Garden Cities and Suburbs: At Home and Abroad

Abstract

Garden cities and garden suburbs were a dominant theme in community planning throughout the twentieth century. Ebenezer Howard’s garden city at Letchworth and Henrietta Barnett’s garden suburb at Hampstead, London, attracted international renown and emulation, beginning before 1914. The design standards proved adaptable to private development, model industrial villages, public housing, and state new towns. Today, the ideas of Howard, Raymond Unwin, and John Nolen are providing the basis for sustainable development and the New Urbanism movement. This review seeks to draw out the continuum between Howard’s garden city model and changing urban paradigms of the twentieth century.