The Garden City Utopia

Book excerpt: 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.