It Could Happen Here - Why Garden Cities Aren't Enough ft. Andrew

Episode Date: March 21, 2023

Andrew talks with Gare and Mia about the history of Garden Cities and how a Georgist urban planning idea inspired Walt Disney (pejorative).See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Hello, hello, hello, hello. And I wanted to talk about cities because I very recently published a video on Sulipong City Planning. I mean, I don't know whether you're all going to hear this podcast, but I did recently publish it. And you can check that out on my channel. And I thought I'd share a bit more I did recently publish it. And you can check that out on my channel.

And I thought I'd share a bit more about one particular historical urban planet movement that I talk about in that video. And that is Ebenezer Howard's Garden Cities movement. And his book, Garden Cities of Tomorrow. Are you all familiar with either? No. I don't think so yeah so ebenezer howard um side note by the way i don't know who looks at a child and names them ebenezer howard but he presented this idea of the garden city concept in 1898 in a book called tomorrow a peaceful path to real reform later he republished in 1902 under the name garden cities of tomorrow and take note 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 we'll discuss later. He wanted to provide access to the benefits of both town living and country living. As he describes it, 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 it has crowding it has disease i mean this is victorian era um cities he's talking about place will stink um in contrast the country and country offers the space and the beauty of nature and its abundance but it lacks society and it can feel isolated and really spread out.

So he wanted to create a hybrid of both concepts, a third magnet of town, country, the combined benefits of both. Howard believed that- A secret, sorry, I have to jump in here and make a secret- A secret third thing. Yes, yes, thank you, yeah. Not town, not country, but a secret third thing. We fulfilled our contractual obligations. Thank you. Yeah. Not town, not country, but a secret third thing. We fulfilled our contractual obligations.

One joke. All right, I'm going to sign off the call. Andrew, you take it from here. So yeah, a secret third thing. economic backgrounds could be created by establishing these town-country cities with very specific parameters run by strong government institutions. In Ebenezer Howard's context, again, no offense to the Ebenezers of the world, but jeez, I can't let go of those implications. I think we need to bring back the name Ebenezer, actually. It's been too long since I've seen an infant named Ebenezer, meaning I've never seen one.

I feel like we should see more just absolutely absurd old-timey names. What do you call the baby? Do you call them Ebby or something? How does this work? You call the baby Ebenezer, the baby's name. Oh, God. Why would you? You call it the baby's name why would you you call it the baby's name you could call it Ebby you could call it Neezer you could eventually call it Weezer okay different options horrible nickname that is awful oh yeah that is okay I'm hearing the

implications I do never I never want to hear that again. Yeah, I digress. Howard's writing, I'm just going to call him Howard. Howard's writing during the Industrial Revolution was in response to, well, the Industrial Revolution. You know, his response to the urban slums, the pollution, the lack of access to the countryside. And much of his book is dedicated to the idea that cities, as they existed in his time, were not sustainable in the long run. By the middle of the 19th century, over half of Britain's population lived in towns, and in 1900, that proportion had risen to over three quarters. But English towns and cities presented social and environmental problems of an unprecedented scale, 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 every kind of person. He saw he wanted to purchase like large areas of land from aristocratic owners and start setting up garden cities that would house up to 32,000 people in individual homes on 6,000 acres. And that whole vision of individual homes is, think um it belies a limitation the imagination there but it's somewhat understandable considering the historical conditions of the time where people were living in these overcrowded um slums and stuff and the the dream was really to have a

home of your own that you didn't have to crowd out it has to be crowded you could have to share with others but anyway 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 town hall lecture halls theaters and a hospital an enormous arcade called the crystal palace not arcade as in video game um where residents would browse a covered market and enjoy a winter garden neighborhoods with cooperative kitchens and shared gardens, schools, playgrounds and churches, factories, warehouses, farms, workshops and access to a train line. In its ideal form, the Garden City would 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 would accommodate 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 of the garden city. He still wanted the city to be adapted to the local layout somewhat. And these elements of garden city design uh were all inter 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 georgist um oh god wait that explains that explains so much about all this politics politics. Of course, he was a Georgist. Yeah, quite an interesting crew of characters.

Oh. He wanted mixed 10-year homes and housing types that were generally affordable. You know, to go on another digression, I find Georgism to be such an interesting fixation of a philosophy. It's like, you know, looking at all the problems in society and you know what we need? A land tax. That'll solve things. I mean, obviously that's not the all there is to the to the that political philosophy that economic uh 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 like that was the whole focus of it yeah that's really funny too because it has one of the sort of largest like collapses of any ideology ever like this is like

a very serious it was a big ideology you know it literally helped to develop the board game Monopoly you know it's like

it was a huge thing this is something I've actually been looking into a lot I've been trying to track down some of the original like 1920s copies

of Monopoly that's more based on the second on the Lambert scheme yes I've been trying to find the ones that were like pre

Parker Brothers. And 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 one in the

past two months, and it's been a bit more challenging, just because I'm kind of a Monopoly two months, and it's been a bit more challenging, just because I'm kind of a Monopoly freak. Yeah, it's really interesting to see how that game was developed and then changed over time, and how Hasbro stepped in. Is it Hasbro or the Parker Brothers, whateverbro stepped in is it Hasbro or the Parker Brothers stepped in and did their do and kind of basically

rewrote the history of the board game entirely yeah but anyway elements of the Garden City strong community engagement, community ownership of land, mixed tenure homes housing types types are 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 the natural environment with strong cultural, recreational and shopping facilities in addition to 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 their time, they were criticized. I mean, they were praised for being an alternative to the overcrowded industrial cities, but they were also criticized for damaging the economy, being destructive to the beauty of nature and being inconvenient.

You know, they weren't able to be, and furthermore, because they had this sort of top-down design philosophy, they weren't able to truly reflect the natural and organic developments of a town or a country you know so secretly a thing couldn't do either the things that the original two stuff could do. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter.

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on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel winning economists to leading journalists in the field and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong though, I love technology, I just hate the people

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Submit your podcast today at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. And then, of course, you have the mustached man himself, Murrayray bookchin stepping in in the limits of the city to eviscerate the idea of the garden city he talks about how howard's scheme uh was basically a system of benevolent capitalism that presumed to avoid the extremes of communism and individualism. And as a result, his entire book was, quote, permeated by an underlying assumption, so typically British, that a compromise can be struck between an intrinsically irrational material reality and a moral ideology of high-minded conciliation.

Mic drop. Yeah. I feel like the most brutal part of that is just the typically British part. Yeah. I mean, any 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 battlegrounds of conflicting social interests. You know, there's alienated labor, there are income differences, there are disparities of work time and free time. All that conflict is not addressed just because you make a pretty city. 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 center just because you have a nice transit system and a green belt. I feel like some of these same problems crop up on some of the solar punk stuff online as well. I mean, we've already talked about greenwashing throughout the solar punk aesthetic and stuff.

But yeah, it is an interesting aspect that keeps propping up. And it's just intriguing that it dates back over 100 years ago, like this same exact thing. Yeah, exactly. 100 years ago like this same exact thing yeah exactly and funny enough you know his garden cities were even falling short of utopias that were thought of before his time you know like i'm not even just utopias but also actual historical political experiments that you know 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 central council and a department structure based on elections. Unlike in Thomas More's Utopia,

there's no proposal for rotating agricultural and industrial work. Unlike the Paris Commune of 1871, which was established long before Howard wrote his book, he 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 howard's ideas are right like there was just a lack of social analysts analysis in favor of just design yeah georgism like sure it would probably be like better than what we have now well yeah for sure but it by no means like fixes all of the systemic issues it's like amsterdam right i would rather have capitalism while riding a bike but bookchin also talks about how these communities do not encompass the full range of possibilities of human experience.

Again, quote, because, you know, Bookchin is low-key a boss, right? Neighbourliness is mistaken for organic social intercourse and mutual aid. Well-manicured parks for the harmonisation of humanity with nature. The proximity of workplaces for the development of a new meaning for work and its integration with play, an eclectic mix of ranch houses, slab-like apartments, and bachelor-type flats

for spontaneous architectural variety, shopping mart plazas in a vast expanse of lawn for the agora, lecture halls for cultural centers, hobby classes for vocational variety, benevolent trusts for municipal councils for self-administration. One can add endlessly to this list of misplaced criteria for community that serve to obfuscate rather than clarify the high attainment to 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 people are brought together, you know, they have all these conveniences and these pleasantries, but they're still culturally impoverished. They're still atomized. They still deal with the stark reality of capitalism in the spaces that they're going to inevitably spend most of their day at work. Like, it's nice that 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 day? I mean anything at least you know your commute will probably be shorter but that's about it and that's if you get a job in the city itself this this is interesting

because in some ways the invention of 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 oh yeah you can you can see the the invention of the suburb of trying to create these little nestled communities but also getting away from the uh the uh the urban center which was seen as this like scary place uh full of people who were non-white so you have have this white flight thing that developed this notion of the suburbs, which in some ways kind of does this, but in a much worse way, actually.

It makes the idea of the Garden City look like a much better alternative to what the suburbs did. And it's just interesting that even the version of this that got implemented was just done in a way that is so much more dystopian and depressing. Yeah.

I mean, and Buckchin addresses that comparison to the suburbs as well, right? He says, in the best of cases, the new towns differ from suburbs primarily because job commuting is short and most services can be supplied within the community itself. 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 working hours i can't i can't believe bookchin beat me to the punch on this one he outbooked you i'm devastated this is the first time bookchin's time Bookshin has ever beaten me. This is truly terrible. So, but despite some of these flaws and criticisms, Howard was passionate about his idea, right?

I mean, he published the books. He also organized, like he's actually, he's not sitting on Twitter, right? He's actually doing something about his ideas. So he organized this Garden City Association in 1899 in England to promote the ideas of social justice, economic efficiency, beautification, health, and well-being in the context of city planning. That Garden City Association later became the Town and Country Planning planning association which still exists to this day um women played a very active role and continue to play a very active role in the organization i mean as howard says himself in his book women's influence is too often ignored you hear that

ladies this guy's a feminist when the garden city is built as it shortly will be women's share in the work we found have been a large one women are among our most active missionaries um and so he's doing some abdullah ajalan shit now look at that yeah yeah yeah he's um liberating life you know but yeah the tcpa the town country planning association um has continued to campaign for a new generation of garden cities based on modern modern garden city principles they work cross-sector and government influence policy and legislation they raise awareness through guidance and training they uh promote affordable homes and inclusive, healthy and climate resilient places. And they try to create, to explore barriers, opportunities and practical solutions necessary to make new garden cities a reality.

are genuinely interested in empowering people to have a real influence over decisions about their environments and to secure social justice within and between communities or at least that is what their website says outside of the tcpa the idea of a garden city definitely sort of rooted itself in urban planning and the urban 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 original idea um it's more so taking the garden city as an inspiration as an aesthetic inspiration um to create greater integration between urban areas and green spaces in his time though going back to the late 19th and early 20th century howard was a successful

fundraiser again he was trying to get things going in the first years of 20th century, Howard was a successful fundraiser. Again, he was trying to get things going. In the first years of the 20th century, he built two garden cities, Letchworth Garden City and Wellwyn Garden City, both in Hertfordshire, England. And both still exist today. Letchworth was originally quite successful. It was first, you know, an ancient parish from like the 11th century

and remained a small rural village until the start of 20th century when the land was purchased by a company called first garden city limited which was founded by howard and his supporters and they went on to establish the united kingdom's first roundabout, the Soloschlotz Circus, a lot of urban parkland 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 1960 and the company sort of changed how the town

was managed the residents of the local council kind of lost some say, the original Garden City ideals were reduced and the corporation eventually became um first the company created a corporation transferred ownership to the corporation which was now called letchworth garden city corporation and then that corporation was

replaced by a charitable body in the 1990s called letchworth garden city heritage foundation which continues to own and manage the estate to this day. Letchworth was a sort of an interesting experiment the people who were found who helped to found that town were very much otherworldly as some people would describe them they for example they had a some people described them as health freaks they actually voted on a ban to set um against the selling of alcohol um a ban on the selling of alcohol in public premises oh boy so which is i mean for a British village, right? In the early 1900s to vote against having a pub?

Unheard of, right? They did eventually create a pub, but that pub didn't serve any alcohol. Bummer, bummer. Hate to see it. Yeah. But Letchworth was still like a real pioneer. You know, its approach to blending town and country was used in the Australian capital, Canberra, in Hellarau in Germany, in Tapanila in Finland, and in the Mesa Parks in Latvia. And of course, in the other garden city, Wellwyn.

Howard had arranged for that land to be purchased by a company called Second Garden City Limited real creative there and first they were going to call the um the city Diggswell but a couple days later they changed their mind probably because they realized that's a dumb name and they decided to call it Diggswell. I wasn't going to say anything but yeah that's not that's not a great name. Yeah. And so the town is laid out along these three-line boulevards. It's sort of a New Georgian town centre. There's a lot of grass, a lot of parks, as we expected. And the planners had intended to create the Garden City to have like one shop called Wellwind Stores, which was basically a monopoly that all the

residents were expected to shop at welcome i'm danny thrill won't you join me at the fire and dare enter noctcturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonorum, an anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows. As part of Michael Duda Podcast Network. Available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The 2025 iHeart Podcast Awards are coming.

This is the chance to nominate your podcast for the industry's biggest award. Submit your podcast for nomination now at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. But hurry, submissions close on December 8th. Hey, you've been doing all that talking. It's time to get rewarded for it. Submit your podcast today at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon

Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel winning economists to leading journalists in the field and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong though, I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better.

Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. lastly I think I want to bring up one final inspiration I was a bit torn on whether I would include this one or not but I said you know what 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. Drew a great deal. Oh no. This is Epcot.

This is the Florida. This is the extravental prototypical city of tomorrow. Yes, this is Epcot. Oh no. This is the Florida project. Oh no. Disney's Epcot was designed in concentric circles with radiating boulevards. No! This is the worst jump scare I've ever heard.

Oh, but it should be noted, or rather it should be expected, that unlike Howard, Mr. Disney 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 30 stories and a convention center there would be an internationally a convention center. There would be an internationally themed town center. There would be a mega mall.

There would be themed restaurants, shops and attractions. There would be a monorail. Yeah, there sure is. He was a car-free community advocate. Based off Disney. yeah sure he sort of he was he was a car-free community advocate yeah like his plan was that nobody would drive in epcot delivery trucks and other automobiles and auto other automobiles that needed to enter the city were to be kept underground so it's kind of like a fusion of Ebenezer Howard and Elon

Musk. That sucks. That sucks. Also, the city would be climate controlled with a glass roof. Yes. I mean, it's funny because he couldn't even do this properly. He couldn't even build

this. Instead, it got turned into a bare skeleton of what his original plan was because epcot well failed in so in so many ways reason being that he ended up dying right yeah yes like even on his deathbed he was still sketching up designs for epcot so he never really got to implement it pro-life dictator dies anyways the actual like the actual like living communities in Disney World Florida are so different and

in many ways they're just like another suburb except you're in a suburb owned by Disney yeah and I mean to give you a little except you're in a suburb owned by Disney. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, it's going to be a little peek into what life would have been like under

Epcot, right? Your home would have been prefabricated and modular. So the materials and technologies could be tested as soon as they were available. By the way, while they have nothing against prefab homes, I think they'd be very useful.

But Disney's idea was basically your home is prefab so that anytime he wanted to install an update on it he could it's great you know like the entire city was basically like a guinea pig for any technologies he came up with um and so he wanted 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 successors can make updates and changes without ever being slowed down by this pesky thing called citizens, votes and rights and all that. It's funny because this is actually now under attack by Ron DeSantis in Florida. The sovereignty of Disney may like change a lot i think they lost it i i think they already stripped it yes but but how this plays out in actuality is yet to be determined but it is funny that this is actually like this is a very uh very recent thing it's like the lasts like a week or so. What we can see here is

one of the inevitable transitions as we saw in British colonial rule in India, which is that direct corporate rule is always replaced by indirect corporate rule via the state. Yeah, pretty much. In some ways, we will probably learn that it was better to live

under Disney than Ron DeSantis. But that is not saying much. Next time he opens up a DeSantis world. No, no. Do not call it into being. It's literally just like 18 Gitmo exhibitions. Oh, Lord. I mean, DeSantis world will just be the united states when de santis

was the presidential election oh god true sad but true but let me tell you a bit more about epcot right if you were 18 or older you have to have a job also you don't get to retire nobody's allowed to retire you only get to stop working if you either die or leave amazing one way out also he and reason being he believed this would prevent slums or ghettos from forming in any part of his magical city 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 theoretically everybody in Epcot would have their basic needs met also though in exchange for that they wouldn't have any privacy because epcot was also supposed to be like a tourist attraction you know you look outside the window and tourists are like looking inside the window so that was a that was a thing that

was epcot thankfully it doesn't it wasn't fully implemented. I mean, some people have said that Singapore is like a dystopian city-state run by Disney, but we could talk about that another time. That's the basic rundown on Garden City's past, present, and future. The idea of it, I think, was notable, admirable, good effort, but flawed. And because it lacked a strong ideological foundation and economic foundation and analysis that took into account the contentions baked within society that manifests in the urban landscape. urban landscape.

And I think it's a clear warning that for solar punks and for any people who are interested in urban planning as a whole, that, you know, aesthetics is not everything. Design is not everything, you know, there has to be some, some meat to those,

um, let's say some meat underneath that flesh. It's a really weird analogy, but yeah. Yeah, no, but like, yeah, the, no but like yeah the the the principle of okay i'm just gonna i'm gonna i'm gonna abandon the walter benjamin thing i was gonna do there but no try it keep keep going keep going we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna try the walter

benjamin thing i haven't 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 or converted into aesthetic, it becomes fascism. So don't do that. In fact, have actual politics and not simply reduce your politics to an 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.com slash andrewism on Twitter at underscore St. Drew and on patreon.com slash andrewism.

You can find us at Happen Here Pod or Cools on Media on Twitter and Instagram. And you can find me tweeting about my desire to understand the mechanics of how Disney World operates at Hungry Bowtie, mostly on Twitter. Yay. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening.

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The 2025 iHeart Podcast Awards are coming. This is the chance to nominate your podcast for the industry's biggest award. Submit your podcast for nomination now at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. But hurry, submissions close on December 8th. Hey, you've been doing all that talking. It's time to get rewarded for it. Submit your podcast today at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions.

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