“ The Town-Country Magnet”

From Garden Cities of To-morrow

(1898/1902)
Ebenezer Howard
EBENEZER HOWARD
(1850-1928)

Ebenezer Howard was an English urban

planner and founder of the garden city movement,
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.
He was inspired by Engels and Marx, who
wrote and published many articles and books together
that attempted to expose the uneven distribution of
wealth gained during the Industrial Revolution. Their
writings see capitalism as an exploitative system that
benefits the owners of land, capital, and means of
production more than the workforce.
Why Garden city?
• Harvard early experience the pollution,
Congestion, social dislocation of modern
industrial metropolis.
• It is important to understand context to
which Howard's work was a reaction. London
and other cities in the 19th century was in
the throws of industrialization, and the cities
where exerting massive forces on the labor
markets of the time.
• Massive immigration from the countryside to
the cities was taking place with the London.
• The idea behind garden City was urban
decentralization, zoning for different uses,
the integration of nature into cities, green
building and the development of self contain
‘New Town’ communities outside crowded
Central cities illustrated in plate 35 laid the
groundwork for the entire tradition of
modern city planning.
GARDEN CITY MOVEMENT: the origin
• A garden city is a town
design for healthy living
and industry, exercise
that makes possible a full
measure of social life, but
not larger, surrounded by
rural belt, each a self
sufficient entity of 30000
population, ring by an
agricultural belt.
THE THREE MAGNETS- The people, Where
will they go?

The three magnets diagram makes three

points.
1. Town life
2. Country life
3. Town-country life
 TOWN COUNTRY TOWN-COUNTRY
Positive aspects Negative aspects Positive aspects Negative aspects Combination of both aspects
Social opportunity Closing out of nature Beauty of nature Lack of society Beauty of nature- peace all-
over the places
Isolation of crowds High range and prices Land lying idle Hands out of work Social opportunity-
cumulative growth
Places of Foul air and murky Wood, meadow, Trespassers beware Trees and parks of easy
amusement Sky forest access-equal chances
Chances of Slums Fresh air Low wedges Low rents-plenty to do
employment
High money wages Costly drainage Low rents Lack of Low prices
amusement
Well-lit streets Abundance of Need for reform Field for enterprise- flow of
water capital
Palatial edifices Crowded dwellings Pure air and water- good
drainage
Deserted villages Bright homes and gardens -
no smoke, no slums
The original garden City cultured by Ebenezer
Howard, 1902
• A total of 6000 acre estate
• 1000 acres, purely for the central
garden City as a home for 30,000
people.
• Surrounding the central city 5000
acres of land is written for
agriculture and home for 2000
people, with cow pastures, farm
land and welfare services.
CONCEPTUAL LAYOUT
• Circular City growing in radical manner or a
pattern
• Divided into six equal words, by six main
boulevards that eradicated from Central
garden
• Civic institutions like Town Hall, library,
hospitals, theatre, museum our place
around Central garden.
• The central park enclosed by crystal Palace
act as an arcade for Indoor shops and
winter gardens.
• The street for houses are formed by series
of concentric ringed tree line avenues.
GARDEN CITY PRINCIPLE IN
PRACTICE
Letchworth, United Kingdom
• Letchworth is a worlds first garden City, created as a solution to slum and
poverty of urban life in Britain in the late 19th century. Based on the ideas of
Ebenezer Howard as published in the book of 1898 “To-Morrow: A Peaceful
Path to Real Reform (1898)”, Letchworth garden City inspired town planning
across the globe.
• Settlement Size-7.7 sq mi / 20 sq km / 5,500 acres
• Population-33,249
• Employment Numbers-Approx 15,000 jobs
Other notable features that reflect Garden City Principles
• Well connected and biodiversity rich public parks, and a mix of public and
private networks of well managed, high-quality gardens, tree-lined streets and
open spaces;
• Distinct separation of the residential, industrial and civic areas and in the use of
parks to screen residential neighbourhoods from roads and other undesirable
things.
• strong local cultural, recreational and shopping facilities in walkable
neighbourhoods
• Beautifully and imaginatively designed homes with gardens, combining the
very best of town and country living to create healthy homes in vibrant
communities
References
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebenezer_Howard
• https://www.britannica.com/topic/garden-city-urban-planning
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_city_movement
• https://planningtank.com/planning-theory/garden-city-movement
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letchworth
THANK YOU