Ebenezer Howard(garden city)

• Sir Ebenezer Howard is known for his Publication Garden cities of tomorrow (1898), the
description of a utopian city in which people live harmoniously together with nature.
• Garden City Concept was also given by him. The publication resulted in the founding of
the garden city movement that realized several Garden Cities in Great Britain at the
beginning of the 20th century.
• His garden cities were planned, contained communities surrounded by a green belt
(parks), containing proportionate areas of residences, industry and agriculture. Garden
city movement aimed at addressing the urban problems plaguing the industrial city of
that time. 
• Garden City Concept was an effective response for a better quality of life in over
crowded and dirty industrial towns which had deteriorated the environment and posed
serious threat to health.
Garden city movement had The Three Magnets to addresses the question ‘Where will the
people go?’ the choices being ‘Town’, ‘Country’ or ‘Town Country’.
• Town – The pull of ‘Town Magnet’ are the opportunities for work and high wages, social
opportunities, amusements and well – lit streets. The pull of ‘Country Magnet’ is in
natural beauty, fresh air, healthfulness. It was closing out of nature, offered isolation of
crowds and distance from work. But it came at a cost of foul air, costly drainage, murky
sky and slums.
• Country –  It offered natural beauty, low rents, fresh air, meadow but had low wages
and lack of drainage. Country has dullness, lack of society, low wages, lack of
amusements and general decay.
• Town- Country – it was a combination of both town and countryside with aim of
providing benefits of both and offered beauty of nature, social opportunity, fields if
easy access, low rent, high wages and field of enterprise.  Thus, the solution was found
in a combination of the advantages of Town and Country – the ‘Town – Country
Magnet’ – it was proposed a Town in the Country, and having within it the amenities of
natural  beauty, fresh air and healthfulness. Thus advantages of the Town – Country are
seed to be free from the disadvantages of either.
How cities were supposed to be developed as per Garden City Movement
• An ideal garden city is a compact town of 6000 acres, 5000 of which is permanently reserved
for agriculture.
• It accommodates a maximum population of 32,000.
• There are parks and private lawn everywhere.
• Also the roads are wide, ranging from 120 to 420 feet for the grand avenue, and are radial
rather than linear. Within the town, functional zoning is basic. 
• Commercial, industrial, residential, and public uses are clearly differentiated from each other
spatially. 
• Additional elements include unified land ownership co-operatives, there was no individual
ownership of land.
• Local community also participated in the decision making regarding development.
• There is a central park containing public buildings. It is surrounded by shopping streets which
are further surrounded by dwelling units in all directions. The outer circle contains factories
and industries.
• Rail road’s bypasses the town, meeting the town at tangent. 
• After a city reaches its target population, new interconnected nodes can be
developed.
• A Garden City is built up and its population has reached 32,000 will grow by
establishing another city some little distance beyond its own zone of ‘country’, so that
the new town may have a zone of country of its own. But the inhabitants of the one
could reach the other in a very few minutes; for rapid transit would be specially
provided for, and thus the people of the two towns would in reality represent one
community.
• There will be a cluster of cities so grouped around a Central City that each inhabitant
of the whole group, though in one sense living in a town of small size, would be in
reality living in, and would enjoy all the advantages of, a great and most beautiful city;
and yet all the fresh delights of the  country; field, hedgerow, and woodland not prim
parks and gardens merely would be within a very few minutes’ walk or ride.
• And because the people in their collective capacity own the land on which this
beautiful group of cities is built, the public buildings, the churches, the schools and
universities, the libraries, picture galleries, theatres, would be on a scale of
magnificence which no city in the world whose land is in pawn to private individuals
can afford.
Thus the main components of howard’s garden city movement were:
• Planned Dispersal: The organized outward migration of industries and people to towns
of sufficient size to provide the services, variety of occupations, and level of culture needed by
a balanced cross – section of modern society.
• Limit of Town – size: The growth of towns to be limited, in order that their inhabitants may live
near work, shops, social centers, and each other and also near open country.
• Amenities: The internal texture of towns to be open enough to permit of houses with private
gardens, adequate space for schools and other functional purposes, and pleasant parks and
parkways.
• Town and Country Relationship: The town area to be defined and a large area around it
reserved permanently for agriculture; thus enabling the farm people to be assured of a nearby
market and cultural center, and the town people to have the benefit of a country situation.
• Planning Control: Pre – planning of the whole town framework, including the road – scheme,
and functional zoning; the fixing of maximum densities; the control of building as to quality
and design, but allowing for individual variety; skillful planting and landscape garden design.
• Neighborhoods: The town to be divided into wards, each to some extent a developmental and
social entity.
• Two garden cities were built using howard’s garden city movement concept are
letchworth garden city and welwyn garden city, both in Hertfordshire, England.
Letchworth garden city 
• Its plan was based on population of 30000 with living area of 1250 acres and 2500
acres of rural green belt.
• Communities ranged from 12000 – 18000 people, small enough which required no
vehicular transportation.
• Industries were connected to central city by rapid transportation.
Welwyn
• It started with area of 2400 acres and 4000 population
• Had a parkway, almost a mile long central mall
• Town laid out along tree-lined boulevards with neo georgian town center
• Every road had a wide grass verge
Soria y Mata (the linear city)

• The linear concept appeared in theory of urban planning by the end of the 19th century.
• The pioneer who first envisioned, proposed and actively promoted this new scheme of city
development was Soria y Mata with his plan for ciudad lineal de Madrid in 1882.
• The idea of linearity was expressed by emphasizing main transportation route as backbone
of the proposed urban layout.
• All other functions were arranged along that axis with defined width and indefinite length,
intersected at certain intervals by secondary perpendicular streets.
• The layout consisted of large blocks with residential buildings surrounded by vegetation
with commercial and public structures situated at intersections. Soria y mata believed that
this type of development would eliminate many social problems caused by urban
congestion.
• He managed to fund, realize and develop his idea of ciudad lineal as a settlement in close
vicinity of Madrid (today it is a district of the city).
Linear city
• The linear city was an urban plan for an elongated urban formation.
• The city would consist of a series of functionally specialized parallel sectors.
• Generally, the city would run parallel to a river and be built so that the dominant wind
would blow from the residential areas to the industrial strip.
• The sectors of a linear city would be:
• 1. a purely segregated zone for railway lines,
• 2. a zone of production and communal enterprises, with related scientific, technical
and educational institutions,
• 3. a green belt or buffer zone with major highway,
• 4. a residential zone, including a band of social institutions, a band of residential
buildings and a "children's band",
• 5. a park zone, and
• 6. an agricultural zone with gardens and state-run farms (sovkhozy in the Soviet
Union).
• As the city expanded, additional sectors would be added to the end of each band, so
that the city would become ever longer, without growing wider.
• The linear city design was first developed by Arturo Soria y Mata in Madrid, Spain
during the 19th century, but was promoted by the Soviet planner Nikolai Alexander
Milyutin in the late 1920s.
La Ciudad Lineal
• In 1882 Don Arturo Soria y Mata, a Spanish engineer, published in the Madrid
periodical, 'El Progreso', a series of articles in which he described his concept of
linear towns. He proposed that such towns should be planned in the form of ribbons
of building on either side of a single wide central avenue which would form the main
traffic artery carrying both road and railway.
• These ribbons of building were to extend through undeveloped countryside, raising
living standards and encouraging agricultural production on either side of their path.
Existing nucleated towns and cities were to be linked together by linear development
in a systematic network extending over a whole country.
• Soria set out ten fundamental principles for what he described as the rational
planning of towns:
• (1) Transport is the fundamental problem of town planning. Since the railway
provides die best means of transport which is fast, frequent, and cheap, it follows
that the layout of the town should conform with the linear path of the railway.
• (2) As the plan for a house precedes its construction, so should town planning
precede town building.
• (3) A rectangular layout of roads and building blocks is to be preferred because it
is more orderly, cheap, and convenient, than any irregular layout. It follows
logically from the first principle that the form of a town should depend upon one
principal street, the spine of the urban system. This road should be as wide as
possible, at least 120 feet, and should carry in its centre two or more tramways,
preferably electrified. The building blocks should have frontages to the main
avenue of 300 feet between the transverse roads, and should be rectangular,
square, or trapezoid, in form. The main avenue should carry water, gas, and
electricity services, which should be distributed along the transverse roads, the
vertebrae of the spine, thus providing the most economical means of
distribution.
• (4) no building, whether public or private, should occupy more than one fifth of its site.
The remainder of the site should be devoted to cultivation, orchards, and trees. The
minimum size of house plot should be 60 feet in frontage and 3,600 sq. Feet in area.
• (5) for each family there should be one house and for each house a garden for cultivation.
Houses should be detached in order to provide privacy, light and air upon all four sides,
and, at the same time, to reduce fire risks.
• (6) every building should be set back to a minimum building line is feet from the street.
The justification for this is not only aesthetic but practical in that it allows for future road
widening.
• (7) the best method of combining the nucleated towns of the past with the linear towns
of the future is to link the old towns together by means of linear towns, opening up
agricultural land and bringing to it prosperity and the important services of water,
electricity, and transport.
• (8) in order to overcome difficulties of topography, such as rivers and mountains, in the
path of linear development, its width could be reduced to the minimum required for the
double railway lines at these points. The railway might be elevated in order to cross
rivers, or carried in tunnel under mountains.
• (9) The linear town would make possible a return to nature and to a civilized life
in the country, thus arresting the dangerous and anarchic movement of people to
the cities from the countryside.
• (10) The linear town would be complementary to the doctrines of Henry George
in that it would provide the most practical and division of land, benefitting land
owners whose land would be acquired and also the public generally
Patrick Geddes (outlook tower, valley section, folk work
place, civic survey)
Sir Patrick Geddes was a British biologist, sociologist, geographer, philanthropist and
pioneering town planner. He is known for his innovative thinking in the fields of urban
planning and sociology.
Principles of planning
• Preservation of human life and energy, rather than superficial beautification.
• Conformity to an orderly development plan carried out in stages.
• Purchasing land suitable for building.
• Promoting trade and commerce.
• Preserving historic buildings and buildings of religious significance.
• Developing a city worthy of civic pride, not an imitation of European cities.
• Promoting the happiness, health and comfort of all residents, rather than focusing on
roads and parks available only to the rich.
• Control over future growth with adequate provision for future requirements.
The Valley Section (Patrick Geddes)
• The valley section is a term invented by Patrick Geddes and described in his book, “The
valley section from hills to sea.” 
• The valley section depicts an ideal regional-urban condition, whereas the Notation of Life
embodies concrete architectural proposals how to realise that ideal condition.
• Geddes expresses in the valley region that Enlightenment theory of social evolution that
describes mankind’s development through the four stages of hunting, pastoral, and
agriculture toward commercial societies.
• The valley section is a longitudinal section which begins high up in the mountains and then
follows the course of a river down the mountains and through a plain toward its estuary at
the coast.
• The valley section does not comprise a single valley, but a number of valleys. Seen from a
bird’s-eye perspective, the diagram depicts a fan-shaped region of valleys focusing on the
river’s estuary. Into this region Geddes inscribed different meanings.
• Along the bottom of the diagram he notes the so-called natural, i.e. best adapted,
occupations represented by tools of different trades and crafts. For example, the miner is
the natural occupation of the mountain zone where raw materials can be extracted from
the rock.
• Or, the smaller farmer is best adapted to the relatively harsh condition higher up the plain. If
these occupations, Geddes argued, exist in harmony with their particular environment,
human societies would materialise in the form of such human settlements as can be seen
along the valley section.
• The model illustrated the complex interactions among 'biogeography, geomorphology and
human systems' and attempted to demonstrate how 'natural occupations' such as hunting,
mining, or fishing are supported by physical geographies that in turn determine patterns of
human settlement.
• The point of this model was to make clear the complex and interrelated relationships
between humans and their environment, and to encourage regional planning models that
would be responsive to these conditions.
• Evident in the stained-glass image are Geddes’ categories of folk, work and place: the quarry
and the mine in the hill, the sheep and the forest on the hill, arable and cattle farming and
crofting on the low ground, and the city with its industry, its trade and its shipping.
• But on another level this stained glass version of the valley section is a multiple
representation of what the physical and social world is at the moment and could be in the
future. Looking at the Latin wording which appears below this window, we can sees Geddes
insisting on a set of at first sight contrasting and yet mutually illuminating views of the valley.  
• The valley is first and foremost an ecology: a ‘microcosm of nature’, but it is also the ‘sedes
hominum’, the seat of humanity, the place where human beings make their lives as part of
that ecology. And linked to this it is the dramatic ‘theatrum historiae’, the theatre of history,
the past experience that should inform the future.
• Finally, it is the ‘eutopia’ or ‘good place’ of the future, a place that Geddes believed could be
achieved through local and international co-operation, and adoption of sustainable
technologies.
Outlook Tower
• In 1892 Geddes secured a five-story building at the top of the Royal Mile in Edinburgh which
would become his applied civics laboratory. Here he could train observers to apply the lenses
he had devised and in that sense, the Outlook Tower was an instrument itself with
procedures as specific as those of the microscope in the dissection laboratory.
• Located at the top of the Royal Mile, adjacent to the Castle esplanade, the Outlook Tower occupied
the highest point in Edinburgh below the castle. Geddes purchased the building from Maria Short who
had operated an observatory and museum, “The Museum of Art and Science,” in the building since
1835.
• Geddes described the Outlook Tower as “the centre of [the University’s] geographical, historical, social
and economic studies, and of its annual Summer Meeting for teachers”.
• As in every ‘Aussichthurm” [watchtower], the general view requires to be supplemented by a
Telescope and Orientation Table indicating the main features of the landscape.
• With these is further associated the orientation of unseen places throughout the whole world by
means of the Episcope of M. G. Guyou, while a Tellurian Cosmosphere and Star-map extend this
orientation to its further limits.
• The "orientation table" mentioned by Geddes is actually the parapet itself, where directional arrows
and names of towns are inscribed in the granite coping. This parapet affords a 360-degree view of the
city and surrounding region, further gathered by a telescope.
• Telescope, star-map, cosmosphere, and episcope are the noted visual devices by which visitors made
an outward examination of the city, extending the reach of that examination into the far universe.
• Following this initial gathering of observations from the roof of the tower, visitors then entered the
camera obscura. This room, at the top of the building, is entered by a short flight of steps. A small
mirror, mounted on the roof, may be rotated from within the room and reflects through two lenses
the view of the street below onto a circular, concave table at the center of the room.
Folk work place
• Inspired by the French sociologist Frederic Le Playʼs (1802–1886) triad of ʻLieu, Travail,
Familleʼ — which Geddes translated to “Work, Place, Folkʼ — Geddes developed a new
approach to regional and town planning based on the integration of people and their
livelihood into the environmental givens of the particular place and region they inhabit.
• He emphasized that sound planning decisions have to be based on a detailed regional survey,
which established an inventory of a regionʼs hydrology, geology, flora, fauna, climate and
natural topography, as well as its social and economic opportunities and challenges.
• As such the Geddesian methodology pioneered the bioregional planning approach more
than 70 years before the emergence of bioregionalism.
• Patrick Geddes explained an organism’s relationship to its environment as follows:
“The environment acts, through function, upon the organism and conversely the organism
acts, through function, upon the environment.”
• This can be understood as a place acting through climatic and geographic processes upon
people and thus shaping them. At the same time people act, through economic processes
such as farming and construction, on a place and thus shape it. Thus both place and folk are
linked and through work are in constant transition.
Le Corbusier(villa contemporaine)
• The Ville Contemporaine was an unrealized project to house three million inhabitants
designed by the French-Swiss architect Le Corbusier in 1922.

• The centerpiece of Corbusier's utopian, urban plan was a group of sixty-story

• At the center of the planned city was a transportation hub which would house depots
for buses and trains as well as highway intersections and at the top, an airport.

• Le Corbusier segregated the pedestrian circulation paths from the roadways, and
glorified the use of the automobile as a means of transportation. As one moved out
from the central skyscrapers, smaller multi-story zigzag blocks set in green space and
set far back from the street housed the proletarian workers.
Ville Contemporaine
•Fundamental principles:
1. Decongestion of the centers of cities;
2. Increase of the density;
3. Enlargement of the means of circulation;
4. Enlargement of the landscaped areas.
•In the center, the station with landing platform for flying taxis.
•North-south and east-west-the large express route for rapid vehicular traffic (vehicular overpass 120 ft. Wide).
•At the foot of the skyscrapers and all around, a large open place 7200 ft. X 4500 ft. (32.400.000 sq. Ft.) Covered with gardens
and parks.
•In the parks, at the foot of and around the skyscrapers, the restaurants, cafés, luxury shops, buildings with two or three
terraces arranged for seating; theatres, halls, etc.; Open-air or covered garages.
•The skyscrapers house commercial premises.
•To the left: the large public edifices: museums, city hall, public service buildings.
•Further to the left is the English garden (the English garden is destined to be the logical extension of the heart of the city).
• To the right: serviced by one of the branches of the large traffic artery are the docks and
industrial areas with freight stations and depots. Encircling the city: free zone, woods and
fields. Behind: the belt of garden-cities.
• The city:
twenty-four skyscrapers could contain between 10.000 and 50.000 employees each.
City dwellings-600,000 inhabitants quartered in "indented" or "closed" subdivisions.
The garden-cities-2.000.000 inhabitants or more.
• Density:
a) skyscraper: 3000 inhabitants to the hectare.
B) "indented" subdivisions: 300 inhabitants to the hectare. Luxurious residences.
C) "closed" subdivisions: 305 inhabitants to the hectare. This high density makes for a
reduction of distances and thus ensures a rapidity of communication
• The centerpiece of this plan was a group of sixty-story cruciform skyscrapers built on steel
frames and encased in curtain walls of glass.
• The skyscrapers housed both offices and the flats of the most wealthy inhabitants.
• These skyscrapers were set within large, rectangular park-like green spaces.
• At the center of the planned city was a transportation hub which housed depots for buses
and trains as well as highway intersections and at the top, an airport.
• Le Corbusier segregated the pedestrian circulation paths from the roadways, and glorified the
use of the automobile as a means of transportation.
• As one moved out from the central skyscrapers, smaller multi-story zigzag blocks set in green
space and set far back from the street housed the proletarian workers.
• The basic cell of the Ville Contemporaine was a standardized residential unit with a terrace-
garden.
• In opposition to the scattering of the urban phenomenon, le Corbusier placed vertically
individual units on the periphery and concentrated them in the complex of high-rise buildings
called immeubles-villas.
• It was a vision of a vertical garden town that allowed the undisturbed spread of park/green
surfaces beneath the skyscraper and all around them in large open spaces.
• In the central city zone, administrative and cultural facilities lay around the administrative
core that was characterized by skyscrapers.
• With skyscrapers and tall buildings, he wanted to bring the city to the smallest possible area.
• The hierarchical distributive norm regulated at various levels the city's auto-routes, which
were entwined below the spacious surface for aero taxis, and the fast roads diagonally
crossing the linear base of the city
• In the Ville contemporaine, Le Corbusier created urban space based on from free-standing
objects as basic units of measure in the dimensioning of urban space, he expressed
principles of a new urbanism, i.e. the principles of a clear differentiation of the primary city
functions connected by the network of fast communications.
• With this logic, he established a connection between the central and peripheral parts of
the city and linked them into a coherent system.
• The plan clearly reflects his architectural ideology, which is to think radically technically
means to be in close relation to the interests of capital and to adapt to social order and
social conditions.
• For this reason, Le Corbusier argued that "the great city the metropolis, as a phenomenon
and design symbol of spatial articulation will remain in all social systems as a justified
phenomenon."
Frank Lloyd Wright(Broadacre city)

• The Broadacre City was Frank Lloyd Wright’s utopian development concept created
together with its socio-political scheme.
• Wright believed that his vision would inevitably and naturally emerge in the architectural
fabric of the United States, replace traditional urban establishments and give way to the
creation of synthesized urban and rural developments.
• Once built, one self-sufficient unit of the Broadacre City would cover an area of four
square miles (1,040 hectares) and would accommodate approximately 5,000 people in
1,400 homes (Johnson, 1995:140).
• Each individual would be guaranteed a minimum of one acre of land, free of charge. An
area of such size would allow people to have a garden, or even a small farm next to the
house, so to enable self-sufficiency (Nelson, 1995:341).
• Due to its structure, the Broadacre City is a perfect example of the incorporation of an
urban settlement (a settlement with all the amenities and facilities of the city) into a rural
landscape (Nelson, 1995:341).
• The concept of the structural design of the Broadacre City was based on two already
existing and operating inventions:
• The motor car, which led to the general mobility of Americans
• The radio, telephone, and telegraph that enabled electrical intercommunication to
become complete (Wright, 1935:346)
• Broadacre city concept:
• Cities should flow over land in 1-acre increments (1-40 acre parcels)
• Fits within existing Township and Range land system.
• Traffic congestion will be relieved by spreading out across the countryside.
• Individual family farms provide for the basic needs of families.
• Decentralized government and cultural activities.
• City administration through radio contact.
• The Chief Executive of the decentralized city should be its architect, the person best
equipped to see that buildings and occupants are in harmony.
• Broadacres was to accommodate at least one acre per individual (adult or child) since at
that time there was fifty-seven green acres available per person in the United States.
• This would eventually lead to a density of about 500 persons per square mile, which Zygas
notes as “scandalously low”.
• In this landscape, each entity was enveloped in some kind of “green space”. Entities
included factories, skyscrapers, schools, places of worship and places of recreation.
• The area was fed by super-highways (at least 6 lanes) which feeds into progressively smaller
roadways, the size of which was determined by the use of the associated entities (that is,
main roads had at least 4 lanes and residential streets were the most narrow often ending
in cul-de-sacs).
• Railways and truck right-of-ways were to remain separate and out of sight from main
thoroughfares. Wright also despised the city’s “wires on poles”8 and proposed the placing
of utility lines underground.
• Other aesthetic contributions included no open drainage along roadways, large-scale
landscaping over the entire site (including broad views of native vegetation), and all
terminal buildings and warehouses were restricted to ports of entry or under tracks (this is
the only area for which concentration is permitted).
• Other elements include fueling and service stations, and county seats would be located at
various important intersections; underground refuges (for times of war) would be kept as
storage units during times of peace along or under railways; highways would be built with
the terrain at safe grades; road construction would be done by the regional governing agency
but supervised by architects, landscape architects and structural engineers; and minor flight
stations would be installed for the safe landing, takeoff and storage of private flight vehicles.
• The idea of Broadacres was to let go of traditional form – of the city as a whole, and of
individual pieces such as the hospital (sunlit clinics), the church, the universities (institutions
for creative expression and deep thought – the settings for becoming more universal), public
schools (no longer to resemble factories, but set in “the choicest part of the whole
countryside” as a conglomeration of smaller schools hosting students each with common
outdoor/activity areas, flower beds and gardens giving the student the opportunity to work
with the ground).
Ludwig Hilberseimer(Decentralized city)

• The decentralized city proposed by ludwig hilberseimer seeks to create a closer physical relationship
between the city and the natural landscape while also considering the strategic impact of removing
“settlements” from the urban environment.
• At this time, the urban centers were congested with traffic, polluted, and suffered from insufficient
natural light. In the same line of thinking as the garden city the decentralized city established
guidelines for smaller supposedly closer-knit communities in the undeveloped country taking
advantage of the unspoiled air and implementing a new rational model of growth that would better
facilitate access to sunlight and the passage of traffic.
• In terms of programmed city components, the settlements of the decentralized city replicate the
components of the contemporary city closely: housing, factories, stores, administration buildings,
parks, and schools. Hilberseimer cites multiple city projects as influences, and this study is primarily
concerned with the contemporary city as a predecessor in terms of programed spatial components.
• However, it should be noted broadacre city by frank lloyd wright, was also influential on the thinking
of hilberseimer as a model of decentralization, and might have influenced his thinking on schools as
a crucial component of the city. However unlike the contemporary city, the decentralized city has no
hierarchical center, instead using the existing city centers like chicago as the regional center.
• The decentralized city’s development pattern, comprised of its component parts, the
highways, the buildings, and the natural landscape was meant to exist as a collection of
discrete, autonomous parts that would develop through their own logic and connect
tangentially.
• Hilberseimer develops a strategy for minimizing the adverse health effects of smoke
producing industry, which was an essential part of his growth strategy.
• Drawings produced for the decentralized city that depict a regional approach not only
consider the individual settlement’s position relative to the pollution, but also considers the
next downwind settlement relative the expected smoke paths.
• In the new city; principles of city planning, Hilberseimer goes as far as to say “to pour poison
into a man’s lungs as it is to pour poison into his coffee”.
• In this lineage of planning, the consideration of the impact of polluting industry on the
health of the working class acknowledges the symbiotic relationship between the workers
and the places of production. By extension, these are the first considerations of the
environmental impact of a capitalist model that depends on industrial production.
• The smoke maps were a crucial component of Hilberseimer’s proposal because unlike his
predecessors, he did not romanticize the city or seek to implement his own ideologies, rather
he unsentimentally planned the city as a site of production.
• In the decentralized city, schools are places exterior to the “settlement,” sitting in the
allotted agricultural park area, providing a safe area for children to play where they
wouldn’t have to cross roads.
• Child safety in crossing streets was an idea explored in Radburn, new jersey, and most
likely influenced the placement of the schools and parks in the decentralized city
settlement.
• Perhaps Hilberseimer saw, as many in his time did education, as a vehicle to social
advancement and a vehicle through which the working class could assert a more
influential role in society. This line of thinking on education in the city is continued
through the work of jaap bakema and Kevin lynch.
• While the role of education in the decentralized city is still open for speculation,
Hilberseimer was seemingly ambivalent toward the political role of the working class.
After this scheme in the lineage however, such optimism in the power of planning to
provide a high quality of life begins to evaporate as capitalism continues to expand.
Clarence Arthur Perry(Neighborhood unit)

• Neighborhood-unit principles
• 1. Size - A residential unit development should provide housing for that population for which one
elementary school is ordinarily required, its actual area depending upon population density.
• 2. Boundaries - The unit should be bounded on all sides by arterial streets, sufficiently wide to
facilitate its by-passing by all through traffic.
• 3. Open Spaces - A system of small parks and recreation spaces, planned to meet the needs of
the particular neighborhood. should be provided.
• 4. Institution Sites - Sites for the school and other institutions having service spheres coinciding
with the limits of the unit should be suitably grouped about a central point or common area.
• 5. Local Shops - One or more shopping districts, adequate for the population to be served, should
be laid out in the circumference of the unit, preferably at traffic junctions and adjacent to similar
districts of adjoining neighborhoods.
• 6. Internal Street System -The unit should be provided with a special street system, each highway
being proportioned to its probable traffic load, and the street net as a whole being designed to
facilitate circulation within the unit and to discourage its use by through traffic.
Population and housing
• The lot subdivision provides 822 single-family houses. 236 double houses, 36 row houses and
147 apartment suites. Accommodations for a total of 1,241 families. At the rate of 4.93
persons per family, this would mean a population of 6, 125 and a school enrollment of 1,021
pupils. For the whole tract the average density would be 7.75 families per gross acre.
Open spaces
• The parks, playgrounds, small greens and circles in the tract total 17 acres, or 10.6 per cent of
the total area. If there is included also the l. 2 acres of market squares. The total acreage of
open space is 18.2 acres. The largest of these spaces is the common of 3.3 acres. This serves
both as a park and as a setting or approach to the school building. Back of the school is the
main playground for the small children, of 2.54 acres. And near it is the girls' playfield of 1. 7 4
acres. On the opposite side of the schoolyard, a little farther away, is the boys' playground of
2.7 acres. Space for tennis courts is located conveniently in another section of the district. At
various other points are to be found parked ovals or small greens which give attractiveness to
vistas and afford pleasing bits of landscaping for the surrounding homes.
Recreation spaces
• These consist of a large schoolyard and two playgrounds suitable for the younger children.
grounds accommodating nine tennis courts.
A playfield adapted either for baseball or soccer football. In distributing these spaces
regard was had both to convenience and to their usefulness as open spaces and vistas for
the adjacent homes. All should have planting around the edges, and most of them could be
seeded. thus avoiding the barren aspect so common to city playgrounds.

Community center
• The pivotal feature of the layout is the common, with the group of buildings, which face
upon it. These consist of the schoolhouse and two lateral structures facing a small central
plaza. One of these buildings might be devoted to a public library and the other to any
suitable neighborhood purpose. Sites are provided for churches, one adjoining the school
playground and the other at a prominent street intersection. The school and its
supporting buildings constitute a terminal vista for a parked main highway coming up
from the market square. In both design and landscape treatment the common and the
central buildings constitute an interesting and significant neighborhood community
center.
Street system
• In carrying out the unit principle, the boundary streets have been made sufficiently wide
to serve as main traffic arteries. One of the bounding streets is 160 feet wide, and the
other three have widths of 120 feet. Each of these arterial highways is provided with a
central roadway for through traffic and two service roadways for local traffic separated by
planting strips. One-half of the area of the boundary streets is contributed by the
development. This amounts to 15.3 acres, or 9.5 per cent of the total area, which is a
much larger contribution to general traffic facilities than is ordinarily made by the
commercial subdivision. But not greater than that which is required by present-day traffic
needs. The interior streets are generally 40 or 50 feet in width and are adequate for the
amount of traffic. Which will be developed in a neighborhood of this single- family density.
Shopping districts
• The most important business area is, of course. around the main portal and along the
southern arterial highway. For greater convenience and increased exposures a small
market square has been introduced. Here would be the natural place for a motion-picture
theatre, a hotel, and such services as a branch post office and a fire-engine house. Another
and smaller shopping district has been placed at the northeast comer to serve the needs
of the homes in that section.
Clarence Stein(American garden cities)

• The RPAA sponsored a visit by Patrick Geddes in 1923, and Stein and Wright visited Ebenezer
Howard and Raymond Unwin in England the following year.
• Their influential body of work includes Sunnyside Gardens in Queens, Hillside Homes in the
Bronx, Walt Whitman Houses in Brooklyn, Chatham Village in Pittsburgh, Baldwin Hills Village in Los
Angeles, Radburn in New Jersey, and Kitimat in British Columbia.
• These communities feature gardens, shared courtyards, and parks closely integrated with housing.
• Stein and Wright used cul-de-sacs, superblocks, and greenbelts to separate neighborhoods as much
as possible from highways and reduce traffic congestion.
• Such arrangements drew criticism in later years from Jane Jacobs and other advocates of vibrant
street life.
• The Great Depression and World War II prevented Stein and the RPAA from securing the financial and
political backing to realize their vision for true garden cities (with local employment, public
transportation links, and limitations on sprawl).
• However, their attempts have inspired generations of planners and their built projects are now being
preserved as historic landmarks.
• In toward new towns for America (1951), stein explains his work through a series of reflective
case studies.
• He recalls efforts to keep new towns affordable and encourage "good living" by way of healthy
and attractive environments.
• He criticizes real estate development that favors profit over quality living conditions, citing
related health problems, congested streets, environmental damage, and inefficient use of
resources.
• He's especially critical of impersonal housing and dangerous roadways.
• Channeling Howard, he calls for comprehensively planned, small-scale, pedestrian-oriented
communities ensconced in green space. Also like Howard, he encourages planners to live in
the communities they've helped establish, or at least visit often, staying aware of changing
needs and making adjustments with the help of local residents.
• In light of surface parallels between garden cities and suburban sprawl, it appears incongruous
that stein is now featured at a seminar on preservation and environmental sustainability.
• Much of his work could be criticized as planned from above, dependent on automobiles, and
wasteful of resources. However, pictures reveal an integrity that is absent in housing built for
fast profit. And his dedication to providing quality housing for low-income citizens is an
inspiring counterpoint to prevailing trends in real estate development.
Radburn
• Joseph & Gordon (2000:251) states that the Radburn plan, designed by Clarence stein,
combined Clarence Perry's neighborhood unit concept with a radically new street layout.
• According to the university of Saskatchewan (1998) Clarence stein's radburn plan was
developed with several objectives in mind. It was designed to relieve traffic congestion and
promote street safety, alleviate crowded living and working conditions, provide city dwellers
with more sunlight and air, to regulate the size of cities and to combine beauty with
efficiency.
• According to Gatti (1975) the most important new concept in the radburn layout was the
separation of pedestrian and vehicular traffic.
• Cotner (2009:1) states that vehicles were kept at the periphery to protect pedestrians and
children from vehicular conflicts. This was done by doing away with the traditional grid-iron
street pattern. The grid was replaced by Radburn‟s superblock concept.
• The superblock consisted of a large block of land surrounded by main roads.
• Homes within the superblock were grouped around small cul-de-sacs, with access to main
roads provided through secondary access roads.
• Joseph & Gordon (2000:251) states that the radburn plan's cul-de-sacs were separated by
narrow pedestrian pathways which were connected to a central public space, which consisted
of a park, playground and educational use. Cul-de-sacs addressed the grid layout's traffic
problems on local streets.
• According to Gatti (1975) the walks surrounding the cul-de-sacs divide them from the central
park area and from other cul-de-sacs.
• To maintain the separation of pedestrian and vehicular traffic, pedestrian underpasses and
overpasses linking superblocks, were provided. (Joseph & gordon, 2010: 251).
• The system was designed so pedestrians could start at any given point and proceed on foot to
school, stores or church without crossing a street used by motor vehicles.
• According to Cotner (2009:1) daily shopping, entertainment, schooling, recreational, and
leisure opportunities were developed within and along the boundaries of the superblock.
• The priority given to pedestrians may provide a commendable concept be duplicated in south
African low-cost housing developments. The remaining area inside the superblock was
designated as park area.
• The radburn layout furthermore secured parks without additional costs to residents, through
savings in expenditures for roads and public utilities.
• The radburn type layout requires less area of street to secure the same amount of frontage.
This layout also emphasized the use of narrower roads and smaller utility lines. With these
savings the cost of landscaping and play spaces could be covered.