Howard’s Garden City

Posted: August 26th, 2021

Howard’s Garden City

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Howard’s Garden City 

The garden city is an urban planning technique that first proposed by Sir Ebenezer Howard in the year 1898. Specifically, Howard devised this proposal in the United Kingdom, where he intended to see a country that is apportioned into three kinds of magnets, namely the state, town, and town-country. Ideally, the designer of this idea associated the garden city with proper planning coupled with communities that are conceptually surrounded by green agricultural belts. He planned to establish a garden city that consists of residence, industry, and farming regions. Therefore, the concept of a garden city is a useful measure of determining a naturally healthy and economically viable country-town magnet for the betterment of inhabitants’ social welfares.

Howard describes the country-town magnet as a kind of urban planning revolving around the payment of land rates by the inhabitants and the provision of services by the government. Specifically, he intends to see a situation where a few trusted government officials procure a mortgage of about £240,000 at a small interest rate of 4% in a bid to purchase a large tract of land (Howard, 1902). The property needs to be vast in size to facilitate the planning and construction of an urban city. To ensure that the inhabitants of the area would pay back the mortgage, the relevant town council would build commercial shops and offices for rent by the inhabitants. As a result, the collected rents would facilitate faster payment of the mortgage, simply because the interest rate at 4% was considered lower than the economic value of the investment. Further, the author suggests that a significant amount of rent receivables would be channeled into a public kitty to promote the provision of other services like roads, water, electricity, and waste management (Gataric et al. 2019). Consequently, the whole concept would improve the social welfares of the inhabitants.

Proper planning of agricultural and industrial regions reinforces the need toimprove the health and living standards of about 30,000 workers and 2,000 farmers in a country-town magnet (Howard, 1902). The author intends to see a large population of people working in better working conditions, where they receive salaries and wages of higher purchasing power as compared to the costs of living. Moreover, the industrial sector needs to uphold a regular kind of employment in that workers have job security, thus cannot be retrenched or declared redundant. Also, this type of magnet revolves around the setting up of industrial cooperative societies, which would encourage workers to save a significant amount of taxable incomes. The incorporation of cooperative societies is useful in helping the employees to grow savings, thus increasing their chances of securing loans for personal developments (Gataric et al. 2019). Besides, Howard further writes about the usefulness of cooperative societies in the agricultural sector. For example, these societies promote the ease of access tomarkets for the produces at affordable prices, thus avoidingexploitation by the middlepersons.

With the description of the “Crystal Palace” covering 145 acres together with its surrounding parks, the writer intends to foster the importance of recreational facilities as a way of creating a sense of relaxation among the inhabitants (Howard, 1902). The recreational amenities like Central Park offer the inhabitants an opportunity to understand the aesthetic vitality of their natural environment during winter. As an example, the beauty of the garden city is ultimately manifested by the Winter Garden that acts as a circular exhibition facility. The provision of beautiful and favorite resorts offers the inhabitants a chance to converge together and share common values that ascribe to their diversified religious beliefs. Apart from that, Howard aspires to design a country-town magnet that would entirely focus on the construction of 5,500 affordable housing units, each of 20 by 130 square feet for the working residents (Howard, 1902). Such an approach would ensure that only a small portion of the taxable incomes are directed towards rent payables, hence leaving a more significant percentage for other spending purposes like food and transport.

Furthermore, the author stresses the importance of designing an active and proper railway transport system. The use of a rail transport system that runs from the garden city to the central city through the back streets of Grand Avenueexemplifies the necessity of urban planning (Corovic, 2014). For instance, this kind of public transport offers the inhabitants mobility to and from workplaces, hence reducing the time taken to reach home and workplaces. As a result, the workers have ample time to work without feeling pressure from unmet work schedules. More so, the use of railway helps to decongest the city, simply because it is relatively faster and has a large capacity to transport people and goods in comparison with the use of buses and trucks (Corovic, 2014). I consider the use of the railway system as a better means of limiting the use of road transport that would have otherwise created high traffics. Thus, the railway has helped reduce the percentage of carbon emissions in the atmosphere.

In conclusion,the idea of a garden city mirrors the ideals of American public life in the sense that Howard desires to have a town that emphasizes on the harmonious association between the factors of production and the city dwellers. There is a need to have the working populations receive wages and salaries that have higher purchasing power than the costs of living. To make the whole concept of the garden city a reality, the government must use the land rates and other taxes to provide a means of swift transport and affordable housing plans that suit the needs of the inhabitants. Therefore, the author stresses the significance of incorporating these economic and social ideals in a bid to promote a naturally healthy environment for the better existence of the city dwellers. 

References

Corovic, D. (2014). The garden city concept in the urban discourse of interwar Belgrade. Modernism and Modernity in the Arts and Architecture, of Interwar Serbia, 1918-1941, 201-221.).  Leuven: Leuven University Press.

Gataric, D. et al. (2019). The origin and development of garden cities – An overview. Department of Geography, Tourism, and Hotel Management. https:doi:10.5937/zrgfub1901033G

Howard, E. (1902). Garden cities of tomorrow. United Kingdom: Swan Sonnenschein & Co., Ltd.