Garden Cities of To-morrow is a book by the British urban planner Ebenezer Howard. When it was published in 1898, the book was titled To-morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform. In 1902, it was reprinted as Garden Cities of To-Morrow. The book gave rise to the garden city movement and is very important in the field of urban design.Anderson, p. 173.
Background This book offered a vision of towns free of slums and enjoying the benefits of both town (such as opportunity, amusement, and high wages) and country (such as beauty, fresh air and low rents). Howard illustrated the idea with his "Three Magnets" diagram.See diagram. His ideas were conceived for the context of a capitalist economic system and sought to balance individual and community needs.Sacred-texts.com. Introduction to Garden Cities of Tomorrow. Visited October 20, 2009.
Two English towns were built as garden cities, Letchworth and Welwyn. Though they did not completely measure up to the ideal, they provided a model for controlling urban sprawl.
Diagrams from the 1898 edition
Diagrams from the 1902 edition
Diagrams from the 1922 edition
Notes
References Larry Anderson. Benton MacKaye: Conservationist, Planner, and creator of the Appalachian Trail. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. 2002. Ebenezer Howard. Garden Cities of Tomorrow. London: S. Sonnenschein & Co., Ltd. 1902. (at Google Books) Sacred-Texts.com. Garden Cities of Tomorrow (HTML edition with introduction).