We need a Garden City vision fit for the 21st century

It’s such a lovely phrase, so easy to say and conjures such an idyllic British idea of living. But beneath this leafy veneer the Garden City is something far more radical, and far more important. In fact, the idea of the Garden City is Britain’s greatest contribution to planning - both at home and internationally. Right now, when the phrase is tripping off the tongues of the chancellor, the deputy prime minister, housing associations and more, it’s worth thinking about what made it such a powerful idea.

The Garden City emerged as a response to the slums, squalor, crime that characterised the industrial city. First mooted in 1898 by Ebenezer Howard - who was a journalist, not a planner, architect or politician - in his book Garden Cities of To-Morrow. In 20 years it grew from an idea to a reality in Letchworth and Welwyn.

At its heart was the idea of the town-country, a best-of-all-worlds hybrid combining the health, space and beauty of the country with the opportunity and activity of the city - simultaneously pastoral and technological. And it was an economic and social hybrid too: a private development that used the rise in land value to benefit its inhabitants.

The Garden City is more than a phrase, it’s both a challenge and a guide to how we can face the crisis of the contemporary city

A century or so after Howard, we face our own contemporary housing crisis. Issues of affordability, foreign investment, problems in the private rented sector and the difficulty of building new homes - allied to the fact that London is likely to grow by a million people in the next 10 years, all lead us back to Howard’s question: “The People: Where Will They Go?”

The Garden City is often cited as a solution. But it’s not the image of the Garden City that we need: not more private suburban developments with extra trees. It’s the thinking behind the Garden City that we need: What might the contemporary version of Howard’s town-country be in the 21st century? How can private development contribute to the public good? Can planning communities be a way of creating new popular ideas of how and where we might live?

Researching and curating the British Pavilion for this summer’s Venice Architecture Biennale, I’ve been looking at how the history of British planning might help us face contemporary issues. And how we might rethink the Garden City for the present day. Do innovations like Foster’s new HQ for Apple that combine technology with orchards and open space show how we can reimagine the town-country idea? Could even the freedom and imagination of a phenomenon like Glastonbury show how freedom and custom-build might shape communities?

Deep down, it’s visionary planning that we now lack. And maybe – just like it did with the Garden Cities – these kinds of imaginative visions might come from figures like Steve Jobs or Michael Eavis, from beyond the built environment professions.

Whatever it is, the Garden City is more than a phrase, it’s both a challenge and a guide to how we can face the crisis of the contemporary city.

The history of British planning from the Garden Cities onwards suggests that it does not have to be - as it is often characterised – top-down and totalitarian. The British tradition of planning shows that freedom and community can play active parts. Likewise, it’s important to consider the whole of the built environment, the ecology of Britain as a whole. Maybe we need to have, like they do in Holland, a minister of spatial planning where housing, economic policy, infrastructure, environment, can be thought of in a joined up way.

Perhaps, even more, we need to visualise the possible futures of Britain - to produce ideas on a large scale considering the country and society as a whole. Visions that we can discuss and debate, that can guide us strategically in the long term and that help us see what the possible futures of Britain can be.

Sam Jacob is a founding director of architect FAT