Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables, figures and photographs
- Preface
- one Introducing Jigsaw cities
- Part 1 How did we get here?
- Part 2 Where are we now?
- Part 3 Where do we go from here?
- Afterword: the urban jungle or urban jigsaw?
- Notes and references
- Bibliography
- Index
- Also available in the CASE Studies on Poverty, Place and Policy series
three - Breaking up the jigsaw
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 January 2022
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables, figures and photographs
- Preface
- one Introducing Jigsaw cities
- Part 1 How did we get here?
- Part 2 Where are we now?
- Part 3 Where do we go from here?
- Afterword: the urban jungle or urban jigsaw?
- Notes and references
- Bibliography
- Index
- Also available in the CASE Studies on Poverty, Place and Policy series
Summary
That in this land of abounding wealth, during a time of perhaps unexampled prosperity, probably more than one fourth of the population are living in poverty, is a fact which may well cause great searchings of the heart. There is surely need for a greater concentration of thought by the nation upon the wellbeing of its own people, for no civilisation can be sound or stable which has at its base this mass of stunted human life. The suffering may be all but voiceless, and we may long remain ignorant of its extent and severity, but when once we realise it, we see that social questions of profound importance await solution. (Seebohm Rowntree, social reformer, son of Joseph Rowntree, 1901)
Garden cities and the urban exodus
Joseph Rowntree's high-minded son, the meticulous social researcher Seebohm Rowntree, was shocked to discover in his native city of York that, as the new century dawned, a large minority still lived in deep hardship, even starvation. The reality of poverty, squalor and disease drove new forms of town planning that were supposed to overcome the endemic problems of urban poverty. One Utopian model of urban and housing planning was developed in the early 20th century with real enthusiasm and exported all over the world. The Garden City movement managed to combine enterprise and cooperation, houses and gardens with public and social amenities, in a totally new form of philanthropic endeavour that was eventually to capture the imagination of governments. It was intensely public-spirited and yet intensely independent of the state in its founding structure and funding. The model villages that we described earlier, particularly New Earswick in York, helped inspire Ebenezer Howard, the founder and utopian visionary of the garden city movement.
In 1898 Howard published a riveting booklet Tomorrow: A peaceful path to real reform. In it, Howard set out his social vision of garden cities: self-contained, self-financing havens of peace and prosperity, built outside the main cities but connected to them by major rail links, where people of all incomes and all walks of life would share its benefits. All profits were to be reinvested for the common good of the garden city itself. His utopian vision echoed Robert Owen's earlier cooperative ideals but at city scale.
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- Jigsaw CitiesBig Places, Small Spaces, pp. 37 - 54Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2007