Ebenezer Howard

Personal profile

 Born in 29 January 1850 –and died in 1 May 1928

 no training in urban planning or design
opposed urban crowding/density hoped to create a “magnet” people would want to
come to
 Howard is believed by many to be one of the great guides to the town planning movement,
with many of his garden city principles being used in modern town planning.[5][9]

 Dissatisfied by the way cities were growing and the alienating conditions of induz=strial
work; proposea new balance magnetbetween countr and city
 Ebenezer Howard was a reformist who sought to provide an alternative to the
overcrowded cities (where standards were deteriorating) by creating self-contained
communities, each surrounded by green belt land. He wanted a place that balanced
housing, industry and agriculture, finding a middle ground between town and country,
and enjoying the benefits of each without the disadvantages. Community was at the
heart of this, with a co-operative approach envisaged for land ownership and food
grown on the surrounding fields. Howard also proposed that satellite cities would
surround a larger city
 "Town and country must be married, and out of this joyous union will spring a new
hope, a new life, a new civilization."

 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.
 Howard aimed to reduce the alienation of humans and society from nature, and hence
advocated garden cities[5] and Georgism.[6][7][8]
 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.
 The second true Garden City was Welwyn Garden City (1920) and the movement influenced
the development of several model suburbs in other countries, such as Forest Hills
Gardens designed by F. L. Olmsted Jr. in 1909,[3] Radburn NJ (1923) and the Suburban
Resettlement Program towns of the 1930s (Greenbelt, Maryland; Greenhills,
Ohio; Greenbrook, New Jersey and Greendale, Wisconsin).[4]
 

Planning concepts- with maps or graphical evidences

a)The three magnet

The diagram summarises the political, economic, and social context underlying
Howard’s utopian vision for the future of British settlement via three illustrated
magnets.

One magnet lists the advantages and disadvantages of town life and another is
accompanied by the positives and negatives of country life. The third magnet
communicates Howard’s proposal of a Town-Country.

In the centre are The People who, having previously been stuck with a difficult choice
between town and country lifestyle, will now be attracted to Howard’s proposal. Such a
re-arrangement would provide the basis for a more prosperous, co-operative and
liberated human experience and is a direct response to the plight of Victorian workers
torn between inner-city slum conditions and a lack of opportunities afforded by more
rural settings.
 the
desire was to attract people to the ‘Town-Country’ magnet which would provide a
new way of living, a ‘joyous union’ between town and country.
some of the chief objects of the 3 magnet relationare these:\

Its object is, in short, to raise the standard of health and comfort of all true workers of
whatever grade--the means by which these objects are to be achieved being a healthy, natural,
and economic combination of town and country life, and this on land owned by the
municipality.
Howard's enthusiastic embrace of progress just drips from every page. He even sees
human beings becoming less selfish, as modern advances in science and technology
open up frontiers of human flourishing. Newer is better, just as the railroad is better
than the stagecoach.

b)-the Garden City Movement

 The garden city movement is a method of urban planning in which self-contained
communities are surrounded by "greenbelts", containing proportionate areas of residences,
industry, and agriculture. The idea was initiated in 1898.
 Was a reaction to the environmental and social legacy of industrial revolution, and the
poor, unhealthy housing conditions that came with that.
 His book, Tomorrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform, published in 1898, argued that garden
cities – new settlements with surrounding agricultural belts – would bring together the best
features of town and country while avoiding the disadvantages of both.
The key principles of Garden Cities
 town-country (combination of both):- towns separated from central city by greenbelt
two actually built in England ; Letchworth& Welwyn
 The basic shape of howardsgarden city was the circle a self sustaining nucleus

• Created by Ebenezer Howard in 1898 to solve urban and rural problems

• Source of many key planning ideas during 20th centue

The overall goal for Howard is to combine the traditional countryside with the traditional town.
For too long residents have had to make the unfulfilling choice between living in a culturally
isolated rural area or giving up nature to live in a city, but "human society and the beauty of
nature are meant to be enjoyed together." As he sees it, , the two "magnets" of Town and
Country that have in the past pulled people in either direction will, in the future, be
synthesized into one "Town-Country magnet."

 Howard wants to make it as little like the overcrowded London of his day as possible, so public
parks and private lawns are everywhere. The roads are incredibly wide, ranging from 120 to
420 feet for the Grand Avenue, and they are radial rather than linear. Commercial, industrial,
residential, and public uses are clearly differentiated from each other spatially.

He also assumes that if everything is planned rationally from the beginning, the costly process
of retrofitting old infrastructure for new technology can be avoided.

The essential features of the garden city can be summarised as follows:

1. Organized planned:- dispersal 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.
2. Limit of town size :-, to around 30,000,in order that their inhabitants may live near work,
shops and other facilities and within walking distance of the surrounding countryside. New
garden cities to be built once population limit reached to avoid any sprawl
3. Spaciousness of layout: - providing for houses with private gardens, enough space for
schools and other functional purposes, and pleasant parks and parkways.Well planned buildings
and ordered green spaces between, with housing, employment and leisure within easy walking
distance.
4. A close town/country relationship: -with a firm definition of the town boundary and a large
area around it reserved permanently for agriculture, providing a ready market for farmers and
access to the countryside for residents.
5. Pre-planning of the whole town framework: - including functional zoning and roads, the
setting of maximum densities, the control of building as to quality and design while allowing for
individual variety, skillful planting and landscape design.
6. The creation of neighborhoods: -as developmental and social entities.
7. Unified land ownership: -The towns would be self-governed, managed by the citizens who
had an economic interest in them, and financed by ground rents.The land on which they were
to be built was to be owned by a group of trustees and leased to the citizens.
8. Progressive municipal and co-operative enterprise: - without abandoning a
general individual freedom in industry and trade.

9.ORGANIZATIONA;L LAYOUT:- were a serious of concentric of concentric circles ,each defined

by a certain function and each separated from the other by a green belt

10.THE FUNCTIONES OF THE CIRCLES :-in the concentric layer after the first central garedn
howard proposed loacating public buildings such as city hall library,hospital.and he proposed
the following

 -crystal palace;a coverd pubic market

 -houses with a mple ground

11.OUTER LAVEL OF THE CIRCLE-heplaced the more industrial functionsof the cities,like
factorieswarehouses,coal yyards,timber/lumberyards,transportation husband export of
materials and food items

12.BEYOUND THE CIRCLE-the preservation offarmland,each circle then represented an

attempt to control growth,when ever one garden city reched its capacity another one
would be started somewhere
how it would be situated relative to a larger city and how multiple Garden Cities would
be networked to one another via central cities.

When the garden city outgrouw

from Garden cities of Tomorrow, 1902 Ebenezer Howard Photograph: Ebenezer Howa
Six magnificent boulevards--each 120 feet wide--traverse the city from centre to circumference,
dividing it into six equal parts or wards.

1) In the centre is a circular space containing about five and a half acres, laid out as a beautiful
and well- watered garden; and, surrounding this garden, each standing in its own ample
grounds, are the larger public buildings--town hall, principal concert and lecture hall, theatre,
library, museum, picture-gallery, and hospital.

2)glass arcade called the 'Crystal Palace', opening on to the, containing 145 acres, which
includes ample recreation grounds within very easy access of all the people. Here manufactured
goods are exposed for sale, and here most of that class of shopping which requires the joy of
deliberation and selection is done

4)Passing out of the Crystal Palace on our way to the outer ring of the town, we cross Fifth
Avenue--lined, as are all the roads of the town, with trees--fronting which, and looking on to
the Crystal Palace, we find a ring of very excellently built houses, each standing in its own ample
grounds; and, as we continue our walk, we observe that the houses are for the most part built
either in concentric rings, facing the various avenues (as the circular roads are termed), or
fronting the boulevards and roads which all converge to the centre of the town.

5) 'Grand Avenue'. This avenue is fully entitled to the name it bears, for it is 420 feet wide, and,
forming a belt of green upwards of three miles long, divides that part of the town which lies
outside Central Park into two belts. It really constitutes an additional park of 115 acres--a park
which is within 240 yards of the furthest removed inhabitant

occupied by public schools and their surrounding playgrounds and gardens, while other sites
are reserved for churches, of such denominations as the religious beliefs.

6)On the outer ring of the town are factories, warehouses, dairies, markets, coal yards, timber
yards, etc.,

 Applications and applicability

Making it a reality on the ground was a massive challenge. In 1899, with backing from
wealthy investors, construction of Letchworth Garden City began. Some of Howard's
ideals had to be comprised, as investors sought to profit from the new town whereas
Howard had proposed a much more egalitarian society.

For his second garden city, about 20 years later, Howard bought the land himself.
Welwyn Garden City would benefit from the experienced gained in Letchworth.
They had as their antecedents the ‘model’ communities of New Lanark in Scotland
(c1800-1810), Saltaire near Bradford (1850-1872ournville, outside Birmingham
(1879-95) and Port Sunlight, near Birkenhead (1888). But), B

LETCHWORT;HOWARDS FIRST GARDEN CITY APPLICATIONS:-with h

 Important contributions, etc. and

GARDEN CITIES OF TO-MORROW

Ebenezer Howard

Garden Cities of To-Morrow (London, 1902. Reprinted, edited with a Preface by F. J. Osborn and an
Introductory Essay by Lewis Mumford. (London: Faber and Faber, [1946]):50-57, 138- 147.

Howard read widely and thought deeply about social issues, and out of this concern came his book in
1898 titled To-Morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform. He paid for the printing of his proposal calling
for the creation of new towns of limited size, planned in advance, and surrounded by a permanent belt
of agricultural land.

Howard's ideas attracted enough attention and financial backing to begin Letchworth, the pioneering
venture of what he hoped would become a mass movement. A new edition of his book in 1902 with a
different title helped to sustain the movement although it would not be until after the First World War
that a second towns, Welwyn Garden City, would be launched. The two chapters of his book reprinted
below are those describing his vision of Garden City's physical characteristics and how a cluster of them
might be created as population increased. Howard was no designer, and he stated that the plan for a
town on an actual site would doubtless depart from the one he described. He also labeled each of his
drawings "Diagram only. Plan cannot be drawn until site selected." Nevertheless, his verbal pictures and
accompanying diagrams reflect his own beliefs about how a model garden city should be laid out. The
ring and radial pattern of his imaginary Garden City was a plan that many other writers of the time also
favored, because of its perceived superiority from both engineering and architectural viewpoints.

Howard's emphasis on the importance of a permanent girdle of open and agricultural land around the
town soon became part of British planning doctrine that eventually developed almost into dogma. Its
most impressive application was the plan for Greater London in 1944 and--following passage of the New
Towns Act of 1946--the creation of a ring of new towns beyond the London Greenbelt. On practical
grounds at least as strong a case could be made for an urban configuration based on wedges of open
space thrusting inward and confining development to the intervening corridors. This was precisely
what H. V. Lanchester argued in 1908 in his article in a British professional journal. Thomas Mawson
reprinted Lanchester's diagram in his Civic Art of 1911. This concept appeared in 1910 in one of the
prize-wining plans for Greater Berlin, and later that year one of its authors, Rudolf Eberstadt described it
in a paper delivered at the R.I.B.A. conference on town planning in London and in his book Handbuch
des Wohnungswesens und der Wohnungsfrage.

A portion of Howard's chapter, "Social Cities" has been added to make clear how he proposed to deal
with population increase after Garden City's limit of 32,000 had been reached.

 their criticisms in appropriate organization of the

document/paper about the
following three urban planning pioneer thinkers
Positive
 He did have a good grasp on the problems associated with his rapidly industrializing
cities.
 Howard identified real social inequities arising from industrialization as many of his
peers had
 Furthermore, I believe his advocacy for rational planning over the chaotic growth of
piecemeal evolution has some merit in a rapidly modernizing context.
 Garden Cities Are Still Great Places to Live;- Welwyn Garden City nearly 100 years
after it was conceived, there is no doubt it is desirable. A magnificent boulevard is still
a striking feature. Trees line the roads. The grass verges are wider than perhaps they
needed to be and there is space. I personally feel this ‘connection with something
green‘ is vital in all our lives but I can see the flip side of the coin.

negative
 often criticized for damaging the economy, being destructive of the beauty of nature, and
being inconvenient.
 wasn't a possible feat due to the limited space they had, More recently the environmental
movement's embrace of urban density has offered an "implicit critique" of the Garden City
movement.[31]
 encourage crime; it has ultimately lead to efforts to 'de-Radburn' or partially demolish
American Radburn designed public housing areas.[32]
 it only tell us something that everybody knew before, namely, that if you plant people out like
vegetables upon the country-side their death-rate is less likely to be high than it is in an overcrowded
street in a slum.
  is that there should be much more ho accommodation in order that over-crowding
 There really is a human proclivity for the "free gifts of nature," which were being pushed away
and cut off by dirty factories and crowded streets of 19th century London. Even if it is
impossible for humans to indwell nature as he proposes without killing it, we still yearn for the
chance to visit, to remain connected.
 Maintaining The Population of a Town is a Challenge

 As these new cities are not on the cards, what happens to the population of
existing garden city? Is a green belt only a protected area until more land is
needed? My experience is that towns keeping growing.

Conclusion
Like many socialistic ideas, Ebenezer Howard’s garden city movement method of urban
planning sounds quintessential in theory, but was impracticable when enacted. Howard truly
believed that his plan for the garden city would overtake capitalism and replace it with a new
civilization based on mutual cooperation. However, his revolutionary plan for decentralization
and cooperative socialism ended after the creation of just two cities, after they did not end up
how he had envisioned them to be.

Upon reading Edward Bellamy’sLooking Backward, Howard was inspired to take action and start
planning a ideal community where everyone was employed by the community.
Howard envisioned a city of about 30,000 residents, with a mix of residential neighborhoods and
facilities for cultural and industrial activities. He believe that this city would gradually render
obsolete the metropolises of the time that dominated entire regions.

A defining feature of his city was an abundance of space; thousands of acres of land would
surround the city, as Howard believed that “one of the first essential needs of Society and of the
individual..is ample space in which to live, to move, and to develop.” However, as land was
expensive near central cities like London, and Howard’s plan required thousands of acres, the
only places this plan was economically feasible was in the far-removed and less desirable
countryside, where land was cheap and abundant. He also later realized that a population of
30,000 people was not large enough to provide the diversity that a true, desirable city would
have, but increasing its size or density would ruin his plan.

The largest problem with Howard’s plan, as is with any socialistic plan, is the matter of finances.
Initially, he struggled to find investors who would be willing to fund the development of the city,
and he was forced to concede many of his original ideas such as adding rent increases and
landlords, in order to attain funding. According to Howard’s plan, there would be no taxes
because the increase in the value of real estate, and thus increase in the price of rent, would be
enough to support the city’s institutions. While he had wanted the garden city to be an
economically accessible place to live for people of all social classes, as home prices increased,
blue-collar workers could no longer afford to live there and were forced out.
While Howard’s cities of Letchworth and Welwyn ended up being completely adequate places to
live, they were not the “oasis of social justice in an unjust society” that he had set out to create,
and were a complete failure in terms of the social revolution he had intended to start. Through
his unsuccessful garden cities, Howard has set a valuable example of how socialism is not a
preferable or even viable alternative to capitalism and democracy.