Garden Cities on their own could only ever be a small part of the solution

Lord Wolfson’s recent Garden Cities Competition has really put the cat among the pigeons. A lavish bash at the RIBA was held to announce the winner of the £250,000 prize for a new Garden City concept which was visionary, financially viable and popular. Gossip at the pre-dinner drinks cited this as a somewhat cynical attempt to show that the Coalition Government was addressing the current housing crisis, but if it was it certainly backfired - with an immediate response from the housing minister vowing never ever to build on the Greenbelt (or at least until after the general election).

The irony of this announcement will not be lost on those who have actually read Ebenezer Howard’s work. Although enormously influential across the world, only two towns of just over 30,000 people were ever built in the UK, and neither followed his ideal model of a hub city surrounded by half a dozen satellite cities. This helps to explain, apart from the cosy-sounding name, why they are so popular and why everyone was so panicked by the winning competition entry’s proposal to build some 40 new cities up and down the country. Heavens, this sounds perilously like a new towns programme which is generally considered to be political suicide. The other irony is that Howard actually invented the concept of the Green Belt as a device to separate and protect the sanctity of his settlements, but once they are all over the place there is a great danger of continuous coalescence. This is pretty much what London and its commuting hinterland is now, and many people find it works quite well – London effectively already spreads from Bedford to Epsom.

The one fundamental point remains – we are massively short of housing, and Garden Cities on their own could only ever be a small part of the solution. We probably need new cities, new towns, urban extensions, urban intensification and urban regeneration, and a whole lot more besides. And we almost certainly need it on both green fields and brownfield land. Change is inevitable in both popular and less desirable areas alike, and people need to stop being such short-sighted Nimbys.

Laws passed in the time of Elizabeth I to limit the spread of London proved unsuccessful, and there is no certainty that they will be more successful today. What a delicious irony that St Martin in the Fields is sited in Trafalgar Square which most people feel is now the centre of a world-class metropolis.

John Phillipps, 

Consultant, Masterplanning

T: 020 7016 0726 

E: john.phillipps@carterjonas.co.uk