Why Garden Cities Aren't Enough ft. Andrew

Andrew talks with Gare and Mia about the history of Garden Cities and how a Georgist urban planning idea inspired Walt Disney (pejorative).

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hello and welcome. It could happen here with me Andrew
of the YouTube channel andrewism and today I'm joined by
Miya and care Hello. Hello, Hello, Hello, and I want
to talk about cities because I very recently published a
video on Sula Punk City Planet. I mean, I don't

(00:26):
know why you're all gonna hear this podcast, but I
did recently publish it, and you can check that out
of my channel. And I thought i'd share a bit
about a bit more about one particular historical urban planet
movement that I talk about in that video, and that
is Ebanez A. Howard's Garden Cities movement and his book

(00:48):
Garden Cities of Tomorrow. Are all familiar with either, No,
I don't think so. Yeah, so Ebane's A Howard. Side note,
by the way, I don't know who looks at a
child and names them Abnez A. Howard, But he presented
this idea of the garden city concept in eighteen ninety

(01:12):
eight in a book called Tomorrow, A Peaceful Path through
Real Reform. Later he republished in nineteen or two under
the name of Garden Cities or Tomorrow, and take notes
in the title of the book of the use of
reform and peaceful path because it does highlight a noticeable
lack within Howard's vision that will discuss later. He wants

(01:34):
to provide access to the benefits of both town living
and a country living. As he describes, a town and
country are like magnets drawing people to them, you know. So,
According to him, town offers vibrant society and opportunity and transportation,
but it lacks the beauty of nature. It has pollution,
and has crowded, it has disease. I mean, this is

(01:57):
Victoria and era cities. He's talking about place with stink
um in contrast, and the country and country offers the
space and the beauty of nature and it's abundance, but
it lacks society and it can feel isolated, and it
really spread out. So you wanted to create a hybrid
of both concepts, a third magnet of town country, the

(02:20):
combined the benefits of both. I believe the secret. Sorry,
I have to. I have to jump in here and
make a secret, secret third thing. Yes, yes, thank you, Yeah,
that country, but a secret third thing. We fulfilled our
We fulfilled our contractual obligations. One joke, all right, I'm
got a side optical, Andrew, you take it from here.

(02:43):
So yeah, a secret third thing, how I would believe
that the ideal living conditions for people of all economic
backgrounds could be created by establishing these town country cities
with very specific parameters, run by strong government institutions. And
Ebenezer Howard's context. Again, no offense to the ebenez As

(03:05):
the world. But jeez, I can't. I can't let go
of those amplications. I think I think we need to
bring back the name Ebenezer. Actually it's it's it's been
too long since I've seen an infant named Ebenezer, meaning
I've never seen one. I think I feel like we
should see more. Just absolutely absurd. All the timing names.

(03:26):
What do you what do you call the baby? Do
you call them ebby or something like? How do you
call the baby Ebenezer? The baby's name? Why would you
you call it the baby's name? You could call it Nieza.
You could eventually call it Weezaks, horrible nickname. That is awful.

(03:46):
Oh yeah, that is okay. I'm here on the amplications.
I do never I never want to hear that again. Yeah,
I digress Howard's writing. I'm just gonna call them. Howard
Howard's Rights in Journey Revolution was in response to well
the Industrial Revolution, response to the urban slums, the pollution,
the lack of access to the countryside, and much of

(04:09):
his book is dedicated the idea that cities as they
existed in his time were not sustainable in the long run.
By the middle of the nineteenth century, over half of
Britain's population lived in towns, and in nineteen hundred that
proportion had a resun to over three quarters. But English
towns and cities presented social environmental problems of an unprecedented scale,

(04:33):
and much of Britain's history in that period could be
connected with the efforts to ameliorate the frightening conditions that
a lot of people lived in. When it comes to
the design, Howard wanted to create these highly structured, carefully
laid out communities to provide the best conditions possible for

(04:54):
every kind of person he saw. He wanted to put
just like large areas of land from aristocratic owners as
a setting up garden cities that would house up to
thirty two thousand people in individual homes on six thousand acres.
And that whole vision of individual homes is I think

(05:14):
it belies a limitation the imagination there, but it's it's
someone understandable considering the historical conditions at the time, where
people were living in these overcrowded slums and stuff, and
the dream was really to have a home of your
own that you didn't have to crowd out. It didn't
be crowded, you couldn't have to share with others. But anyway,

(05:36):
I think a sustainable city should trade the sprawl that
single family homes generate for more dense development. For the
most part, that is, but I digress once again. That's
not all his plan entailed. His garden cities would also
include a huge public garden with public buildings like a

(05:57):
town hall, lecture halls, theaters, and a hospitepital, an enormous
arcade called the Crystal Palace not arcadies in video game,
where residents would browse covered market and enjoy a winter garden,
neighborhoods with cooperative kitchens and shared gardens, schools, playgrounds and churches, factories, warehouses, farms, workshops,

(06:23):
and access to a train line. In its ideal form,
the garden city to become a network of smaller garden
cities built around the larger central town. The idealized vision
of the garden city contained very specific utopian elements, like
small communities planned on a concentric pattern that an accommodated

(06:44):
housing industry and agriculture surrounded by green belts that would
limit their growth. Now, there's a diagram that he did
up for his book that has been popularized that represents
like a sort of a concentric circle design. But he
didn't believe that that necessarily had to be the shape

(07:05):
of the garden city. He still wanted the city to
be adapted to the local layout somewhat. And these elements
of garden city design were all into dependent you know.
He wanted strong community engagement, he wanted community ownership of land.
Although he wasn't a socialist, mind you. He was a Georgeist.

(07:29):
Oh god, wait, that explains it. That explains so much
about all of his politics. Of course, he was a Georgist. Yeah,
quite an interesting crew of characters. He wanted mixed ten
year homes and homes in types that were generally affordable.
You know, to go on another digression, I find georgis

(07:51):
Owe to be such an interesting fixation of a philosophy.
It's like, you know, looking all the problems in society,
and you know what, we need a land tax. That'll
salt thing. I mean, obviously that's not all it is,

(08:13):
to the to the that political philosophy, that economic approach.
But I just found I just find it every time
I think about it. I find it funny that it
was just really like the whole movement was basically this
one like um tax proposal. It's really that was the

(08:37):
whole focus of it. Yeah, it's really funny too, because
I mean it has one of the sort of largest
like collapses of any ideology ever. Like it is like
it was just a very like very it was. It
was a big It was a big ideology. You know,
it literally helped to develop the game, the board game

(08:59):
and plea, you know what. It's like, it was a
huge thing. This is something I've actually been looking into
a lot. But I've been trying to track down some
of the original like nineteen twenties copies of Monopoly that's
more based on the second game. Yes, I've been trying
to find the ones that were like pre pre pre
Parker Brothers um and I've I've I found I found

(09:20):
a few, a few, I found a few like two
months ago, but before I could order them, it was
sold to somebody else on eBay. So I've been trying
to track down another another one in the UH in
the past few months, and it's been a bit more challenging,
just because I'm kind of a monopoly freak. Yeah, it's
um it's really interesting to see how um that game

(09:46):
was developed and then changed over time, and how Hasbur
was stepped in? Isn't Hosbur Poker Brothers without was stepped in?
And did there do to kind of basically rewrote the
history of the board game entirely. Yeah, but anyway. Elements

(10:10):
to the Garden City strong community engagement, communitytionship with land,
mixed tenure homes, homes in type so generally affordable, a
wide range of local jobs with easy commuting distances of homes,
well designed homes with gardens combining the best of town
and country, and green infrastructure that enhances a natural environment,
with strong cultural, recreational and shopping facilities in addition to

(10:33):
integrated and accessible transportation. It's not all sunshine and roses, though,
I Mean you could look at the sort of the
cream washing elements of the Garden City design and even
in the time they were criticized. I mean, they were

(10:55):
praised for being an alternative to the overcrowed industrial cities,
but they were also criticized for damage in the economy,
being destructive to the beauty of nature, and being inconvenient.
You know, they weren't able to be Furthermore, because they
had this sort of top down design philosophy, they weren't

(11:15):
able to truly reflect the natural and organic developments of
a town or a country, you know, so secretly thing
couldn't do either other things that the original two stuff
could do. And then of course you have the mustached

(11:45):
man himself, Marie Bucchin, stepping in in the limits of
the city to evicerate the idea of the garden city.
He talks about how Howard's scheme was basically a system
of benevolent capitalism that presumed to avoid the extremes of

(12:06):
communism and individualism, and as a result, his entire book
was quote permeated by an underlying assumption. So typically British
that are compromise going to be struck between an intrinsically
irrational material reality and a moral ideology of high minded conciliation.

(12:27):
Microst Yeah, I feel like the most brutal part of
that is just the typically British. Yeah, I mean anything learning.
Look at really the plan that Howard had, you know,
the offices and industrial factories and shopping centers that he
intended to provide the garden city with. Those spaces are

(12:49):
battlegrounds of conflicting social interests. You know, there's alienated labor,
their income differences, their disparities of work time and free time.
All all that conflict is not addressed just because you
make a pretty city. You know, there's no resolution to
the problems created under a capitalist factory office or shopping

(13:13):
center just because you have a nice transit system and
a green belt. I feel like some of some of
these same problems to crop up on some of the
solar punk stuff online as well. I mean we've an
attacked him definitely greenwashing throughout the solar punk aesthetic and stuff.
But yeah, I mean it is it is an interesting,

(13:34):
an interesting, interesting aspect that keeps propping up, and it's
just intriguing that it like dates back over a hundred
years ago, like this same exact thing. Yeah, exactly, and
funny enough, you know, his garden cities we even fallen
short of utopias that were thought of before his time,

(13:57):
you know, like not even just utopias, but also actual
historical political experiments that you try to address various social problems,
you know, Like unlike the Greek polis, which had some
basis of face to face democracy, Howard just had a

(14:18):
central council and a department structure based on elections. Unlike
in Thomas Moore's utopia, there's no proposal for rotating agricultural
and industrial work. Unlike the Paris Commune of eighteen seventy one,
which was established long before Howard wrote his book, he

(14:42):
had no sort of incorporation of that sort of political
experimentation in the Garden city development. The criticism really is
how superficial a lot of howards ideas are, right, Like,
there was just a lack of social analysis analysis in
favor of just design. Yeah, Georgism, Like sure it would

(15:05):
probably be like better than what we have now. Well yeah,
but but it by no means like fixes all of
the systemic issue. It's like Amsterdam, right, I would rather
have capitalism while riding a bike. But Bokchin also talks
about how these communities not encompass the full range of

(15:26):
possibilities a human experience again quote because you know Bukchen
is Loki a boss. Right. Neighborliness is mistaken for organic
social intercourse and mutual aid. Well manicured parks for the
harmonization of humanity with Nietzsche. The proximity of workplaces for
the development of a new meaning for work and its

(15:47):
integrasement play, an eclectic mix of ranch houses, slab like apartments,
and bachelor type flats for spontaneous architectural variety, shopping mark
plazas in a vast expanse of lawn for the agora,
lecture halls for cultural centers, hobby classes for vocational variety,
benevolent trusts, so municipal councils for self administration. One can

(16:11):
add endlessly to this list of misplaced criteria for community
that saved to offer skate rather than clarify the high
attainment of the urban tradition. Indeed, the appearance of community
serves the ideological function of concealing the incompleteness of an
intimate and shared social life. Again boom, you know, and

(16:34):
people are brought together. You know, they have all these
conveniences in these pleasant trees, but they're still culturally impoverished,
they're still atomized, they still deal this stark reality of
capitalism in the spaces that they're they're gonna inevitably spend
most of their day at work. Like it's nice that

(16:55):
the city is well designed, but how much of it
are you going to get to see if you still
have to go to work for eight hours plus a d.
I mean, if anything, at least you know, the commune
will probably be shure to But that's about it, and
that's me if you get a job in the city itself.
This is interesting because in some ways, the invention of

(17:16):
the suburb in the in the years after this kind
of tried to solve for this issue while also just
doing it in an incredibly racist way. Like you can
you can you can see the invention of the suburb
of trying to create these little nestled communities but also
getting away from the the the urban center, which was

(17:36):
seen as this like scary place full of people who
were non white. So you have like this white flight
thing that developed this notion of the suburbs, which in
some ways kind of does this but in a in
a much worse way. Actually, it makes it makes the
idea of the Garden City look like a much better

(17:57):
alternative to what the suburbs did. And it's it's just
interesting that even the version of this that got implemented
was just done in a way that it's so much
more dystopian and depressing. Yeah, I mean, and Bookchin addresses
that that comparison to the suburbs as well. Right, he said,
in the best of cases, the new towns differ from

(18:18):
suburbs primarily because job commuting is short and most services
can be supplied within the community itself. In the worst
of cases, they are essentially bedroom suburbs of the metropolis
and add enormously to its congestion during wook and hours.
I can't I can't believe Bookchin beat me to the
punch on this one. I'm devastated. This is the first

(18:43):
time booctions ever has has ever has ever beaten me.
This is this is this is truly terrible. So but
despite some of these flaws and criticisms, how it was
passionate about his idea, all right, I mean, he published
the book. He also organized like he's actually he's not
sitting on Twitter, right, He's actually doing something about his ideas.

(19:06):
So he organized this Garden City Association in eighteen ninety
nine in England to promote the ideas of social justice,
economic efficiency, beautification, health and well being in the context
of City Planet. That Garden City Association later became the
Town and Country Plan and Association, which still exists to
this day. Women played a very active role and continue

(19:29):
to play very active role in the organization. I mean,
as Howard says himself in his book, women's influence is
too often ignored here that ladies, this guy's a feminist.
But when the garden city is built as a chokey
will be woman's share. And the work he found to
have been a large one. Women are among our most
active missionaries. And so he's doing some Abdullah shit now

(19:56):
that yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, he's liberating life, you know.
But yeah. The TCP in the Town Country Planet Association
has continued to campaign for a new generation of garden
cities based on modern modern garden city principles. They will

(20:17):
cross sector and government influence policy in legislation. There is
awareness through guidance and training. They promote affordable homes and inclusive,
healthy and climate resilient places, and they try to create
text world barriers opportunities and practical solutions necessary to make
new garden cities a reality. They also are genuinely interested

(20:43):
in empowering people to have a real influence over decisions
about the environments and to secure social justice within in
between communities, or at least that is what their website says.
Outside of the TCPA, the idea of goden City definitely
sort of rooted itself in urban planning and the urban

(21:04):
planning tradition, and it did sort of feed into this
rise of green spaces within urban landscapes that we now
find around the world. The concept of the garden city
is definitely still revisited today, but it's considerably different from
the origin idea. It's also taken the garden city as

(21:25):
an inspiration as an esthetic inspiration to create greater integration
between urban areas and green spaces in a time though,
going back to the late nineteenth early twentieth century, Howard
was a successful fundraise again he was trying to get
things going in the first years of the twentieth century.

(21:48):
He built two garden cities, Letchworth Garden City and Wellwyn
Garden City, both in Hertfordshire, England, and both still exist today.
Let's ruth was originally quite successful. It was first you know,
an ancient parish from like the eleventh century and remained

(22:09):
a small rural village. And so the start of twentieth
century when the land was purchased by a company called
First Garden City Limited, which was founded by Howard and supporters,
and they went on to establish the United Kingdom's first
roundabout the Solar Shot Circus, a lot of urban like

(22:33):
park land and open spaces, including a green space named
after Howard called Howard Park. But after Howard's passing, the
First Garden City Limited was sort of taken over in
nineteen sixty and the company so it changed how the

(22:53):
town was managed. The residents of the local council kind
of lost some say the original Goden City ideals were reduced,
and the corporation eventually became for the first the company
created a cooperation transferred ownership to the corporation which was

(23:14):
now called Letchworth Garden City Cooperation, and then that cooperation
was replaced by a charter will body in the nineteen
nineties called Letchworth god City Heritage Foundation, which continues to
own and manage the estate to this day. Leachworth was
a sort of an interesting experiment. The people who were founded,
who helped to found that town, were very much otherworldly

(23:37):
as some people would described them. They for example, they
had some people describe them as health freaks. They actually
voted on a ban to set against the selling of alcohol,
a ban on the selling of alcohol in public premises?

(24:00):
Oh boy, so which is I mean for a British village,
right in the early nineteen hundreds to vote against having
a pub? Unheard of? Right? They did eventually create a pub.
That pub didn't serve any alcohol. Bumber bumber, hate to

(24:21):
see it. Yeah, but lat truth was still like a
real pioneer, you know. It's approached to blend in Tallent
country was used in the Australian capital Canberra, in hell Rao,
in Germany, in Tapanila and Finland, and in Messa Parks
and that field, and of course in the other garden
city well win. How what had arranged for that land

(24:42):
to be purchased by a company called Second Gotain City Limited.
Real creative there, And of first they were going to
call the city digs Well, but a couple of days
later they changed their mind, probably because they realized as
a dumb name, and then they decided to call Yeah.
I wasn't gonna say anything, but yeah, that's not that's

(25:03):
not a great name. Yeah. And so the town is
laid out along these tree line boulevards. It's sort of
a New George and Town Center. Um. There's a lot
of grass out of parks, as to be expected. And
the planners had intended to create the Guarden City to
have like one shop called Welwyn Stores, which was basically

(25:25):
a monopoly that all the residents were expected to shop at. Lastly,
I think I want to bring up one final inspiration.
I was about to one on whether I would include
this one or not, but I said, you know what

(25:46):
I might be entertaining and I might want to talk
about it further in the future. A certain character by
the name of Walt Disney. Oh no, this is Epcot.
This is this is this is the extramental prototypical City
of Tomorrow. Yes, no, this is the Florida Project. Oh no,

(26:11):
Disney's Epcot was designed in concentric circles with radiats. This
is the worst job scare. Oh, but it should be noted,
or rather should be expected that, unlike Howard, mister Disney

(26:31):
envisioned having a lot of personal control over the day
to day management of life in his city. So really,
Epcot was only loosely inspired by Howard's idea of combining
the populace with industry. Um, this city would have had
a hotel at the center with more than thirty stories

(26:55):
and a convention center. There would be an internationally themed
town center. Um, there would be a mega mole. There
would be themed restaurants, shops, and attractions. There would be
a monorail. Yeah he was, he was a car free

(27:15):
community advocate of Disney. Yeah. Like his plan was that
nobody would drive in Epcot. Delivery trucks and other autobiles
and other automobiles that needed to enter the city were
to be kept underground. So it's kind of like a

(27:36):
fusion of Ebone's ah what an elon musk that sucks?
That sucks. Yeah. Also, this city would be climb a
controlled with a glass roof. Yes, I mean, And it's
funny because like he couldn't even do this properly, Like
he couldn't even build this. Instead, instead they got turned
into like a like a like a bare skeleton of

(28:00):
his original plan. Was because Epcot will failed in so
in so many ways, the reason being that he ended
up dying right. Yeah, yes, Like even on his deathbed,
he was still sketching up designs for epcots, so he
never really got to implement it. Pro life Dictator dies anyways. Yeah, actual,

(28:20):
like the actual like living communities in in Disney World
Florida are are so different and in many ways they're
They're just like another suburb, um, except you're in a
suburb owned by Disney. Yeah yeah, And I mean it's
gonna be a peek into what life would have been

(28:41):
like on the epcot. Right, your home would have been
pre fabricated and modula certain materials and technologies could be
tested as soon as they were viable. By the way,
why they have nothing against free fab homes. I think
they could be very useful, um, But Disney's idea was basically,
your home is pre fab so that any time he
wanted to install an update on it, he could. It's great,

(29:04):
you know, like the entire city was basically like a
guinea pig for any technologies he came up with. UM,
and so he wants to really retain absolute control of
the city, Like they wouldn't even own anything Disney alone
would own the land so that he and his successes
can make updates and changes without ever being snowed down

(29:26):
by this pesky thing called citizens votes and rights and
all that. It's funny because this is actually now under
attack by Ron de Santis in Florida. The sovereignty of
Disney may like change a lot, and I think already
stripped it. Yes, but but how this plays out in

(29:47):
actuality is yet to be determined. But it is funny
that this is actually like this is a very very
recent thing, Like it's just like a week or so.
But see what we can see here is one of
the inevitable transitions as as as we as we saw
in British colonial rule in India, which is that direct
corporate rules always replaced by injurrect corporate rule via the state. Yeah,

(30:10):
pretty much. Yeah, it's in some ways we will probably
learn that it was better to live under Disney than
run Descantis. But that's not saying much. Next time he
opens up a discentist would No, no, it's just it's
just it's literally just like eighteen Giitmo exhibitions. Oh lord,

(30:34):
I mean, descentist world will just be the United States
when descents poidential election. True, sad but true. But let
me tell you a bit more about Epcot. Right, if
you were eighteen, you know older, you have to have
a job. Well, so you don't get to retire. Nobody's

(30:55):
allowed to retire. You only get to stop working if
you either die or leave amazing one way out. Also,
and the reason being, he believed this would prevent slums
or ghettos from foremen in any part of his magical city,

(31:15):
because I mean, if everyone has a job, then nobody
will be struggling to pay rent or eat. Right. Funnily enough,
of course, a lot of Disney workers today can't afford
to pay rent or eat. But hey, the theoretically everybody
in Epcot would have their basic needs met. Also, though

(31:36):
in exchange for that, they wouldn't have any privacy because
Epcott was also supposed to be like a tourist attraction.
You know, you look outside you were new, and tourists
are like looking inside you were new. That was a
thing that was Epcot thankfully doesn't it wasn't fully implemented.
I mean, some people have said that Singapore is like

(31:58):
a dystopian city state run by Disney. But we could
talk about that him at the time. That's the basic
rundown on garden cities, past, present, and future. The idea
of it, I think was, you know, notable, admirable, good effort,
but flowed um and because it lacks a strong ideological

(32:22):
foundation and economic foundation and analysis that took into a
county contentions speak within society that you know, manifests in
the urban landscape. And I think it's a clear warning
that for solo punks and for really people who are
interested in urban planet as a whole, that you know,

(32:43):
aesthetics is not everything. Design is not everything. You know,
they asked me some some meat to those um, let's
say some meats underneath that flesh. It's a really weird analogy,
but yeah, yeah, no, but like yeah, the principle of Okay,
I'm just gonna I'm gonna, I'm gonna abandon the Walter

(33:03):
Benjamin thing I was gonna do there, but no, try it,
keep keep going, keep We're gonna Benjamin thing I have
I have. I haven't actually read any of his stuff
in like five years, but one of Benjamin's things was
when politics is sort of displaced, you're converted into esthetic,
it becomes fascism. So don't do that. In fact, have
actual politics and not simply reduce your politics too an

(33:25):
aesthetic or to aesthetics, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, true, true.
All right, Well that's it for me. You can follow
me on YouTube dot com slash Andreism, on Twitter at
er School of Saying True, and on picture dotcom slash Andreism.
You can find us at happen here pod or cools

(33:47):
on Media on Twitter and Instagram. Um, and you can
find me tweeting about my desire to understand the mechanics
of how Disney World operates at Hungry Boutie, mostly on Twitter. Yeah.
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(34:10):
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