OUGD504 - Studio Brief 01 - History of Letchworth Garden City

Letchworth, situated in Hertfordshire, United Kingdom, is the world's first Garden City and former civil parish. The land was purchased by Quakers with the initial intention to form a Quaker community before the town was developed to produce a solution to the squalor and poverty of urban life in Britain around the late 19th Century. This development was based on the ideas of social reformer, Ebenezer Howard, published in his 1898 book entitled 'To-morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform' and later published as 'Garden Cities of To-morrow'.

Ebenezer Howard
Ebenezer Howard advocated the construction of a new kind of town known as 'Garden Cities', which combined the advantages of cities and countryside, aiming to eliminate their disadvantages. The idea was to produce a zone system which separated industrial areas from residential areas with green, open spaces prevailing everywhere. This new development also aimed to produce not only a new form of urban planning but also community management through the introduction of a 'Rate-Rent' system that would finance the Garden City Project, which supplied financing for community services (rates) with a return for those who helped invest in the development of the town (rent). Such ideas were communicated through the diagram of 'The Three Magnets'.

The Three Magnets
The Three Magnets diagram was produced by Howard in order to help summarise the economic, social and political contexts of his vision for the future of British settlement. The diagram consists of three magnets; one lists advantages and disadvantages of city life, one for those of country life, whilst the third combines the advantages of both communicating the proposal of a town-country. The basis of these ideas were to provide a response to the many Victorian workers torn between inner-city slum conditions and the lack of opportunity of more rural settings. Barry Parker and Raymond Unwin were appointed architects of the town. Through the process only one tree was felled in order to demonstrate the principles established by Ebenezer Howard through his three magnets idea, and an area of land was kept devoted to agriculture, which is now known as the first 'Green Belt'. The town was laid out in such a way to also promote these principles.