No. 06 (2000): The Garden City, a hundred years later

To remember the Garden City, a hundred years after its theoretical pronouncement, doesn’t constitute a mere act of historical remembrance. Our wish, on the contrary, is to approach this ephemeris with the purpose, perhaps with the bad conscience, of showing the present relevance of Howard’s way of thinking, if by that we understand his close proximity to the current demands rather than its uncomfortable adaptation to the one which saw it being born.

Our hope is to make the case that the Garden City is, in essence, an idea that can keep answering the current urban requirements as it tried, if without the predicted success, to face those others that were planned on the tail end of the nineteenth century. This doesn’t mean that we are supporting something obsolete or that we are redoing the historic identification of Howard with the time in which he lived. We don’t intend to promote thoughts pinned to past times, nor question Howard’s condition as a historical character closely linked and committed to his time.

The city as an idea, as a form and as management in the context of a society that wants self-government, constitutes part of the thoughts that Howard professed and that we recommend should be re-read and revised in order to refocus the lost horizon of our field.