The Garden City Movement

A History of the First American and British New Towns

In the early 1900's, the Garden City movement took hold in Europe with the founding of Letchworth in 1903. The United States did not follow suit for more than 30 years, when in the depths of the Great Depression the United States began a building program of Garden Cities. The scale and motivations for the founding of American and British Garden Cities were very different. However the values, design principles and "feel" of the cities were very similar.

Letchworth

In the last decade of the 19^th century, the United Kingdom was experiencing a radical shift in its economy and city form. The industrial revolution had made the UK a world leader in manufactured goods. Demand for workers in the cities had risen sharply. Coupled with advances in agriculture that required fewer farmers, a massive influx into the cities was underway.

The influx into metropolitan areas caused serious problems that threatened the health and welfare of citizens. Housing was in short supply, particularly homes that could accommodate entire families. The same factories that brought people to the cities were heavily polluting the air and water. Tenement apartment buildings, often with substandard plumbing, sprang up near factories. Transportation to and from work was difficult. For the average worker, options were limited to walking or horse-drawn streetcar. The streetcar option was expensive, often costing more than the equivalent of an hour of work for a one-way ride. With the absence of zoning requirements, industrial parks and districts did not form naturally. Instead a roughshod mix of factories, housing and neighborhood retail brought together uncomplimentary uses in a potentially detrimental setting.