Having discussed Radburn, we can look at Radburn’s context in urban planning history. As Clarence Stein acknowledged in his book Toward New Towns for America, none of Radburn’s elements or urban ideas were new. The innovations in Radburn’s plan lay in the articulation and integration of superblocks, specialized circulation, open space backbone, and house with two fronts. We know that the planners of Radburn were followers of Garden City principles. Stein and Wright both went to England to study superblocks with cul-de-sacs in 1923 and experienced examples of Garden Cities such as Welwyn and Letchworth.
Ebeneezer Howard, the founder of the Garden City principles, believed the problems of city and country needed to be addressed through reforms in land use. He envisioned a new landscape for England through the applications of Garden City principles. For Howard, the Garden City would serve as the conceptual framework to solve the larger urban problems caused by large migrations to overcrowded metropolitan areas, its corresponding unchecked suburban development, and the desertion of rural towns.
Ebeneezer Howard, the founder of the Garden City principles, believed the problems of city and country needed to be addressed through reforms in land use. He envisioned a new landscape for England through the applications of Garden City principles. For Howard, the Garden City would serve as the conceptual framework to solve the larger urban problems caused by large migrations to overcrowded metropolitan areas, its corresponding unchecked suburban development, and the desertion of rural towns.
For Howard, the realization of an individual Garden City was not the ultimate goal. He envisioned an entire network of garden cities. The result of this web of Garden Cities would be a better form of industrial life distributed throughout the country and the decongestion of major cities (i.e., London) into more humane cities.
“One small garden city must be built as a working model, and then a group of cities… These tasks done, and done well, the reconstruction of London must inevitably follow…”[6] The notion of Garden City has been often mistaken with the idea of the small towns and suburban development. Suburbs result when a city grows beyond its optimum size and consequently depends on outlying areas to provide housing. The Garden City is unlike a suburb in that it is designed to be self-sufficient with its own center for industry, employment, commerce, culture, and education. All major needs of the city’s residents are met within the community. Furthermore, the Garden City is limited in area. Its optimum size determined by numbers necessary to support the economic and social needs of its residents.
In his book, Howard doesn’t present specific plans for the Garden City. Instead, he presents diagrams for the Garden City since he is more concerned in developing a system to plan cities rather than specifying the outward form of cities. In his book, the Garden City is circular in plan. It spans 1000 acres of a 6000 acre site and supports a population of 32,000 people. Dwelling units in the Garden City would be constructed at a density of 20.28 houses/acre (Raymond Unwin later reduced this ratio to 12 units/acre, Stein and Wright used a 7 units/acre ratio at Radburn). In the town’s center is a 5 acre park. Around the central park are public buildings such as town hall, library hospital, museum, and art gallery. Circular avenues divide the town. 6 radial boulevards divide the town into 6 wards. Each wards is a self-contained superblock of 5000 people. Surrounding the city is a greenbelt for asylums, convalescent homes, industrial schools and an agricultural college. The main railway loops around the city. Town people would reside close to the industrial areas where they would work. The 2000 people working and living in the greenbelt would enjoy the benefits of the town.
To bring his ideas into reality, Howard proposed that the garden city be built on agricultural land by a limited dividend corporation which was financed and operated for the benefit of the citizens. All land in the Garden City was to be held in common ownership and leased to individuals. Private enterprise and farmers would flourish. The town’s issues would be addressed locally in a democratic atmosphere.
The realization of the first Garden City in England started to gain momentum once Howard was introduced to industrialists George Cadbury and W.H. Lever. With their support, the Garden Cities Association was founded in 1899. Shortly after, in July 1902, the Garden City Pioneer Co Ltd. was formed to build a 3822 acre garden city 34 miles north of London for a population of 35,000 people. Architects Barry Parker and Raymond Unwin, (who later became a consultant in the Radburn project), produced the town plan in 1904. In utilizing the contours of the land and reducing the housing density to 12 units per acre in formulating site plan, they modified Howard’s diagram for Garden City.
Offering a mere 4% return with no dividends to investors, the Garden City Pioneer Co Ltd. failed to attract investors. Letchworth depended on financial help from Edward Cadbury, W.H. Lever. They had to borrow money from banks at a high rate of interest. Since they lacked the finances to build houses, plots were laid out for sale and developed by builders and individuals. The lack of adequate financing severely restricted the control over the town’s final design and function. Providing housing for low-income families and workers for the town’s industry became difficult. Ultimately the goal to create a self-sufficient Garden City was not met because of financial constraints. In the realization of the first Garden City, the importance of financial logistics and its impact to the results of the city were clearly shown.
In April 29, 1920 the Welwyn Garden City Ltd. was formed. The original site plan for Welwyn was drafted by Louis de Soissons. Learning from Letchworth, the planners of Welwyn revised its corporation’s financial policies. In order to attract investors, dividends were made payable up to 7%. All further profit was reinvested for the benefit of the town and its inhabitants. In addition to its refined fiscal strategy, the Parliament Housing Act of 1919 provided a subsidy for construction of working class homes. Thus housing was provided for resident workers to bike or walk to work. Because of its fiscal policies, the whole town of Welwyn was pre-planned, all the buildings of Welwyn were designed by the Welwyn Garden City Ltd., and all lands were held in public ownership.
Welwyn’s plan adhered to the Garden City principles: the town size was limited to 40 to 50,000 residents, a large greenbelt with larger playing fields was located at the fringe of the town area. The town center was located by the railway station, and contained the administrative, cultural, educational, recreational, and commercial facilities. The industrial area occupied 200 acres near the railroad, and its placement was determined by the prevailing southwest winds. Shredded Wheat and Dawnay and Co. were two notable companies that were established in Welwyn. The housing was planned such that every citizen was within walking distance to the town center or the open country. Housing was clustered around cul-de-sacs, and was planned at a density of 12 houses per acre. Not anticipating the eventual rise of the automobile, no off-street parking was provided. Many of the planning ideas in Welwyn were further developed in the Radburn project: housing clustered around cul-de-sacs, schools placed in the middle of residential neighborhoods, and the town center’s relation to the railroad.
In April 29, 1920 the Welwyn Garden City Ltd. was formed. The original site plan for Welwyn was drafted by Louis de Soissons. Learning from Letchworth, the planners of Welwyn revised its corporation’s financial policies. In order to attract investors, dividends were made payable up to 7%. All further profit was reinvested for the benefit of the town and its inhabitants. In addition to its refined fiscal strategy, the Parliament Housing Act of 1919 provided a subsidy for construction of working class homes. Thus housing was provided for resident workers to bike or walk to work. Because of its fiscal policies, the whole town of Welwyn was pre-planned, all the buildings of Welwyn were designed by the Welwyn Garden City Ltd., and all lands were held in public ownership.
Welwyn’s plan adhered to the Garden City principles: the town size was limited to 40 to 50,000 residents, a large greenbelt with larger playing fields was located at the fringe of the town area. The town center was located by the railway station, and contained the administrative, cultural, educational, recreational, and commercial facilities. The industrial area occupied 200 acres near the railroad, and its placement was determined by the prevailing southwest winds. Shredded Wheat and Dawnay and Co. were two notable companies that were established in Welwyn. The housing was planned such that every citizen was within walking distance to the town center or the open country. Housing was clustered around cul-de-sacs, and was planned at a density of 12 houses per acre. Not anticipating the eventual rise of the automobile, no off-street parking was provided. Many of the planning ideas in Welwyn were further developed in the Radburn project: housing clustered around cul-de-sacs, schools placed in the middle of residential neighborhoods, and the town center’s relation to the railroad.
In 1906, the year Letchworth opened its doors, the Garden Cities Association of America was founded. It was formed to discuss the possibilities of implementing Howard’s Garden City concepts in American regional planning to save urban America from congestion and rural areas from dispersion. America was undergoing similar planning issues that England was experiencing due to the effects of the Industrial Revolution. As Patrick Geddes and Lewis Mumford pointed out in their writings, people were abandoning rural areas of the country and overcrowding the cities. The cities’ housing infrastructure was overloaded because the cities couldn’t support the influx in population. Congested cities led to over intensive suburban development, and congested transportation commutes to cities. The suburban idea fed the congestion and over-reliance on one metropolis.
During WWI, America needed many ships for the war, but the existing housing facilities for ship builders were inadequate to meet Government’s wartime activity. Congress allocated 75 million dollars to provide houses for shipbuilders. Thirty-one developments with a total of 9648 dwellings were eventually built in this effort. Although, the government eventually cut its federally funded housing program after the end of the WWI, the Shipping Board introduced the possibility of government involvement in housing issues. More importantly, one of the future planners of Radburn, Henry Wright, obtained exposure to Garden City planning ideas through his work at the Shipping Board.
“Many of the plans were made by architects imbued with the Garden City Idea…”[7]. Wright began formulating ideas about different innovative block patterns and street systems while working at the Shipping Board between 1917-1918. In his work at Newburg, Bridgeport, and Camden he concentrated on freeing housing design from the prevailing grid pattern. “While acting as Town Planning Advisor for the Shipping Board there was developed a theoretical scheme which reversed out awkward and irrational arrangement of house fronts on the street, where unpleasant things must take place, and the inconvenient placing of service doors on the rear of garden sides just where they ruin what should be a pleasant quiet garden plot.” [8]
Robert D. Kohn, the head of Shipping Board, later introduced Wright to Clarence Stein. Together with planners F.L. Ackerman, Frederick Bigger, Alexander Bing, John Bright, Stuart Chase, Benton MacKaye, Lewis Mumford, and C.H. Whitaker, they formed the Regional Planning Association in 1923.
As one of the most innovative planning groups in American history, the RPA created a powerful forum for politicians, urban planners, and businessmen to develop regional plans for the urban development of America. The RPA was an offshoot of the English Garden city movement and the RPA’s theoretical framework was greatly indebted to the Garden City framework developed in England. Like its English counterpart, the RPA set out to define principles that could be used in a systematic municipal and regional building process rather than building cities with specific physical form. The RPA proposed a new pattern of regional growth to replace suburbanism and metropolitanism. To control urban population growth, they sought to replace sprawl with polynucleated land use; a network of small communities held in a matrix of green space.
The RPA believed that the other contemporary approaches to solving the urban problems such as road improvements and slum clearance were misguided. They argued that more transportation infrastructure (i.e., Triborough Bridge) causes more concentration of people in the cities. Additionally, road improvements result in higher taxes, which leads to more intensive use of land to meet the tax burden, thus leading to more congestion. The RPA was not interested in wide spread commuting districts which lead to commuter congestion. To the RPA, slum clearance was too costly because urban land was expensive. In slum clearance too much capital would be devoted to land purchase thereby inflating housing costs.
Instead, the RPA’s approach to solving urban problems was holistic. Housing, transportation, public schools, recreation, power, water, and sewage disposal were interdependent systems that needed re-consideration in urban planning. In planning developments at Sunnyside and Radburn, many traditional notions of block layout, infrastructure, and open space were rethought.
At the time of the RPA’s emergence, the United States was facing a critical housing shortage after the war. The members of the RPA were dissatisfied with the building industry’s inability to relieve the housing shortage after WWI. They looked enviously at how other countries were solving their housing problems. While England making policies to house its working class (Parliament Housing Act 1919), America was still debating federal housing programs (Congress had terminated the federally funded U.S. Shipping Board housing program after the end of WWI). RPA sought alternatives to the condition of suburban sprawl and urban crowding. RPA took a comprehensive, non-speculative stance towards land use.
The RPA was not composed of academic theorists; the RPA planners wanted to steer the nation towards garden city reform by constructing educational models that could be emulated elsewhere.
The members of the RPA complemented each other’s abilities. They each had varied experiences and backgrounds in planning. In short, Lewis Mumford articulated the vision of the RPA, Henry Wright provided the technical expertise, Benton MacKaye expanded the regional planning strategy to include wilderness, Stein coordinated and evaluated planning ideas, and New York Governor Al Smith (who wanted to replace the East Side tenements he grew up in) provided the political clout. Alexander Bing came to the RPA as an experienced developer. He had made his fortune buying land and constructing luxury apartments on 5th avenue before the elevated railroad was removed. After serving on the Labor Board during WWI he became more active in social reforms. He believed providing homes and communities for people with limited incomes could set the stage for social reform. He set up the City Housing Corporation so that money from investors could be used for sound and social projects.
Bing thought the prevailing mode of development defined by marketplace in America hindered the production of affordable housing. Realtors were determined to intensify land use to maximize land values and profit. The consequent speculation inflated costs and promoted piecemeal development. At that time, developers expected at least a 10% return on investment. This expectation pushed the cost up for home buyer. In the 1920’s only 3% of the new construction in New York City was within the means of 70% of population. Bing and Stein quickly identified financing as most significant factor in providing affordable housing. Stein calculated that a 1-2% savings in interest would result in a 10% reduction in mortgage fees.
Bibliography
6. Howard, Ebenezer, Sir. Garden cities of to-morrow. Cambridge, Mass., M.I.T. Press [1965]
7. Lansing, John B. Planned residential environments A report prepared for the U.S. Dept. of Transportation, Bureau of Public Road.Ann Arbor, Survey Research Center, University of Michigan, 1970.
8. Mumford, Lewis. The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations and Its Prospects (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1961). Plate 51
9. Mumford, Lewis. “The Fourth Migration.” The Survey. May 1, 1925; vol. LIV, no.3, p 130-134.
The RPA believed that the other contemporary approaches to solving the urban problems such as road improvements and slum clearance were misguided. They argued that more transportation infrastructure (i.e., Triborough Bridge) causes more concentration of people in the cities. Additionally, road improvements result in higher taxes, which leads to more intensive use of land to meet the tax burden, thus leading to more congestion. The RPA was not interested in wide spread commuting districts which lead to commuter congestion. To the RPA, slum clearance was too costly because urban land was expensive. In slum clearance too much capital would be devoted to land purchase thereby inflating housing costs.
Instead, the RPA’s approach to solving urban problems was holistic. Housing, transportation, public schools, recreation, power, water, and sewage disposal were interdependent systems that needed re-consideration in urban planning. In planning developments at Sunnyside and Radburn, many traditional notions of block layout, infrastructure, and open space were rethought.
At the time of the RPA’s emergence, the United States was facing a critical housing shortage after the war. The members of the RPA were dissatisfied with the building industry’s inability to relieve the housing shortage after WWI. They looked enviously at how other countries were solving their housing problems. While England making policies to house its working class (Parliament Housing Act 1919), America was still debating federal housing programs (Congress had terminated the federally funded U.S. Shipping Board housing program after the end of WWI). RPA sought alternatives to the condition of suburban sprawl and urban crowding. RPA took a comprehensive, non-speculative stance towards land use.
The RPA was not composed of academic theorists; the RPA planners wanted to steer the nation towards garden city reform by constructing educational models that could be emulated elsewhere.
The members of the RPA complemented each other’s abilities. They each had varied experiences and backgrounds in planning. In short, Lewis Mumford articulated the vision of the RPA, Henry Wright provided the technical expertise, Benton MacKaye expanded the regional planning strategy to include wilderness, Stein coordinated and evaluated planning ideas, and New York Governor Al Smith (who wanted to replace the East Side tenements he grew up in) provided the political clout. Alexander Bing came to the RPA as an experienced developer. He had made his fortune buying land and constructing luxury apartments on 5th avenue before the elevated railroad was removed. After serving on the Labor Board during WWI he became more active in social reforms. He believed providing homes and communities for people with limited incomes could set the stage for social reform. He set up the City Housing Corporation so that money from investors could be used for sound and social projects.
Bing thought the prevailing mode of development defined by marketplace in America hindered the production of affordable housing. Realtors were determined to intensify land use to maximize land values and profit. The consequent speculation inflated costs and promoted piecemeal development. At that time, developers expected at least a 10% return on investment. This expectation pushed the cost up for home buyer. In the 1920’s only 3% of the new construction in New York City was within the means of 70% of population. Bing and Stein quickly identified financing as most significant factor in providing affordable housing. Stein calculated that a 1-2% savings in interest would result in a 10% reduction in mortgage fees.
Bibliography
6. Howard, Ebenezer, Sir. Garden cities of to-morrow. Cambridge, Mass., M.I.T. Press [1965]
7. Lansing, John B. Planned residential environments A report prepared for the U.S. Dept. of Transportation, Bureau of Public Road.Ann Arbor, Survey Research Center, University of Michigan, 1970.
8. Mumford, Lewis. The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations and Its Prospects (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1961). Plate 51
9. Mumford, Lewis. “The Fourth Migration.” The Survey. May 1, 1925; vol. LIV, no.3, p 130-134.
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