The City in the Garden

Referaat aines kohaliku ja regionaalse arengu planeerimine

Koostanud: Tea Tikkanen

In country towns in southern and eastern England grew up Ebenezer Howard (1850-1928) the most important creator of garden city. Later he emigrated to America. There he got many experience which have been important to him and to development of his work; in Nebraska he worked as a farmer and a pioneer and in Chicago he saw the city’s great rebuilding after fire of 1871. With his experiences he came back to Britain and he developed his idea in London of the 1880s and 1890s. In his life time he wrote only one slim book, which published in 1898 under the title Tomorrow: a Peaceful Path to Real Reform. Four years after in 1902 it was reprinted as Garden Cities of Tomorrow. He planned peaceful movement of people and industry away from crowded city. He borrowed freely ideas from the ideas that were circulating at the time. Idea of land nationalisation was from Herbert Spencer and from Peter Kropotkin he took up idea about colony. There was many other actors too who are certainly influenced Howard. As he wrote, the idea of community building was every where in the air. And he claimed that his work was unique combination of proposal. In his book his claimed also that he had thought out his central idea ideas himself but that he had then found other writers who supplied the details.

1.The plan of the garden city

Howard started his work with the famous diagram of the Three Magnets. The first Magnet is the Victorian Slum City, which was on horrific place but it offered economic and social opportunities, lights and crowds.

The second Magnet was the late-Victorian countryside. It was in fact equally unprepossessing, though it promised fresh air and nature, it was racked by agricultural depression and it offered neither sufficient work nor wages nor adequate social life.

Social life was possible to square the circle by combining the best of town and country in a new kind of settlement, Town-Country. It is the third Magnet of Howard’s diagram.

Town-Country was possible by a group of people, which establish a garden city for enough from the city. They should get factories, workers and would build their own houses to the countryside but this entire fixed limit. The garden city would be surrounded by area of permanent green belt, which owned by the company.

When the garden city’s reach its planned limit 32 000 inhabitants then another would be started a short distance away and each would be connected to the others by a rapid transit system.

The heart of the Howard’s plan was freedom and co-operation. He was much more interested in social process than physical forms. Keynote of his socio-economic system was local management and self-government. Municipality, private contractors would take care of services. And garden city’s people themselves would build their own homes. Every man and woman would establish small-scale enterprises.

2. Garden cities come to reality

2.1 Letchworth

34 miles from London was Letchworth, area with depressed agriculture and low land prices. That region met the criteria of area for garden city.

On 1.September 1903 was registered The First Garden City Company.

Whole progress was slow. In the first two years only 1000 people came and the first profits came in 1912. The first garden city problem was to attract industry. The first inhabitants were the idealists, artistic middle-class, which gave to Letchworth a permanent reputation for crankiness. However the town continued to grow, more slowly than the promoters hoped. It reached 15 000 inhabitants which was less than half its planned target, in 1938. And inhabitants had embraced trades unionism and socialism, which was far from participating in the co-operative spirit of the enterprise.

Raymond Unwin (1863-1940) and Barry Parker (1867-1947) made physical realisation. Neither was formally trained as an architect. Unwin started as an engineer and Parker was an interior decorator. Them ideology was creativity come from an imaginative understanding of the past. And architect and planner play roll in guardians of social and aesthetic life.

In 1902 they got the first commission to work on. For the Rowntree chocolate family they had to develop the garden village close to them factory. New Earswick is separated from factory and from the city by narrow green belt, which was part natural and for playing fields. The cottages were grouped around communal greens or pedestrian ways. Design main point was a natural feature like trees and a small brook. Impression of village was calm and informal although things were in natural order. The central features were village green and central hall.

In one respect only it failed: the standards of design were so high that the lowest-paid could not afford it.

Letchworth’s problems were a larger and more complex than New Earswick’s.

At Letchworth industry had to be integrated in with the housing. A whole centre had to be planned and there has more formal elements. The major municipal buildings dominated the central Town Square. Otherwise the town central is a terrible mess with radial avenues, ronds-points and the streets that seems to lead nowhere in particular. If there was something bad there was also something good: The informal housing worked out. Letchworth’s Spirella factory was designed Viennese Jugendstil.

Their thoughts were always with people who would live in the buildings, walk and or play in the spaces they created. And the separation of different classes of people had to prevent.

2.2 Hampstead

Hampstead was not a garden city, but a garden suburb. The Hampstead commission was established in 1907. There was not industry and it was openly dependent on commuting from an adjacent tube station, from which became one of the London ghost tube stations. Hampstead had high social purposes, where the poor and the rich shall teach each other. Like Letchworth, Hampstead got a reputation. At this time Unwin was influenced by Sitte and he designed for everyone much more space. Land for that he took from roads and took it to gardens and open space. Hampstead layout came informal with the curving streets and great variety of housing types. Hampstead had the central town squere too which placed on the suburb’s the highest point. There was designed two big churches and Institute.

2.3 Satellite towns

In 1912 Unwin read a lecture at Manchester University and he had commended of garden suburbs depending on the city for employment, satellite towns.

Between the wars local authories built publicly subsidised dwellings. Howard didn’t believe the power of the state to do that. None of new dwellings was built in the form of the true garden city.

Howard started to plan satellite town of his own. But there was many failure. There were huge like Howard had planned, 30.000, but they lacked the necessary industry to make them self-contained. And many times they lacked public-transport link and design failure.

Parker designed Wythenshawe for Manchester in 1930. Its planned target was 107 000 which was three times more than recommended by Howard. It was separated from the city by a half-mile- wide green belt. Large industrial area was planned but it couldn’t provide jobs enough. And express bus service became necessary to the city.

Plans for public traffic was borrowed from New York by Parker: the idea of Parkways as access roads to residential areas. Roads were not restricted to creation and would be used by all kinds of traffic. Parker’s main road was called the Princess Parkway.

30 years later it was upgraded into a motorway by the transport planners. And Wythenshawe itself has not been treated kindly by graffiti and vandalism and crime.

3. The Garden City movement in over the Oceans

3.1 Europe

In Spain was Arturo Soria y mata (1844-1920) who worked as an engineer. He had an idea of La Ciudad Lineal in 1882 and 1892 he developed a detailed proposal. His garden city was linear, which was planned around the tramway system, which running out from a big city. But the extraordinary linear city was never more than a common suburb. In 1894 and 1904 the first section of the planned 48 kilometres city ran for 5 kilometres circum ferentially between two major radial highways east of Madrid. Tramway worked by horses and electrified in 1909. In 1934 Span’s garden city met its end. Nowadays it still recognisable there because of some of original building are still standing. But in future Mata hand’s work will be memory.

In France was Tony Garnier (1869-1948) an architect from Lyon. His Cite industrielle was made in 1898 but it published in 1918. His garden city had depended on huge metallurgical plant and the physical plan is dominated by strong axial boulevards and housing on rectangular grids.

Theodor Fritsch plan Die stadt der zukunt was published two years before Howard’s own. Fritsch claimed that Howard had stolen ideas. Between these two men’s plans was similarities in physical terms. the circulator form, the division between land uses, the open land at centre and the surrounding green belt, the low prize housing, the peripheral industry, the land ownership. But Fritsch’s city lacks the specific function of urban decentralisation, which is central to Howard’s plan. Totally different ideology was Fritsch’s plan of city where each individual knows his place in a rigid, separated social order.

There was also other planners who took Howard’s ideas and made foreign interpretations. Geodes Benoît-Lévy’s La Cité-Jardin which was elementary confusion between garden city and garden suburbs. Sellier planned 16 Cités-Jardins around Paris between 1916-1939, but his interpretation was much more Unwin’s Hampstead variant.

In Germany was believe that the garden city movement explains good British industrial labour relations. So the garden city movement took place very well Germany. Before World War One the most important garden village was Margarethenhöhe, which was develop by Krupp family in 1912.Design followed the Unwin-Parker tradition and its architect was Geor Metzendorf. Purpose was creating own town for Krupp’s workers, which would make them more class-conscious.

In Germany began to rise the fear of the giant city and the decline of the countryside. The fear of the cities was biological decline of the race. In the middle of World War One removal of population started to dominated and worry about the declining countryside on the borders of Germany settlement against Slav Europe.

Like in Britain in Germany too rose the fear of revolution. When Social Democratics achieved power in the city, started an active housing policy and under Ludwing Landmann was strategy for restoring social peace between capital and labour.

Landmann was attracted the architect-planner Ernst May (1886-1970). In 1925 may came to develop to Germany. May was influenced by the garden city movement and he had worked with Unwin. May’s plan was a pure garden city one with new towns 20-30 km distant, separated from the city by a wide green belt, but politically it was impossible. So he had to change his plans and concentrate to plan satellite towns which was separated from the city narrow green belt. Satellite towns had depended on city for jobs so the public transportation was needed. May’s satellites were to be designed as modern architecture against master Unwin. May’s programme was not large and many of them were disposed unmemorably on small plats around the city and only a few represent the classic satellites.

In Berlin was Martin Wagner (1885-1957) who was co-ordinating a major housing and planning programme like May. Them thoughts differed on many things, but they had also something to share: a belief in a new social partnership between capital and labour and in a reintegration of working and living. Some thoughts were also Howard’s and Unwin’s one but differencences were too. The May-Wagner variant was the anarchist co-operation sources. May variant main idea was well planned resident environment could complement the pursuit of efficiency in the workplace.

Wagner didn’t believe in satellites. He had own idea Siedlung wherein houses were grouped around the factory, but with no independent existence from the rest of the city. That kind of place is Siemensstadt, which developed by the electrical company around their complex of works.

3.2 America

In America social development was a little bit different. Large-scale immigrants’ waves came from over the ocean to America. Across the Atlantic Ocean found way also Howard’s idea.

Clarence Perry (1872-1944) who was much more sociologist-planner than physical planner. He worked as a community planner. His plans object was socialisation of the immigrant and of the immigrant’s children. But that is not all. There was residents programme in the model garden suburbs of Forest Hills Gardens. From that organisation Perry got his concept of the neighbourhood unit. Its central feature would be local school and an associated playground and local shops and the central point or common place.

In 1924 America got its own garden city corporation, City Housing Corporation by Alexander Bing. The first garden city was Sunnyside Gardens 5 miles from Manhattan. Later Stein and Wright planned three neighbourhoods on City Housing Corporation’s land. Idea was to realise the Sunnyside from the rigid New York City grid and to combine it with cluster.

Stein-Wright own idea was Radburn cities and they are the most important American contributions to the garden-city tradition. Stein-Wright planned three Radburns cities and the first was Radburn. Radburn Association controlled and managed the space. There was hope of social mix, but it failure in many ways. Three in five families were at least middle executives and there were no blue-collar workers at all. The most disappoint was the realtors kept out Jews and blacks. There was also same problem like in Britain. It was difficult to attract industry. And the Depression cut further growth and development. The CHC was forced to abandon all hope of creating a true garden city.

But Stein didn’t lost his hope and he was as consultant in two other financial successes Radburns, Chatham Village in Pittsburgh and Baldwin Hills Village in Los Angeles.

4. New Towns after Wars

After World War Two in Europe the state took control of cities. The garden city was now nationalised and bureaucratised. In Britain was still urban problem. In plans new towns should be in the size range 20 000-60 000. Between 1946-50 was designed thirteen new towns in Britain. Eight for the London area, two for Scotland, two for in northeast England, one in Wales and one in the English midlands. The core of problem was in London. Four London new towns were in country and connected each other by Howard’s inter-municipal railway. From which was connection also to central London and in the mid-1980’s there been the motorway.

London’s new towns were criticized by sceptic people. But towns themselves are proved for criticisers that they are still good places to work and to live and the best prove is that the media notice the only when they want to write about a place without problems.