Regaining Paradise : Englishness and the Early Garden City Movement

by Standish Meacham

• ISBN13: 9780300075724
• ISBN10: 0300075723
• Format: Trade Book
• Copyright: 1999-05-11
• Publisher: Yale University Press

Summary

This engaging book considers the British social reform movement at the beginning of the twentieth century through the lens of the garden city movement, a plan to build new communities on open land that would provide a healthy, aesthetially pleasing environment free from overcrowding and pollution. Standish Meacham argues that although the garden city movement initially embodied radical schemes for the reformation of society, it became in the hands of its upper-middle-class proponents a device for maintaining the established order in the face of threatening social change. Meacham shows that even socialist architects closely associated with the movement and its most famous prewar projects at Letchworth and Hampstead relied for inspiration on the villages of England's pre-industrial squirearchy. The result was the reaffirmation of a particular concept of Englishness that influenced both social policy and urban design.

Table of Contents

Preface	vii
Introduction: The Matter of Englishness	I
Bournville and Port Sunlight: The Exemplars	II
Ebenezer Howard and the Garden City Association	44	(26)
Barry Parker and Raymond Unwin: Principles and Practice	70	(25)
Letchworth: Best Laid Plans	95	(28)
Letchworth: ``The Spirit of the Place,''	123	(23)
Suburban High-Mindedness at Hampstead	146	(32)
Epilogue	178	(7)
Notes	185	(20)
Index	205