Garden City Movement - Garden Cities

Garden Cities

Howard organised the Garden City Association in 1899. Two garden cities were built using Howard's ideas: Letchworth Garden City and Welwyn Garden City, both in Hertfordshire, England. Howard's successor as chairman of the Garden City Association was Sir Frederic Osborn, who extended the movement to regional planning.

The concept was adopted again in England after World War II, when the New Towns Act caused the development of many new communities based on Howard's egalitarian ideas.

The idea of the garden city was influential in the United States. Examples are: the Woodbourne neighborhood of Boston; Newport News, Virginia's Hilton Village; Pittsburgh's Chatham Village; Garden City, New York; Sunnyside, Queens; Jackson Heights, Queens; Forest Hills Gardens, also in the borough of Queens, New York; Radburn, New Jersey; Greenbelt, Maryland; Buckingham in Arlington County, Virginia; the Lake Vista neighborhood in New Orleans; Norris, Tennessee; Baldwin Hills Village in Los Angeles; and the Cleveland suburb of Shaker Heights. In Canada, the Ontario towns of Kapuskasing, Don Mills (now incorporated into the City of Toronto) and Walkerville are, in part, garden cities.

Greendale, Wisconsin is one of three "greenbelt" towns planned beginning in 1935 under the direction of Rexford Guy Tugwell, head of the United States Resettlement Administration, under authority of the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act. The two other greenbelt towns are Greenbelt, Maryland (near Washington, D.C.) and Greenhills, Ohio (near Cincinnati). The greenbelt towns not only provided work and affordable housing, but also served as a laboratory for experiments in innovative urban planning. Greendale's plan was designed between 1936 and 1937 by a staff headed by Joseph Crane, Elbert Peets, Harry Bentley, and Walter C. Thomas for a site that had formerly consisted of 3,400 acres (14 km2) of farmland.

In Peru, the concepts of the garden city have a long tradition in urban design and have been reintroduced in its architecture more recently. The ancient city of Chan Chan (20 km², 850 AD) in Trujillo, North of Lima, and the Inca's XII century's city of Machu Picchu, were designed as garden cities. Peru's modern capital, Lima, was designed as a garden city in 1535 by Spanish Conquistadors to replace its ancient past as a religious sanctuary with 37 pyramids. More recently, in 1966, the 'Residencial San Felipe' in the Lima's district of Jesus Maria was built using the Garden City concepts

In São Paulo, Brazil, several neighbourhoods were planned as Garden Cities, such as Jardim América, Jardim Europa, Alto da Lapa, Alto de Pinheiros, Jardim da Saúde and Cidade Jardim (Garden City in Portuguese). Goiânia, capital of Goiás state, is an example of Garden City.

In Argentina, an example is Ciudad Jardín Lomas del Palomar, declared by the influential Argentinian professor of engineering, Carlos María della Paolera, founder of "Día Mundial del Urbanismo" (World Urbanism Day), as the first Garden City in South America.

In Australia, the suburb of Colonel Light Gardens in Adelaide, South Australia, was designed according to garden city principles. So too the town of Sunshine, which is now a suburb of Melbourne in Victoria.

Garden city principles greatly influenced the design of colonial and post-colonial capitals during the early part of the 20th century. This is the case for New Delhi (designed as the new capital of British India after World War I), of Canberra (capital of Australia established in 1913) and of Quezon City (established in 1939, capital of the Philippines from 1948–76). The garden city model was also applied to many colonial hill stations, such as Da Lat in Vietnam (est. 1907) and Ifrane in Morocco (est. 1929).

In Bhutan's capital city Thimphu the new plan, following the Principles of Intelligent Urbanism, is an organic response to the fragile ecology. Using sustainable concepts, it is a contemporary response to the garden city concept.

The Garden City movement also influenced the Scottish urbanist Sir Patrick Geddes in the planning of Tel-Aviv, Israel, in the 1920s, during the British Mandate for Palestine. Geddes started his Tel Aviv plan in 1925 and submitted the final version in 1927, so all growth of this garden city during the 1930s was merely "based" on the Geddes Plan. Changes were inevitable.

The Garden City movement was even able to take root in South Africa, with the development of the suburb of Pinelands in Cape Town.