Ebenezer Howard

Ebenezer Howard (1850-1928) was a British writer who developed and popularised the idea of the Garden City, and was a huge influence on town planners in the western world for most of the twentieth century.

Howard emigrated to the [[United States in 1871, living in Nebraska and Chicago, but returned to London in 1876, working as a clerk and sometime Parliamentary reporter. He became a supporter of Henry George, whose single tax proposals were to influence Howard's work. In 1898 Howard published To-Morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform, republished under its more familiar title Garden Cities of To-Morrow in 1902. In it, he argued that the problems of ever-expanding cities, and the poor social conditions within them, could be solved by instead building self-contained networks of 'Garden Cities' which would be restricted in size, would be designed to maximise the social, intellectual and economic potential of a community, and would offer the advantages of living in town and in the country in terms of cultural, educational, recreational and environmental amenities.