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Garden Cities to the World! The international propagation of the garden city idea 1913-1926
| In the nineteenth century new elites arose that challenged the culture of laissez faire of local authorities. They sought new approaches to the increasing interrelated problems that infested urban life: overcrowding, congestion, housing shortages, the uncontrolled urban sprawl, bad sanitation, a poor quality of architectural and urban design. These new elites formed a diverse community: planners, architects, engineers, social reformers, scientists, administrators, politicians and interested laymen. Although each group had its own programme, they found each other in a mutual enemy, the nineteenth century city.
From the outset the campaign for improved cities had an international outlook. Protagonists of the urban reform movement across the globe followed each others publications and experiences and met during international congresses. Hygiene and social sciences were the first urban issues to be taken up; housing only became an independent issue for international debate with the establishment of the International Housing Congresses (1889). Variations in housing conditions and public policies greatly hampered the debate on housing on an international level. However, this soon changed as the garden city idea swept the urbanized world. It provided a common ground that was severely missed in the previous period. The garden city gospel did much to invigorate the international housing movement at large, although it was seriously compromised along the way. Soon it became evident that it was impossible to regard housing problems isolated and subsequently the housing discussion ventured into adjoining fields. In the everbranching international urban debate the notion of town planning increasingly occupied the minds of participants.
The British Garden Cities and Town Planning Association (TCPA), established in 1902 to propagate Howard’s ideas and ultimately to launch the first garden cities, took part in this international exchange.The TCPA provided a welcome international focal point for anyone wanting to learn more about garden cities. Already in 1904 it held its First International Garden Cities Conference in London, the first of a series of such meetings dedicated to the international dissemination of the garden city gospel. A next step on the international stage was made in 1913 with the formation of the International Garden Cities and Town Planning Association (IGCTPA). Formally an international body to unite the garden city workers across the world, in reality the International Association initially was nothing more then an international branch of the TCPA, an operation abroad to impose British housing and town planning doctrine and exorcise false interpretations of the garden city gospel.
This paper focuses on the IGCTPA during the period 1913-1926. The interaction of protagonists of the urban reform movement in this international setting will be surveyed. More in particular, the paper wants to reconstruct how the British GCTPA exerted the IGCTPA as a vehicle to broaden its position from national elite to international elite and how other countries participating in the International Association, reacted to this British paternalism.
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