My Town Monday - Sir Ebenezer Howard

After thinking long and hard about what I can tell you about my town, I have decided to do some research and tell you all about the original founder and how our town came about.

Welwyn Garden City is the second 'Garden City' The first one being a few miles away, Letchworth Garden City. The concept of the town was bought about by the work of a prominent urban planner, Sir Ebenezer Howard.



Howard read widely, including Edward Bellamy's 1888 Utopian novel Looking Backward and thought deeply about social issues.
One result was his book (1898) titled To-Morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real reform which was reprinted in 1902 as Garden Cities of To-Morrow. This book offered a vision of towns free of slums and enjoying the benefits of both town (such as opportunity, amusement and high wages) and country (such as beauty, fresh air and low rents). He illustrated the idea with his famous Three Magnets diagram (pictured), which addressed the question 'Where will the people go?', the choices being 'Town', 'Country' or 'Town-Country' - the Three Magnets.






It called for the creation of new suburban towns of limited size, planned in advance, and surrounded by a permanent belt of agricultural land. These Garden cities were used as a role model for many suburbs. Howard believed that such Garden Cities were the perfect blend of city and nature. The towns would be largely independent, and managed and financed by the citizens who had an economic interest in them.



His ideas attracted enough attention and financial backing to begin Letchworth Garden City, a suburban garden city north of London A second garden city, Welwyn Garden City, was started after World War I. The creation of Letchworth Garden City and Welwyn Garden City were influential in the development of "New Towns" after World War II by the British government.







NOW HERE IS THE REALLY EXCITING BIT THAT I HAD NO IDEA ABOUT........





Walt Disney used elements of Howards's concepts in his original design for EPCOT (Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow).



If only I had known, may have saved me a few trips to Disney over the years!!! (Mind you he wasn't responsible for Tower of Terror and Space Mountain though!!)



This is what is so exciting about doing my town Monday, I now know that Vincent Van Gogh came to town AND Ebenezer Howard was influential in some of the design of EPCOT - Brilliant!!