What’s on the Garden City poster
A definition and 6 facts worth remembering.
Ebenezer Howard's 1898 proposal for planned towns of limited size, surrounded by a permanent green belt, with land held in common so rising value returned to the community.
- Set out in Tomorrow, 1898; reissued 1902.
- Target of about 30,000 people per town.
- A permanent agricultural belt around each.
- Land held in trust, not privately captured.
- Letchworth begun 1903, Welwyn 1920.
- The land ownership idea was mostly dropped later.
- First garden city — Letchworth, 1903
- Town size — about 30,000
- Howard's three magnets diagram argues that town and country each have defects the oth…
Against Victorian slum overcrowding and speculative land value. What survived was the greenery; the land reform rarely did.
Questions about the Garden City poster
- What’s on the Garden City poster?
- A definition and 6 facts worth remembering. Ebenezer Howard's 1898 proposal for planned towns of limited size, surrounded by a permanent green belt, with land held in common so rising value returned to the community. Set out in Tomorrow, 1898; reissued 1902.; Target of about 30,000 people per town.; A permanent agricultural belt around each.; Land held in trust, not privately captured.; Letchworth begun 1903, Welwyn 1920.; The land ownership idea was mostly dropped later.; First garden city — Letchworth, 1903; Town size — about 30,000; Howard's three magnets diagram argues that town and country each have defects the oth…. Against Victorian slum overcrowding and speculative land value. What survived was the greenery; the land reform rarely did.
- Who is the Garden City poster for?
- Garden City belongs to the Architecture section rather than to a school year, because design is not something one grade owns. Anyone learning urban design can pin it up — a beginner, a student mid-course, or someone revising years later.
- When should you use the Garden City poster?
- Use it to trace the ancestry of almost every twentieth-century suburb and new town. A wall chart earns its place by being glanceable from where the work is happening, so Garden City belongs on the wall where that design work actually happens, within glancing distance, rather than filed away.
- What other posters go with Garden City?
- Active Frontage, Housing Typologies and Jane Jacobs sit alongside Garden City in the Architecture section. Printed together they make a wall rather than a single sheet, which is how a reference set actually gets used.Active FrontageHousing TypologiesJane Jacobs
- Is the Garden City poster free to download and print?
- Yes. Garden City downloads as a free PDF with no account, no email and no watermark, like everything else in the Architecture section. Print as many copies as you like for a home, a classroom, a library or a tutoring group; reselling the file is the only thing the licence rules out.Read the licence
- What size does the Garden City poster print at?
- Garden City is a vector PDF laid out for US Letter, and prints on A4 with Fit to page — the same file, no separate download. Because every mark on it is drawn rather than photographed, it stays sharp enlarged to A3, A2 or A1 at a copy shop. Colour carries emphasis only, so a greyscale print of Garden City loses nothing.Printing guide
Related posters
Charts that sit alongside Garden City on the same wall.
Browse every Architecture poster, or start from the full catalogue.