Generic Terminology in Colonial Urban Contexts: Garden Cities Between Dakar and Tel Aviv

Abstract

This chapter examines the various planning practices that stand behind the generic term ‘garden cities’ through an analysis of the inclusiveness and flexibility that are rooted in the term. While garden cities rhetoric and modes of planning in the western world are well covered in research literature, their counterparts in the southern hemisphere or in colonial contexts have gained relatively little attention. In scholarly works, in which comparative studies are rare, garden cities notions and practices have been considered simplistic at best, mere distortions of the original British models. The chapter traces and expands on the dissemination of garden city ideas in the early twentieth century from Britain to French Senegal and Ottoman Palestine. By bringing together Dakar and Tel Aviv (Ahuzat Bayit) our aim is not only to contribute to garden city historiography by an in-depth consideration of ‘other’ geographies. The aim is also to acknowledge the inherent dynamism that is rooted in both garden city terminology and implementation, which corresponds to a rich variety of vernacular contexts (including the global South-East). Semantically and practically, these contexts therefore constitute an integral and essential part of the global history of the garden city planning phenomenon.