Ebenezer Howard And The Garden City

Through a multitude of significant changes physically, conceptually, economically, and more, the societal reformation of cities in the Progressive Era had set themselves as the foundations of American civilization. The juxtaposition between the rich and poor statuses in these urban areas show the drastic separation within developing cities. Through this division caused a wide variety of living conditions, the majority of which held the overcrowded sections of cities where the population mostly stayed while the higher end communities had more luxurious lives. Through this success of entrepreneurship and economic growth from all aspects in cities, the entire landscape, both physically through innovative architecture and the perspectives outside rural and suburban areas had on them, had transformed for the better in these areas.

Paul Goldberger, an American architectural critic once quoted, “Urbanism works when it creates the journey as desirable as the destination.”

Well known in cities at the time were the City Beautiful movement and the city practical, however, social issues were merely pushed to the side. Wirka (1996) explains that “both are undoubtedly important movements in the history of planning” (p. 57), however, she goes on

This created overcrowding, disease, and the need to build more shelters to accommodate everyone. This in part, was the reason cities such as Manchester grew so large. However, the living conditions of urban cities in Europe were utterly abysmal. Disease ran amok in the streets, infecting people quite easily. For example, the city of Paris had narrow streets and buildings practically stacked on top of one of each other, leading to the same problems that most European cities at the time had. According to Edwin Chadwick, public health reformer who authored Report on the Sanitary Conditions of the Laboring Population of Great Britain, “Diseases caused or aggravated by atmospheric impurities produced by decomposing animal and vegetable substances, by damp and filth, and close and overcrowded dwellings, prevail among the laboring classes.” In this statement, Chadwick encompassed just about every problem with these large urban areas. He also provided the effects of the problems associated with the horrid living conditions, for instance the effect of education would be much more “temporary”, and the population would not be as influenced by morality. Edwin Chadwick was a socialist, which should definitely tip the reader

An essential need of the city and urban life, for bringing people together and seeing architecture as a social form. (147-148 writing on cities)

The experiment of the city needs some fine-tuning. Social reformers from all different stripes come out in full force to correct some of these urban problems. One of these campaigns is for the establishment of parks and its close cousin the playground. Landscape architect Charles Eliot whose work heavily influences the Boston Metropolitan Park System strongly pushes a park system to combat the growing urban

description of the construction of a good city. The good city is a relation to

Ebenezer Howard created revolutionary concepts with his “Town-Country Magnet” idea. This idealistic paper combines the healthy amenities of the country with the economic machine of the city; two entities that were, at the time, completely segregated. He reinvented this space and called it the “Garden City” (Howard 373). This urban decentralization used a circular plan and designated each ring to a different use, separated by expansive avenues and

“The best that can be said of the conception is that it did afford a chance to experiment with some physical and social planning theories which did not pan out. “ This quote reflects Jane Jacob’s philosophical ideas in an attempt to criticize the social housing’s design approach and its associated urban planning in modern era. “The physical and social theories” outlines the urban planning idea of social housing (Utopian idea) and according to Jane’s statement, such experiment of these theories were deem to be unsuccessful. It is inevitably certain to some extent that a provocative statement towards modern era social housing approaches would hold true due to the minimal success the plans brought to the city, such as solving the working class commendations temporarily. Nevertheless, it is a failure to deliver long-standing social improvements corresponded with the increasing suspicion of modernism, one cannot simply attribute ill fate to its “innovative physical features” (As Jane said, the Utopian and Utopia), but should rather considered a range of other elements in the larger aspect of society: factors such as difficulty of racial integration, problems of financing and management, lack of bridging between architecture and planning, as well as the increasing preference of suburban lifestyle from the rising mid class. These problems reflected evidently in some stereotypes of social housing communities built in the modern era such as Pruitt-Igoe, sunny side Gardens, Paul

New Urbanism, a burgeoning genre of architecture and city planning, is a movement that has come about only in the past decade. This movement is a response to the proliferation of conventional suburban development (CSD), the most popular form of suburban expansion that has taken place since World War II. Wrote Robert Steuteville, "Lacking a town center or pedestrian scale, CSD spreads out to consume large areas of countryside even as population grows relatively slowly. Automobile use per capita has soared, because a motor vehicle is required for nearly all human transportation"1. New Urbanism, therefore, represents the converse of this planning ideology. It stresses traditional planning, including multi-purpose zoning,

“Wright and Le Corbusier seem predestined for comparison. Their ideal cities confront each other as two opposing variations on the same utopian theme” (Fishman, 163). Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris, more commonly known as Le Corbusier (October 6, 1887 – August 27, 1965), was a Swiss-French architect, designer, painter, urban planner, and writer. Throughout his life, he was a pioneer of modern architecture and city planning (Frampton, 12). One of Le Corbusier’s contemporaries was also hugely influential but with a competing plan Frank

Part two of Death and Life explains several conditions for city diversity based on the observations of different American cities and discusses in depth the four factors that Jacobs believe are critical for the development of a city. The basis for generating diversity lies in these conditions, and cannot be secludedly achieved by planning and designing. This part lays out the foundation and is the basis for the rest of the book. It shows urban planning and many possible remedies for creating equal diversity, and studies why these are not applied and the effects of it not being so.

As a result of a booming development of the nineteenth century city, “progressive” architects of the time started to deliberate and conceive opinions to create long term solutions. Known for his radical cultural manifestos, Le Corbusier is one of the architects that epitomizes the change in ideal of the Machine Age. He introduced ideas of living in completely analogous, planned, designed, and then built, cities. Le Corbusier 's proposition for the City of Tomorrow had in its roots the intention of creating a series of fundamental principles that would become the skeleton of any modern city plan. However, considerations that were not applied during that period of time, are the cause of its unsuccessful development.

Space that is documented and utilized by humans, whether directly or indirectly, takes on a basic level of social utility and cultural construction. As Elias Canetti would suggest, the prospect of touch carries with it the risk of being taken and subsequently assimilated or digested (1). The predecessors to the first great urban parks in the United States, namely country estates, cemeteries, and town squares or plazas, all contribute some aesthetic and related ideological basis for a newly emerging discourse of urban parks. Parks were seen as the “poor-man’s countryside,” in reference to the country estates of the wealthy. Also, cemeteries were the first naturalistic open spaces consistently built within urban boundaries. The idea of the commons and town square is perhaps the most telling predecessor of the city park.

The garden city movement, a method of urban planning that was initiated in 1898 by Sir Ebenezer Howard, had a significant influence on urban planning. The theory of urban planning has envolved over the past hundred years, some have attempted to emulate theories from the garden city movement, while others have been revised based on Howard’s original ideas. The Garden City concept spawned many ideas of urban planning. Among these ideas, the Garden Suburb, Satellite City, the New Towns Movement and the New Urbanism are all significant theories in the history of urban planning and had their influence to this day. The integration of town and country, the separation of conflicting land uses and modes of travel, and the ideas of growth management are all elements of the Garden City concept that have made made their ways into plans of most major Western cities.