VIEWPOINT: Tomorrow today: a centennial perspective

Abstract

The year 1998 marks both the centenary of the publication of Ebenezer Howard's Tomorrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform and the seventieth anniversary of its author's death. Born in London in 1850, Howard had no professional qualifications, and served as a Parliamentary shorthand reporter for many years, which developed his concern for social reform. Invariably now identified with the evolution of town planning through the 'Garden City', his concept was seen as the vehicle for reform, rather than an end in itself. Howard's inventive character he patented a shorthand typewriter demanded a prototype through which to test the soundness of his ideas, and the Garden City was to fulfil this role, as the setting for an enlightened life. Widespread dissatisfaction with the overcrowded, polluted Victorian industrial cities, allied to agricultural depression, exacerbated by Free Trade and increasing imports of cheap food from America and the colonies, convinced him that a new form of settlement was required, in which both urban and rural society could be rebuilt and reintegrated. A century later, as 250000 people from the countryside march into the capital to protest at perceived government antipathy to the traditional rural way of life, a crisis in agriculture, and concern over greenfield housing development, it would be easy to question the impact of a century of decentralisation of population and industry, influenced by Howard's seminal thesis. I believe that an examination of his means, rather than simply reiterating the Garden City mantra, attractive as it is, will disclose the continued relevance of his work. The 'Three Magnets' diagram, now a planning icon, succinctly summarised the advantages and disadvantages of town and country life, and interposed Howard's radical alternative, 'town-country', to combine the physical, social and economic advantages of both, and eliminate their disadvantages. This achieved, people would be drawn to the strongest magnet, like iron filings. With