Howard's Utopia

The notion of “Garden City”, famously explored by Ebenezer Howard was a solution intended to bring together the economic and cultural advantages of both city and country living. He sees it as an alternative to the congested urban areas in England. Canberra –the capital city of Australia differs from the garden city proper, a city that is perhaps not what Howard wished garden city to be. Nonetheless Canberra is a city that incorporates many of the garden city principles and in this essay I will argue that Canberra indeed is a garden city, as Canberra is build on central garden city concepts such as public ownership of land, limited growth and population in the city and a balance between town and country. Whilst Canberra may not be a true garden city, the city structure still contain a concentric pattern of green spaces, sense of community and grant boulevards that was designed by Walter Burley Griffin in the 1920’s along the garden city principles that can be traced back Howard, thus Canberra will be very recognisable to him as a garden city.

One of the central ideas Howard (1965) had for the garden city is that land is owned by the whole city and not by private individual. This will thereby eliminate private landlord and allow garden city to be a commonwealth in which the increasing value of land would subsidies a range of institutions that would promote a higher quality of life for all residents. But, as Ward (2002) wrote “Howards’s vision of a peaceful path to social reform was nowhere fulfilled.” The land in Canberra was bought by the federation for the purpose of building the Australia Capital Territory. The resulting public land would be leased to individuals for urban use for a period of 99 years and for agricultural u...

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...aining high standards of morality and social stability, but was more focused on the idea of the garden suburb than the garden city. However, it can be see from ideas behind the development of Canberra that the city is indeed a garden city.

Canberra has translated Ebenezer Howard’s basic concepts into a series of plans.

It did not completely fulfill Howard’s grand vision, because it is not a direct duplicate, but even Howard himself was fully aware that his ideas will undergo processes of modification. (Birch 2002) Due to the heavy influence of Ebenezer Howard, many often compare the Canberra’s garden city image for Howard’s words and simple diagrams, while in fact there were many compromises. Even so, if Ebenezer Howard were alive today to see the current state of Canberra, there would be much that he would find familiar to the garden city that he envisioned.