The garden city movement is a method of urban planning that was initiated in 1898 by Sir Ebenezer Howard in the United Kingdom. Garden cities were intended to be planned, self-contained communities surrounded by "greenbelts" (parks), containing proportionate areas of residences, industry and agriculture.
Inspired by the Utopian novel Looking Backward, Howard published his book To-morrow: a Peaceful Path to Real Reform in 1898 (which was reissued in 1902 as Garden Cities of To-morrow). His idealised garden city would house 32,000 people on a site of 6,000 acres (2,400 ha), planned on a concentric pattern with open spaces, public parks and six radial boulevards, 120 ft (37 m) wide, extending from the centre. The garden city would be self-sufficient and when it reached full population, another garden city would be developed nearby. Howard envisaged a cluster of several garden cities as satellites of a central city of 50,000 people, linked by road and rail.
Read more about Garden City Movement: Early Development, Garden Cities, Garden Suburbs, Legacy
Famous quotes containing the words garden, city and/or movement:
“We must cultivate our own garden.... When man was put in the garden of Eden he was put there so that he should work, which proves that man was not born to rest.”
—Voltaire [François Marie Arouet] (1694–1778)
“This city is neither a jungle nor the moon.... In long shot: a cosmic smudge, a conglomerate of bleeding energies. Close up, it is a fairly legible printed circuit, a transistorized labyrinth of beastly tracks, a data bank for asthmatic voice-prints.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“What new thoughts are suggested by seeing a face of country quite familiar, in the rapid movement of the rail-road car!”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)