What were garden cities and what was their relationship to health?

Around the same time as, and partly inspired by, the establishment of the Bourneville model housing project, the garden city movement, based on the writings of Ebenezer Howard, gained momentum (1).

The garden city movement advocated a method of urban planning designed to combine the social and economic advantages of the city, such as access to education, employment, and cultural opportunities, with the physical health benefits associated with the countryside, such as access to fresh air and open green space for recreation. Garden city settlements, or communities, included a network of medium-sized, co-developed, self-contained settlements, surrounded by green belts of mainly agricultural land. Similar to the model housing projects, there was an emphasis on access to fresh food, with areas of land set aside for farms, small-holdings and garden allotments to grow fruit and vegetables.

Figure 3: Image from garden cities of tomorrow

Garden city movement thinking was influential for much of the 20th century. Early local authority housing built in the 1920s was in part inspired by garden cities, for example, and was built to higher standards and included substantial private gardens and communal greenspace.

A pamphlet written by Dr Norman Macfadyen on health in garden cities highlights the importance of a healthy environment where “the inevitable strain of life can be eased by good housing conditions, good working conditions, good opportunity for the enjoyment of leisure, freedom for proper rest, with the proper opportunity for fresh food” (2).

The garden city movement was dominant in town planning within Britain for the first half of the twentieth century and is still an important reference point for many planning approaches today – for example there are a number of ‘garden villages’ currently planned.