At the turn of the 19th century, a British publishing house would release a book written by an English urban planner – a book with an optimistic title. The title of this book was To-morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform, later reprinted as Garden Cities of To-morrow. The English urban planner in question was Ebenezer Howard – and this book would lay the foundations for what would later become known as the Garden City Movement. This movement would go on to produce green suburbs praised for their lofty aims, but it would also produce satellite communities that only catered to a privileged few.
The concept propagated by Ebenezer Howard was quite simple. At its most basic, a garden city would harmoniously combine the countryside with the urban town, where rural flight and urban overcrowding would be simultaneously addressed. Spatially, Howard visualized garden cities to be planned on a concentric pattern with green spaces and public parks, intersected by six radial boulevards extending from the center.
