Garden City - urban concept that emerged in the early XX century.
Content
Initial Concept
One of the first descriptions of the garden city can be considered the book "Garden City of the Future." It was written by English utopian sociologist Ebenezer Howard and was first published in 1898 .
Howard believed that the modern (at the time of writing) the city has become obsolete. The chaotic, unlimited growth of the industrial city, its unsanitary conditions and, in a more general sense, inhumanity, was criticized.
As an alternative, Howard offered small cities that combine the best properties of the city and village.
In accordance with the project described in the book, the population of the new city was supposed to be 32 thousand inhabitants. Cities were to form larger groups with a single center. The total population of such a "constellation" of cities was supposed to be about 250 thousand inhabitants.
The ideal city of Howard itself was a structure of concentric round zones. In the very center of such a city there is a park, it is surrounded by a residential area consisting of low-rise buildings with personal plots. The radius of the residential area was approximately one kilometer. Industry and farmland were taken to the periphery.
Garden City and its scheme
Schematically, the garden city can be described as follows:
The shape of the city is a circle. The area of the city is 5000 acres, the area of the agricultural belt is 1000 acres (the total area of the city is 6000 acres) [1] . The city crosses 6 boulevards (120 feet wide), this city is divided into 6 equal sectors. The central square - the intersection of boulevards - a circle of 5.5 acres (also a garden), which is surrounded by public buildings: the town hall, library, museum, hospital, etc.
The central sector is surrounded by a glass gallery - a public park with an area of 145 acres (with sports fields). The Crystal Palace itself is also part of the park, covered. Here exhibitions are held, and trade is. When moving away from the center, the concentric rings of buildings increase (each is surrounded by additional land, there is no dense building).
Construction: 5,500 lots of size 20 x 130 feet, of which at least 20 x 100 feet must be built up. The municipality controls the line of the facades so that the streets are permeable and smooth, otherwise the display of creativity in the design of houses is encouraged.
Grand Avenue is a 420-foot-green belt (essentially a 115-acre park). Here are the buildings: schools, playgrounds, churches - inside the belt, and administrative buildings that go to the Avenue are in the shape of a crescent.
On the outer ring of the city are factories, warehouses, dairies, markets, coal yards, wood yards, etc., all going to the railways (to save on transportation of goods to the city center and unload intraurban highways, which ultimately reduces cost of road maintenance). All industrial equipment runs on electricity, which saves the city from gas pollution.
The land around the city does not belong to private individuals and therefore cannot be built up with a sharp increase in its population. In the city, according to the idea of the author of the concept, a civil society is being formed, which protects these lands from development. The only way for such a city to grow is to “splash out” the satellite city beyond the limits of the agricultural belt. The satellites are connected to the central city by a railway network. Ultimately, a satellite ring is formed around the main city. Globally - a hexagonal system of settling a certain area is being formed.
The purpose of all this: to achieve the highest possible level of quality of life in the city-gardens.
Incarnation
UK
Howard managed to organize an association for the construction of urban gardens. In the first decade of the 20th century, this association built two new garden- towns in England - Lechworth and Velvin .
However, these first garden cities were not particularly popular. So, by the end of the 20s only 14 thousand people lived in Lechworth, and 7 thousand in Velvin.
However, Britain did not abandon the idea of a garden city. Many city planners and architects continued to work on the concept.
After World War II , a program was adopted in Great Britain to build satellite towns around London . The project manager was architect planner Patrick Abercrombie .
Abercrombie borrowed a lot from Howard's ideas. But there were significant differences. The population of new cities was to be 60-100 thousand people (and not 30 thousand people, like Howard's).
In accordance with the Abercrombie plan, 18 new cities with a total population of approximately one million inhabitants were to be built around London. It was planned that approximately half of the residents of the new cities were to be residents of London. Thus, one of the goals of the new cities was to loosen London.
Although the plan was partially implemented, its results were significantly lower than expected. So by 1963 only 263 thousand people moved to the new satellite cities of London.
Other countries
In the first half of the 20th century, the idea of a garden city was popular in many countries, although nowhere its incarnation reached such a scope as in Great Britain.
Examples of city gardens:
- Russia: an attempt to make a garden city in Barnaul , the settlement of Sokol in Moscow , the settlement of Friendship in Mytishchi, the Red Garden City in Rostov-on-Don , the October Village Garden in Vologda ; in the town of Zhukovsky, the First Worker and the Second Worker settlements in Ivanovo ;
- Sweden: Engby Sydr ;
- Belgium: Le Logis garden district (Le Logis) in the Brussels commune of Watermal-Buhafor ;
- Germany: Gardens in many cities, such as Hamburg (Wandsbek-Gartenstadt), Essen (Essen-Margarethenhöhe), Königsberg ( Ratshof and Amalienau , now part of Kaliningrad );
- Spain: Park Guell , designed by Gaudi in Barcelona . The park was originally created as a garden district, but there were no people willing to build housing there.
- Israel: Richard Kaufman planned and built in accordance with the concept of the garden city moshav Nahalal (1921) and kibbutz Tel Yosef (1937) in the Jezreel Valley , moshav Moledet (1947), as well as several areas of Jerusalem: Beit haKerem , Rehavia and Talpiot.
- Australia: The concept of the garden city was the basis for the project of the capital of the state, the city of Canberra (architects Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahoney Griffin). Due to the abundance of natural vegetation, the city received from the locals the informal name of “bush capital” (“forest capital”).
Concept in the second half of the 20th century.
By the second half of the 20th century, the classical concept of the garden city had lost its popularity. The success and popularity of the city-gardens turned out to be lower than expected. Many suburban areas, gardens have become sleeping areas .
However, many of the ideas embodied in the concept of the garden city are now used by modern urban planning concepts, for example, the movement of new urbanism .
Notes
- ↑ CB (Charles Benjamin) Purdom, WR (William Richard) Lethaby, George L. (George Lionel) Pepler. Town theory and practice . - London, Benn Brothers, 1921. - 164 p.
Links
- Will there be a garden city here?
- Birth and death of the Soviet garden city
- A. Gutnov , V. Glazychev . The world of architecture: The face of the city. Moscow, "The Young Guard", 1990, ISBN 5-235-00487-6 pp. 85-95
- Korchagina O.A. Garden towns of the Far East at the beginning of the 20th century: Far, Port Arthur, Harbin. // Actual problems of the theory and history of art : Sat. scientific articles. Issue 6. / Ed. A.V. Zakharova, S.V. Maltseva, E. Yu. Stanyukovich-Denisova. - SPb .: NP-Print, 2016. P. 668-675. ISSN 2312-2129.