The garden city movement

Geni -The garden city movement is a method of urban planning that was initiated in 1898 by Sir Ebenezer Howard in the United Kingdom. Garden cities were intended to be planned, self-contained communities surrounded by "greenbelts", containing proportionate areas of residences, industry and agriculture.

Edward Bellamy's novel Looking Backward and Henry George's work Progress and Poverty inspired Ebenezer Howard to publish his book To-morrow: a Peaceful Path to Real Reform in 1898 (reissued in 1902 as Garden Cities of To-morrow).

Ideally his garden city would accommodate 32,000 people on a site of 6,000 acres (2,400 ha), planned on a concentric pattern with open spaces, public parks and six radial boulevards, 120 ft (37 m) wide, extending from the centre. The garden city would be self-sufficient and when it reached full population, another garden city would be developed nearby. Howard envisaged a cluster of several garden cities as satellites of a central city of 50,000 people, linked by road and rail.

The second edition of his book, Garden Cities of To-morrow was successful and this provided Howard with the support needed to realise his vision. The overcrowding and deterioration of cities was one of the troubling issues of the time. Howard’s garden city concept combined the town and country in order to provide the working class an alternative to working on farms or ‘crowded, unhealthy cities’.

Sam Smith - Living in Maine where our cities are still small offers the opportunity to revive the green city movement. Given climate change, Maine is probably in for a major population increase and still has urban areas small enough that expansion could be done with a combination of city and rural development.  Given that traffic in a city is typically heavy from the surrounding neighborhoods to the center, an expansion could be done in a spoke-like fashion, with urban and natural areas side by side.