Ebenezer Howard's "Garden Cities of Tomorrow"

Howard's Garden Cities of Tomorrow wasn't that interesting, perhaps because Mumford loves it so much that he'd already told me all the interesting stuff. Most of this slim volume is just explaining how the Garden City would work - how it would raise funds, etc. That wasn't interesting. Here's what is important:

First, in Mumford's intro, a couple more awesomely Mumfordian tidbits: he makes the obvious (to a Mumford reader) but controversial otherwise statement that a Garden City is not a suburb but an "anti-suburb" (35). Also, he connects the urge to utopian city planning with shaker communities in the US, a connection I had not yet made (39).

The best thing to get out of Howard's book is just an understanding of what a Garden City is. As expressed on page 48, both the town and the country have strengths and defects. The town has great society but no scenery or fresh air; the country is bright and clean and devoid of human beings. The solution is the "Garden City," not a city made of gardens but a city inside a garden. In other words the garden city is on 6,000 acres: 1,000 acres of actual city and 5,000 acres of farmland (the so-called "Greenbelt") surrounding the city. Thus, within that 1,000 acres is a coherent community - residential, commercial, and industrial built around a park and the hospital, musuem, library, town hall, etc. It's pleasant, walkable, and mildly dense (brownstone level, according to Mumford (p. 519 of "The City and History). And since it's surrounded by rural areas it cannot ever get built up and overrun (these specs are on p. 51-53).

The second and vital part of this plan is the idea of "Social Cities." Garden Cities must be restricted from growing, but growth will occur. Howard calls for a series of garden cities linked together by high speed rail and highways (142). Mumford expands this idea, but it is certainly the key to whole thing - this plan would let the entire world urbanize and keep its green space.