The Garden City Movement

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.

Appalled by the living conditions for everyday workers, a middle-class man named Ebenezer Howard published two books that framed the argument for Garden Cities. He had recently returned from a trip to the United States, where his experiences visiting Quaker towns left him with the idea for creating utopian, self-sufficient cities in the countryside. The first of his books, To-morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform laid out the basic ideals of the Garden City: the "retention of the gifts of nature", the advantages of city life, and to "raise the standard of health and comfort of all true workers of whatever grade."

In his second book, Garden Cities of To-morrow, Howard stepped farther from the social commentary toward describing the actual urban system of the Garden City. He provided blueprints, diagrams and descriptions of the balance of land uses necessary to support a successful Garden City. Here, his ideas were mostly borrowed from earlier authors. Howard borrowed his radial city plan from James Silk Buckingham's plan for a future city called "Victoria." Howard also drew from the social solutions offered to urban problems in TheCommunist Manifesto by Karl Marx. Even though Ebenezer Howard was not a communist, his references to Marx would plague the Garden Cities upon their importation to America. Contrary to Marxist thinking, Howard argued that solving urban problems should be a private venture, one where investors and workers profit from the new city form.

In 1899, Ebenezer Howard formed a Garden City Association to seek financing to build his vision. Shares of the company were sold to investors. A 3,880 acre plot of agricultural land located 60 miles north of London was purchased. About 450 people lived on the property, most within the village of Letchworth. These villages were incorporated into the city plan, and the Garden City drew its name from the 12^th century village. The land purchase drained the company of capital, and it was necessary to mortgage the land to begin construction of the city itself.

Two architects were selected to design the city. Barry Parker and Raymond Unwin designed the city with a radial pattern leading away from the town center and the train station. Their design called for zonal layers. The commercial core lay at the middle of the city. It was surrounded by a layer of low income homes. These homes were to take the form of dense townhomes. Despite the density, each had a small garden for its residents to cultivate fruits and vegetables. Outside of this lower income ring was a ring of homes for richer residents. These were generally standalone cottages and houses on 1/16 to 1/4 acre lots. Outside of the housing was a greenbelt of open land. An industrial park was located opposite the train station, separated from housing. This was one of the first attempts to segregate land uses that were not complementary to each other.

A total of 1250 acres of land was utilized for urban purposes. There was space for 30,000 inhabitants. An extensive parks system (750 additional acres) runs throughout the urbanized area. Neighborhood parks are the most common. There are also several linear parks that serve as pedestrian and recreational corridors. The greenbelt occupies an additional 3000 acres, up from 2500 at the start. The greenbelt was and remains in active agricultural use, and even today is a profitable venture. Later on the greenbelt would be valuable because it insulated the city from adjacent development. Five hundred additional acres were later purchased, although the greenbelt remains fairly thin to the north side.

Public interest in Letchworth was not strong at the start. Howard, Parker and Unwin had difficulty attracting factories and retailers to a city that had no workforce. The Letchworth Association held an exhibition to showcase how low income homes were being constructed at costs far cheaper than found in the central city. This exhibition attracted the attention of workers and employers from around the UK. The first company to move to the city was the publishing house James Denson and Sons in 1904. They built their own factory along with some additional housing closer to the industrial district.

Employer-constructed housing was not owned by the Letchworth Association. Today it encompasses the majority of the owner-occupied homes in the city. Home ownership today is just over 50%. The rest is rented property. Most of the rented property is still owned by the Letchworth Association Cooperative. Profits from the Association are reinvested in the community in the form of public transit, grants for preservation, and public facilities. All homes are subject to a very strict Land Development Code. The LDC covers almost every exterior aspect of homes including window types, roofing and hedging. Hedges are used throughout Letchworth instead of fences to mark property lines.

Greencities Program

The United States Government tried only once to form Garden Cities. During the depths of the Great Depression a trusted advisor to President Roosevelt named Rexford Guy Tugwell was appointed the head of the newly created Resettlement Administration. The Resettlement Administration fell underneath the Farm Security Administration, which would later become the Department of Agriculture. Tugwell left his position as a professor of agriculture economics at Columbia University to take the post. Tugwell was well traveled and knew much about the Garden Cities of Europe, particularly of Letchworth and Welwyn in the United Kingdom. In this way the Garden City idea came full circle. Ebenezer Howard drew his inspiration from American Quaker towns, and Rexford Tugwell drew his inspiration from the United Kingdom Garden Cities, of which there were several by 1930. He proposed to attempt the construction of Garden Cities in the United States to President Roosevelt. The building program would include up to 30 cities arranged outside of major cities. The President agreed to a vastly scaled down version of Tugwell's plan.

Three Garden Cities would be built by the federal government. The "Greencities" program had a budget of $31 million. The first would be Greenbelt, MD, located 15 miles northeast of Washington, DC. The second would be Greenhills, Ohio, outside of Cincinnati. The last would be Greendale, WI, on the outskirts of Milwaukee. The locations were chosen for their proximity to major cities. Not because the intention was to create a suburb, but because the main purpose of the Greencities program was to provide jobs to unemployed workers. Of the three, Greenbelt is the only one that today retains anything of its original form. The other two have long since been swallowed up by the suburban sprawl of Cincinnati and Milwaukee. Greenbelt has not gone untouched by the outward sprawl of Washington- indeed I-495 (the Capitol Beltway) crosses the city limits. Through smart planning, a strict land development code and a large housing cooperative, Greenbelt has been able to preserve the feel and look of a Garden City.

Greenbelt was built on a single agricultural estate purchased by the federal government. At its peak, the town employed 5,012 skilled and unskilled laborers. They worked with a minimum of mechanized tools so that more employees would be needed. High-quality building methods were used, and the materials were bought from several different manufacturers. This was done to support existing businesses that had made it through the depression and to entice them to hire more employees. The number of job applicants greatly outstretched the number of jobs available. It was decided that 90% would come from the District of Columbia, with the remainder from Prince George's County, MD. This decision was the final straw for residents and officials in the county. Many took an openly hostile attitude toward Greenbelt for many years after its construction.

The plan for Greenbelt was designed by Hale Walker with significant input from Clarence Stein. Walker and Stein altered the design from the planned community of Radburn, NJ to create the form of Greenbelt. Greenbelt was laid out as a rough semicircle with its open face to the northwest. The original town had 5 "superblocks" of housing, each designated A through E. Each superblock was sandwiched in between two roads. The road to the interior of the semicircle was considered the main thoroughfare because the town center was found on that road. The road to the outside of the crescent was treated as the service road. Garbage collection, deliveries and parking were found on this road. Each superblock was separated from its neighbor by a crossing street. A superblock had mixed housing types with a central green space. The center of each was cut by a sidewalk system running parallel to the streets, leading to the town center. Pedestrian underpasses ensured safe passage over roads.

The 855 original homes were mostly row houses and apartments. A total of 574 row houses were built, using 71 different floor plans. Most were two stories tall with a basement, although there were some one story and three story models. Each varied from one to three bedrooms. Three hundred and six apartments were built in 4-story buildings. These were mostly one and two bedroom floorplans. Only 5 single family detached homes were built. To the original town planners, the only people who would demand detached homes were the professionals in town such as the doctor, dentist and lawyer.

The communal facilities of the city were very good for one of its size. A public gymnasium, swimming pool and lakefront park allowed people to be active. The town center had 8 stores plus a post office and movie theater. Some office space is located above the retail stores, mostly for the cooperative and for professionals like the doctor and lawyer. The supermarket and pharmacy were and are still owned by the city cooperative. The town center is arranged around a two-tiered square. The buildings reflect the art deco architecture of the period.

The town was added onto just before World War II, expanding the city by three superblocks and one thousand homes. Through the war these residences were occupied by Defense Department workers. These areas were also row houses and apartments, although they were more spaced out. These areas all went in to the north of the existing city and have a comparatively poor connection with the town center.

Greenbelt began self governance in 1937, the same year as the first tenants moved in. The city incorporated in 1952, just after the Federal Government sold the town. It had the first council-mayor form of government in the state of Maryland. The city has continued to annex land outside of the greenbelt surrounding the original town. Today Greenbelt has over 22,000 people, although only about 5,300 live in historic Greenbelt.

Greenbelt faced intense animosity toward it from the Federal Government, the media and its neighbors. The Washington Post and the Senate Committee on Un-American Activities denounced Greenbelt as a socialist or even communist enterprise. They noted the cooperative atmosphere between citizens, the strict codes and the governmental role in building the city. The idea of the government owning all housing within a city ran contrary to the prevailing development methods and the free market system of the United States. They also noted how Ebenezer Howard cited Marx in the publishing of his early books on Garden Cities. Residents of Prince George's County also looked down upon Greenbelt as egalitarian and invasive. They refused to cooperate with the Greenbelt government until the 1960's.

In 1952 the Federal Government sold all of the "Green Cities." The Greenbelt Co-op managed to purchase the entire town from the government by raising funds from the tenants. Tenants feared that they would be priced out of their homes and lose their way of life if the town was not held by the co-op. Today the co-op owns nearly all of the homes built in the 1930's. The interior of the semicircle was built on by private developers in the late 1950's. Some of those developers built housing consistent with the Greenbelt style. Others built tract single family homes.

The arrival of the I-495 beltway circumvented Greenbelt's zoning code. The original plan for the Interstate would have taken it through a part of historic Greenbelt. To save money on eminent domain purchase, an alternate route was chosen south of town. The Baltimore-Washington Parkway meets I-495 south of Greenbelt and cuts through the western half of the green belt. The intersection of these highways attracted high rise apartment buildings and subdivision development south of the historic city. Central Greenbelt escaped this onslaught of government and private sector construction, and in 1987, the American Planning Association designated Greenbelt a planning landmark.

Urban Design

There are considerable design differences between Letchworth and Greenbelt. The most obvious is the size and density of each city. Letchworth was designed to accommodate 30,000 people. Greenbelt was intended to house about 3,000. Greenbelt was designed with densities lower than Letchworth (8 dwelling units versus 20 units). In many ways Greenbelt functioned more as a Garden Suburb. Today, it certainly functions more as a suburb than a self-contained town. Greenbelt cannot come close to supplying enough jobs for its residents. Only neighborhood retail is found there. A citizen of Letchworth can find almost any good or service in the large commercial center.

The green spaces in the two cities are arranged quite differently. While both have (or had) the signature green belt, only Letchworth's has ever been used for agriculture. There are many more neighborhood parks in Letchworth, spaced around the very dense housing. In Greenbelt, parks are located to the interior of superblocks, out of view from the road. Letchworth utilized its hedges to segregate land, while Greenbelt used fences. There is considerably more space between buildings in Greenbelt, as the row houses are found in groups of 4 instead of 10 or more in Letchworth.

Both cities share many common urban design aspects. Public areas and parks are the focal point of the community. The most distinctive trait of a Garden City is the multifamily housing found in a relatively low density setting. Row houses and apartments are usually found in central cities with no green space in between. In both Letchworth and Greenbelt, these housing types are arranged around public parks and common areas. Parking is given a very low priority in both cities. Trees, hedges and open green space was given a priority over parking.

The Land Development Codes and the town cooperatives can be credited with preserving the character of the city. In cities with very low home ownership, this was an easy task. Residents moving to the Garden Cities knew what they were getting into. Residents needed to cooperate with each other and yield some personal liberty for the greater public good. For inner city workers, this would be a welcome trade in exchange for the hardships of early 20^th century city living.

Transportation

Greenbelt was intended to be a self-contained suburb of Washington, while Letchworth was intended to be a standalone city. Contemporary transportation planners would suggest that passenger/commuter rail would have thrived in early Greenbelt, while demand for it in Letchworth would have been minimal. But the exact opposite situation materialized. It is a result of government policies and the culture of each country at the time. At the beginning of the century, each country was supportive of the train. Over the span of 33 years, the priority in America had shifted heavily in favor of the automobile. The car was the priority in America by 1936 when Greenbelt was built, while the train was the choice of Great Britain in 1903.

In Letchworth, the train station on the main line to London was one of the first buildings constructed. In 1903, cars had just been invented. Trains were the dominant form of intercity transportation. The road system from Letchworth linked it to nearby cities, but in the train culture of Great Britain it has always been the train that moved one from place to place.

Today, trains are still important to Letchworth. The development of better train technologies has shortened the transit time to London to about 40 minutes. Some citizens of Letchworth choose to commute to London, a condition that would have been impossible for most of the 20^th century. Some Londoners have taken second homes in Letchworth. Intercity busses to Letchworth run multiple times per day. Local bus transit is frequent and convenient. This multi and intermodal combination allows citizens of Letchworth to function without a car if they choose.

Greenbelt did not have passenger rail service until the 1980's with the construction of commuter trains from Baltimore to Washington. The primary method of transportation to work for Greenbelt citizens was carpooling to Washington. From the beginning of the town, a bus company provided service to Berwyn, MD. Berywn was the end of the line for a streetcar running to downtown Washington. The town did not get direct bus service to the District of Columbia until 5 years after construction was complete. By the 1930s, automobiles had begun proliferating through the middle classes with the mass marketing of the Ford Model T. It wasn't necessary to own a car, but it was necessary to know someone who did. Residents of Greenbelt joined together to purchase cars between 3 or 4 families. This allowed families to travel to specialized commercial areas in Annapolis, College Park or the District of Columbia. It also allowed husbands to commute to work together.

Today Greenbelt lies on the end of the line for the Washington Metro system, but the station is a mile outside of the central city. The Metro did not arrive until 1993. The town is far too small to support local transit services, nor would there be any demand for it in such a walkable city. Car ownership is a necessity in contemporary Greenbelt, whether to drive to the Metro station or to get to shopping outside of the city limits.

Greenbelt has been threatened by the automobile age and suburban sprawl. The Capitol Beltway and the Baltimore-Washington Parkway intersect inside the city limits. Highway construction has erased much of the greenbelt that surrounded the city, particularly to the south. Office parks, commuter parking lots and suburban development emanating from College Park, MD have encroached on the outskirts of the city.

Smart planning and a strong housing cooperative have succeeded in shielding most of Greenbelt from sprawl. Greendale and Greenhills were not so lucky. While some homes remain in those towns from the Greencities program, the towns have been infiltrated and overcome by modern suburbia. Greenbelt also benefited from incorporating into its own municipality just after the town was sold by the federal government, allowing to take some control over its own destiny.

Commerce and Employment

Letchworth was planned as a fully functional town. Factories and commercial areas provided jobs to local residents. The Letchworth town center is a 15 by 2 block strip of storefronts plus a separate town square with governmental offices and services. Smaller commercial outposts dot the city to provide local services. A factory district housed several large factories at its peak, although industry is nearly defunct in modern Letchworth. Good rail connections existed to transport products like paper and textiles to markets in Manchester and London. The population base of the town was large enough to support specialized goods and services. Letchworth is also very far removed from any nearby metropolitan areas. It needed to be nearly self-sufficient economically.

Greenbelt was planned with only one small town center. A grocer, druggist, movie theater and 4-5 small specialty shops were the only commercial properties in town. All are located in a single square. Industry never has existed in Greenbelt. The town is too small to demand specialized good and services. It also lacked efficient rail connections to bring factory goods to market. From the beginning it was necessary for breadwinners to commute outside of Greenbelt to find employment, save the handful of local services and governmental employees.

Social Experiments

There were several groundbreaking social experiments going on with the construction of Letchworth. Letchworth succeeded in attracting people from the whole social spectrum, because its original intention was to provide a utopian alternative to the crowded, dirty city. As a fully functional city, it needed both blue and white collar workers.

Greenbelt attracted out of work working class people to town. In that way Greenbelt never had a chance to achieve the mix of social strata that Letchworth had. Due to the direct government administration of the town, only working class people would be selected. As construction began to wind down, the Federal Government began accepting applications for rentals in the city. Over 5,000 applications were submitted for the 855 slots. Successful applicants had to be married, preferably with children. The wife had to agree to stay home while the husband worked, and all families had to relocate from Washington. Each applicant was interviewed and asked questions about their willingness to cooperate with their neighbors. No ethnic minorities were accepted. Resettlement Administration officials decided to admit a representative proportion of each religion. Fifty seven percent were protestant, 30% Catholic, and 7% Jewish.

The residents of Greenbelt did an excellent job of forming a tight knit, interdependent community. The open hostility of the media and residents of Prince George's County helped drive them together. Over 60 clubs and organizations were formed to cater to people's interests. The town newspaper was dubbed The Cooperator and run by volunteers who were often women. Residents pulled together and formed a Kindergarten. The citizens were active in local elections, with turnouts of over 80%.

Letchworth proved that private building of Garden Cities was entirely possible. However in the depths of the Great Depression there was private sector interest in vast real estate ventures. Thus, the only way the Greencities would ever get built was for the Federal Government to bankroll the project. Both cities succeeded in their goals. Letchworth showed that a new type of development was beneficial and preferable over some types of city living. Greenbelt provided the jobs and housing required during the period. Over the past 65 years, it has also shown that historic communities are sustainable. Both cities stand as examples of alternatives to suburban sprawl that retain a strong sense of community.

Conclusion

The United Kingdom and Europe as a whole have continued building programs of Garden Cities. The Garden City concept morphed into Garden Suburbs- smaller, high density Garden Cities outside of major cities. As the automobile began to rise in popularity in Europe, New Towns began to replace Garden Cities in popularity. These New Towns incorporate fewer of the design principles of the Garden City and cater to the automobile. But they are self-contained cities that function as independent economic units. Together Garden Cities, Suburbs and New Towns have accommodated a majority of population growth within the United Kingdom. They have been a powerful alternative to urban sprawl. They have also helped preserve a community atmosphere. Government policies have let to the rise of New Towns and Garden Cities. Europe also has fewer property rights than the United States, allowing strict land development codes and restrictive zoning to withstand legal contest.

The United States has largely abandoned the Garden City concept. The three original Greencities were the only ones ever built. The United States has also experiences explosive urban sprawl, strapping local governments with excessive costs and robbing the sense of community from suburban citizens. Government policies in the United States heavily favor single family home ownership and the automobile. Coupled with the constitutional rights afforded to citizens and the larger role that local and state governments play, the United States has failed to provide the regulatory backing needed for the private sector to build Garden Cities true to the principles of Ebenezer Howard.

The concept of a privately financed, self-contained town has not completely gone away in America. Many master planned communities attempt to foster community spirit and provide nearby employment opportunities. The New Urbanist movement within the US attempts to locate employment and residential uses in close proximity. Master planned and New Urbanist communities remain the exception instead of the rule in the US. Often they are swallowed up by suburban sprawl.

The first Garden Cities in the US and UK proved that self-contained towns were preferable in many ways to sprawl. They succeeded in creating a strong sense of place. Both Letchworth and Greenbelt successfully combined the benefits of rural living with the benefits of urban living. Suburban sprawl does not do that- it simply removes the detriments of city life while stripping away the benefits of urban and rural living. The United Kingdom has been far more successful at preserving open space, farmland and the sense of place. They accomplished these feats by promoting the foundation of Garden Cities and New Towns. The United States started in the right direction, but unfortunately ceased following that policy path. If the United States looks toward the UK and into its own past, it will find one of the important solutions to the plague of sprawl- the Garden City.

Bibliography

Farm Security Administration, Greenbelt, Maryland Manual, 1938.

Knepper, Cathy D., Greenbelt, Maryland: A Living Legacy of the New Deal; The John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 2001.

Lancaster, Robert; Curator of the Letchworth Heritage Museum. Lecture, Letchworth, UK; May 2003.

Rickmansworth, Norman. Sir Ebenezer Howard and the Garden City Movement; Hertfordshire Historical Museum: http://www.rickmansworthherts.freeserve.co.uk

Rozenzweig, Richard, Resident of Greenbelt and Greenbelt Museum Volunteer. Personal Interview, Greenbelt, MD; July 2003.