5 FEBRUARY 1927, Page 15

Is the garden city idea a crank's dream or a

real escape from the unwholesome ugliness of industrial life ? In the last few months we have had abundant evidence that in the United States and, to a less degree, in Europe Sir Ebenezer Howard is regarded as a prophet. Every detail of his newest garden city has been investigated by American reformers ; and very soon it will be concretely (with apologies for the word) imitated both across the Atlantic and across the Channel. Our home counties of England are credited far and wide over the world as the nursery of a new sort of industrial civilization. The community of 15,000 people at Letchworth, which boasts over 90 decentralized factories, and of 5,000 (increasing by a thousand a year) at Welwyn are Meccas of pilgrimage for housing and town planning and industrial agents, in as full a sense, almost, as Rothamsted is accepted by the world as the hub of agricultural research.

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