The Origin of the Garden City Concept of Urban Form

AT some point in history, someone-whether he be a politician, economist, geographer, architect, or any other man of learning-sets down a fundamental concept concerning a structure for communities based on certain idealistic principles.1 These principles have often evolved out of a reaction to conditions or trends contemporaneous with the period during which they were proposed, and they frequently assume the form of either Utopian or anti-Utopian theories. For example, most of the planning ideas put forward in the first half of the nineteenth century by such men as Robert Owen, Charles Fourier, Saint-Simon, Jeremy Bentham, and others arose out of an attempt to alleviate the social and physical disorder of the emergent industrial city by establishing a new political and economic structure for