Design
The Evolution of England's First Planned Community
In 1901, a team of social do-gooders teamed up to build a clean, green city. A look at their legacy, more than a century later
In September 1901, 300 men gathered in Birmingham, England, for a conference on the city of the future. Back then, cities of the present left a lot to be desired. Severe overcrowding in urban centers across Britain meant that working-class families often crammed into tenements where privvies were scarce and disease rampant. Even if conditions in the big cities improved, many reformers believed, they bred a social inequality that was profound and intractable.
But there was an antidote to the moral and physical degradations of the metropolis, a new urban model that would be healthier for body and soul: the Garden City. This would be a self-contained community of 32,000 set amid farmland, far from metropolitan smoke and grit.