The planned-housing and utopian movements were born long before the post-World War II housing boom created a suburban exodus that came to define the ideal in American living. In 1899, Ebenezer Howard and his Garden Cities Association conceived the idea of living spaces far from the inner city and anchored by the ideal of communing with one another and with nature.
Subsequently, he published the acclaimed book, Garden Cities of To-morrow, which eventually became the road map for the American suburbs of today. Along the way, we forgot or ignored many of Howard’s fundamental principles – or decided they were too expensive – and we ended up with something far from his original vision. Howard would be stymied by what we have done with his then-brilliant ideas, and ideals.
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