Sham Garden Cities
What is a garden city? I drove last week through some houses that were given the name, and they seemed to me to constitute a particularly good specimen of riband development. It is a pity that the name should be misused. It connotes a very definite idea. The purpose of the garden city proper—as seen, for example, at Letchworth and Welwyn—is the de- centralisation of factories. The founders had a picture of factories adjacent to the country homes of the workers, who would thus live in the country without the necessity of choosing between long daily journeys or life in a slum. A good deal of the rather formal plan of the original design has gone by the board, especially the idea of an agricultural belt that might supply the workers direct with fresh food, but the garden city remains in essence true to the original idea, and by general confession, though it is the butt of some sarcasm, the central purpose is the best answer yet found to excessive urbanisation. Groups or lines of houses that boast a narrow garden between themselves and the road do not constitute a garden city. In the best of the garden cities the nightingales are now singing with full gusto.
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