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Garden city
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Sir Ebenezer Howard‘s garden city concept has without doubt influences the mind of today town planners. Ever since its birth in the nineteen century, it has spread widely and has been used as a basis from which existing ideas were revised and reformulated. This fundamental ideas remain as an important basic urban planning idea even in the world today. In Singapore, for instance, traces of the garden city concept could be observed from the way the nation was structured. In my essay, I shall first discuss on the urban hierarchy order seen in Singapore as a whole and then within the Housing and Development Board (HDB) new towns with reference to Sir Ebenezer Howard‘s garden city concept. Sir Ebenezer Howard and The Garden City In 1898, Sir Ebenezer Howard wrote a book entitled Tomorrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform. During then, he was concerned with the depopulation in the countryside and the poor quality of life found in congested and dirty cities. The Industrial Revolution has encouraged a great deal of migration from the rural areas into the cities areas. This is because many of the rural residents sought to seek employment and a better life in the urban areas. However, life turns out to be even harsher. The congested cities create an unhealthy living conditions and migrants face a lot of difficulties while looking for a job. As a result of this, it eventually prompted Sir Ebenezer Howard to come up with the idea of a “garden city” as the solution to these problems. The garden city was seen as a mean to fuse the best quality of both the country and the city. As seen in his book, the garden city concept outlined a utopian vision of a self-sustaining town that would combine town conveniences and industries with the advantages of an agricultural location. This is believed to thus provide a healthy and beautiful place for everyone (regardless whether you are rich or poor) to work and live in. This idea of garden city have proved to be effective in some ways that from then on, Sir Ebenezer Howard‘s new work had initiated the planning and development of the first new towns in Great Britain and then subsequently in other countries during the twentieth century. The Garden City Concept ‘A Garden City is a Town designed for healthy living and industry; of a size that makes possible a full measure of social life but not larger; surrounded by a rural belt; the whole of the land being in public ownership or held in trust for the community.’ When Sir Ebenezer Howard first wrote the book, his central idea was to plan and built new towns. His‘s solution involved a system whereby a central city was surrounded by a number of independent garden cities ,which in turn is surrounded with greenbelts. The combined system is then link up by means of an efficient rail transit system. This concept of a utopian township is formed from the basis of four fundamental principles. Firstly, there is the decentralized idea. This idea of decentralization refers to the outward movement from crowded, metropolis to open countryside. Secondly, there is the garden, which implies a low-density layout and a well planted urban landscape. Thirdly, there is the communal landownership whereby land was controlled based on the interest of the public. Fourthly, there is the self containment idea. Self containment was not a phrase that was being used by Sir Ebenezer Howard. However, it still remain as one of his ideas. It was believes that the combination of all these would transform existing concentrated cities into a decentralized but closely related network of garden cities, collectively known as the social city. The social city is believed to provide a socially and economically balanced city.
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