman and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Howard began to
ponder ways to improve the quality of life.
 LATER LIFE OF
EBENEZER HOWARD
• 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.
• Howard's time in parliament exposed him to ideas about
social reform, and helped inspire his ideas for the Garden City.
• In August 1879 he married Eliza Ann Bills. Howard has been
described as a humble and practical inventor who used his
spare time to create outlines of new cities.
 LATER LIFE OF
EBENEZER HOWARD
• It was the social milieu of the 1800s which led Howard to
consider the social problems of the time and try to find
alternatives.
• Howard mingled with free thinkers, anarchists and socialists,
whose revolutionary and reforming ideas greatly influenced
him.
• Following the death of his wife Eliza Ann Bills (1853–1904)
in 1907 he married Edith Annie Hayward (1864–1941), who
ended her days as Edith, Lady Howard, and with whom he is
buried in Letchworth Cemetery.
 INFLUENCE AND
IDEAS
• 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.
• He disliked the way modern cities were being developed and
thought people should live in places that should combine the
best aspects of both cities and the countryside.
WHAT WAS GARDEN
CITY MOVEMENT
BY
SIR EBENEZER
HOWARD ?
 GARDEN CITY
MOVEMENT
• Sir Ebenezer Howard is known for his Publication Garden
Cities of To-morrow (1898), the description of a utopian city in
which people live harmoniously together with nature.
• The publication resulted in the founding of the garden
city movement that realized several Garden Cities in Great
Britain at the beginning of the 20th century.
•  He had no training in urban planning or design but excelled in
creating places which he called “magnets” where people
would want to come to reside and work.
 GARDEN CITY
MOVEMENT
• His garden cities were planned, contained communities
surrounded by a green belt (parks), containing proportionate
areas of residences, industry and agriculture.
• Garden city movement aimed at addressing the urban
problems plaguing the industrial city of that time.
• Garden City concept was an effective response for a better
quality of life in over crowded and dirty industrial towns
which had deteriorated the environment and posed serious
threat to health.
 Garden city movement
had The Three Magnets to
addresses the question
‘Where will the people
go?’ the choices being
‘Town’, ‘Country’ or
‘Town Country’.
 THE THREE MAGNETS
Town – The pull of ‘Town Magnet’ are the
opportunities for work and high wages,
social opportunities, amusements and well
– lit streets.
It was closing out of nature, offered
isolation of crowds and distance from
work.
But it came at a cost of foul air, costly
drainage, murky sky and slums. 
Country –  The pull of ‘Country Magnet’ is
in natural beauty, fresh air, healthfulness.
It offered natural beauty, low rents, fresh
air, meadow but had low wages and lack
of drainage.
Country has dullness, lack of society, low
wages, lack of amusements and general
decay.
 THE THREE MAGNETS
Town- Country – it was a combination of
both town and countryside with aim of
providing benefits of both and offered
beauty of nature, social opportunity, fields
if easy access, low rent, high wages and
field of enterprise. 
 Thus, the solution was found in a
combination of the advantages of Town
and Country – the ‘Town – Country
Magnet’ – it was proposed a Town in the
Country, and having within it the
amenities of natural  beauty, fresh air and
healthfulness.
Thus advantages of the Town – Country
are seed to be free from the disadvantages
of either.
 How cities were
supposed to be
developed as per Garden
City Movement
 CONCEPT
• An ideal garden city is a compact town of 6000 acres, 5000 of
which is permanently reserved for agriculture.
• It accommodates a maximum population of 32,000.
• There are parks and private lawn everywhere.
• Also the roads are wide, ranging from 120 to 420 feet for the
Grand Avenue, and are radial rather than linear. 
• Within the town, functional zoning is basic.
•  Commercial, industrial, residential, and public uses are
clearly differentiated from each other spatially.
 CONCEPT
•  Additional elements include unified land ownership –co-
operatives, there was no individual ownership of land.
• Local community also participated in the decision making
regarding development.
• As we can see in the diagram, there is a central park
containing public buildings.
• It is surrounded by shopping streets which are further
surrounded by dwelling units in all directions.
• The outer circle contains factories and industries. Rail road’s
bypasses the town, meeting the town at tangent.
 CONCEPT
• After a city reaches its target population, new interconnected
nodes can be developed.
• A Garden City is built up and its population has reached
32,000. How will it grow.
• It will grow by establishing another city some little distance
beyond its own zone of ‘country’, so that the new town may
have a zone of country of its own.
• But the inhabitants of the one could reach the other in a very
few minutes; for rapid transit would be specially provided for,
and thus the people of the two towns would in reality represent
one community.
 CONCEPT
• There will be a cluster of cities so grouped around a Central City
that each inhabitant of the whole group, though in one sense living
in a town of small size, would be in reality living in, and would
enjoy all the advantages of, a great and most beautiful city; and yet
all the fresh delights of the  country; field, hedgerow, and woodland
not prim parks and gardens merely would be within a very few
minutes’ walk or ride.
• And because the people in their collective capacity own the land on
which this beautiful group of cities is built, the public buildings, the
churches, the schools and universities, the libraries, picture galleries,
theatres, would be on a scale of magnificence which no city in the
world whose land is in pawn to private individuals can afford.
 MAIN COMPONENTS
• Planned Dispersal: The organized outward migration of
industries and people to towns of sufficient size to provide the
services, variety of occupations, and level of culture needed by
a balanced cross – section of modern society.
• Limit of Town – size: The growth of towns to be limited, in
order that their inhabitants may live near work, shops, social
centers, and each other and also near open country.
• Amenities: The internal texture of towns to be open enough to
permit of houses with private gardens, adequate space for
schools and other functional purposes, and pleasant parks and
parkways.
 MAIN COMPONENTS
• Town and Country Relationship: The town area to be defined
and a large area around it reserved permanently for agriculture;
thus enabling the farm people to be assured of a nearby market
and cultural center, and the town people to have the benefit of a
country situation. 
• Planning Control: Pre – planning of the whole town
framework, including the road – scheme, and functional zoning;
the fixing of maximum densities; the control of building as to
quality and design, but allowing for individual variety; skillful
planting and landscape garden design.
• Neighborhoods: The town to be divided into wards, each to
some extent a developmental and social entity.
 IMPORTANT FEATURES
1000 acres of towns designed for
healthy living and industry
5000 acres if permanent green belt
which surrounds the whole town
Density of 12 families per acre
A large central park having public
building.
limited size of approx 32000
people, planned in advance and
land in single ownership to
eliminate overcrowding.
Garden cities examples
as a result of garden city
movement

Two garden cities were built using Howard’s garden city movement concept
are Letchworth Garden City and Welwyn Garden City, both in Hertfordshire,
England.
 LETCHWORTH
GARDEN CITY
• Letchworth Garden City – The first garden city developed in 1903 by
Barry Parker & Raymond Unwin  after having won the competition to
build first garden city.
• It is 34 miles away from London.
• It has an area of 5000 acres with 3000 acres of green belt.
• It had an agricultural strip at periphery to check the invasion of urban
area i.e. the sprawling.
• It showed Howard’s general principles, including the communal
ownership of the land and the permanent green belt has been carried
through.
• It was a town of homes and gardens with ample open spaces and a
spirited community life.
• A great attention was paid to landscaping and planting
 LETCHWORTH
GARDEN CITY
• Its plan was based on population of 30,000 with living area of
1250 acres and 2500 acres of rural green belt.
• Communities ranged from 12000 – 18000 people, small
enough which required no vehicular transportation.
• Industries were connected to central city by rapid
transportation
 WELWYN GARDEN
CITY
• Welwyn – It was the second Garden City founded by Sir
Ebenzer Howard and designed by Louis De Soissions in 1920
and was located 20 miles from Kings Cross.
•  It was designed for 4000 population in 2400 acres. It was a
town visually pleasing and was efficient technically and was
human in scale.
• It started with area of 2400 acres and 4000 population
• Had a parkway, almost a mile long central mall
• Town laid out along tree-lined boulevards with Neo Georgian
town center
• Every road had a wide grass verge
• Garden city concept spread to various  parts of world and
influenced and all English, American, Canadian & Australian
planning but housing was most influenced.
• Other example include Glenrother, Bedford Park, Milton
Keyns in United Kingdom, Village Homes, Reston in United
States, Helleran in Germany, Tapiola in Finland.
 FAILURE OF GARDEN
CITIES
• Letchworth slowly attracted more residents because it was able to attract
manufacturers through low taxes, low rents and more space.
• Despite Howard’s best efforts, the home prices in this garden city could
not remain affordable for workers to live in.
• Although many viewed Letchworth as a success, it did not immediately
inspire government investment into the next line of garden cities.
• In frustration, Howard bought land at Welwyn to house the second
garden city in 1919. The Welwyn Garden City Corporation was formed
to oversee the construction.
• But Welwyn did not become self-sustaining because it was only 20
miles from London.
• Even until the end of the 1930s, Letchworth and Welwyn remained as
the only existing garden cities.
 CONCLUSION OF
GARDEN CITY
MOVEMENT
• The idea of garden city, which has economic and social
advantages that urban aggregation had destroyed, was seen in
the first two garden cities only.
• It was seen as the “marriage of town and country, in an
increasingly coherent urban and regional pattern”.
• These new town towns offer a pleasing environment than
crowded and squalid quarters in old cities.
• The movement succeeded in emphasizing the need for urban
planning policies that eventually led to the New Town
movement.